278 
THE PASSENGER PIGEON. 
even at this rate, it would he difficult to account for their 
vast numbers, without the further knowledge of their prolific 
nature, and the rapid growth of the young birds. Their 
sittings are renewed, or rather continued; one pair having 
been thus known to produce seven, and another, eight times 
in one year. In twenty-three days from the laying of the 
egg, the young ones could fly, being completely feathered on 
the eighth day. When the broods are matured, with the 
exception of, probably, some tons of the young, which are 
killed and carried off by actual waggon-loads, being more 
esteemed for food than the old ones, they continue their 
course towards the north ; from whence, in December, they 
return in the same dense mass, and are usually found to he 
remarkably fat ; proving that in the northern regions they 
find an ample supply of food ; and vast indeed must he the 
stock, to furnish and fatten such a swarm of hungry mouths. 
In the crop of one of our common English Wood-Pigeons, 
just killed, we found upwards of an ounce of the fresh- 
budding leaves of clover, and in another, mentioned by Mr. 
White, of Selhorne, was found an equal quantity of tender 
turnip-tops, so nice and inviting, that the wife of the person 
who shot it, boiled and ate them, as a delicate dish of greens, 
for supper. The consumption of grains of wheat by a com- 
mon House-Pigeon, we found to amount to two ounces in 
twenty-four hours, and in the following twenty-four hours, 
when fed with peas, it consumed about the same weight. 
Hence we may easily form some idea of the enormous con- 
sumption of a large flight. Supposing one Pigeon to feed 
regularly at the^above rate, its annual average supply would 
amount to about fifty pounds in weight, — a serious consump- 
tion of grain when large numbers are concerned. The fol- 
lowing calculation, made by a very accurate observer, places 
the subject, as far as relates to the American Wood-Pigeons, 
in a still more striking point of view. He saw a column of 
Pigeons, one mile in breadth, moving at the rate of one mile 
a minute, which, as it was four hours in passing, made its 
whole length .240 miles. He then calculated that each square 
yard of this moving body contained three Pigeons, which 
