200 
PASSENGER PIGEON. 
greater part of their families, and encamped for several days 
at this immense nursery. Several of them informed me, that 
the noise in the woods was so great as to terrify their horses, 
and that it was difficult for one person to hear another speak, 
without bawling in his ear. The ground was strewed with 
broken limbs of trees, eggs, and young squab Pigeons, which 
had been precipitated from above, and on which herds of 
hogs were fattening. Hawks, Buzzards, and Eagles, were 
sailing about in great numbers, and seizing the squabs from 
their nests at pleasure ; while, from twenty feet upwards to 
the tops of the trees, the view through the woods presented a 
perpetual tumult of crowding and fluttering multitudes of 
Pigeons, their wings roaring like thunder, mingled with the 
frequent crash of falling timber ; for now the axe-men were 
at work, cutting down those trees that seemed to be most 
crowded with nests, and contrived to fell them in such a 
manner, that, in their descent, they might bring down several 
others ; by which means the falling of one large tree some- 
times produced two hundred squabs, little inferior in size to 
the old ones, and almost one mass of fat. On some single 
trees, upwards of one hundred nests were found, each con- 
taining one young only ; a circumstance, in the history of this 
bird, not generally known to naturalists. It was dangerous 
to walk under these flying and fluttering millions, from the 
frequent fall of large branches, broken down by the weight 
of the multitudes above, and which, in their descent, often 
destroyed numbers of the birds themselves; while the clothes 
of those engaged in traversing the woods were completely 
covered with the excrements of the Pigeons. 
These circumstances were related to me by many of the 
most respectable part of the community in that quarter ; and 
were confirmed, in part, by what I myself witnessed. I 
passed for several miles through this same breeding place, 
where every tree was spotted with nests, the remains of those 
above described. In many instances, I counted upwards of 
ninety nests on a single tree ; but the Pigeons had abandoned 
