630 
PIGEON TRIBE. 
derings. As might be supposed from its extraordinary 
history, it is formed with peculiar strength of wing, mov- 
ing through the air with extreme rapidity, urging its 
flight also by quick and very muscular strokes. During 
the season of amorous address it often flies out in numer- 
ous hovering circles ; and while thus engaged, the tips of 
the great wing feathers are heard to strike against each 
other, so as to produce a very audible sound. 
The almost incredible and unparalleled associations 
which the species form with each other, appear to have 
no relation with the usual motives to migration among 
other birds. A general and mutual attachment seems to 
occasion this congregating propensity. Nearly the whole 
species, which at any one time inhabit the continent, are 
found together in the same place ; they do not fly from 
climate, as they are capable of enduring its severity and 
extremes. They are even found to breed in the lati- 
tude of 51° round Hudson’s Bay, and the interior of 
New Hampshire, as well as in the 32d degree in the 
dense forests of the great valley of the Mississippi. The 
accidental situation of their food alone directs all their 
movements ; while this continues to be supplied, they 
sometimes remain sedentary in a particular district, as in 
the dense forests of Kentucky, where the great body re- 
mained for years in succession, and were scarcely else- 
where to be found ; and here, at length, when the mast 
happened to fail, they disappeared for several years. 
The rapidity of flight, so necessary in their vast 
domestic movements, is sufficiently remarkable. The 
Pigeons killed near the city of New York, have been 
found with their crops full of rice collected in the planta- 
tions of Georgia or Carolina; and as this kind of food is di- 
gested by them entirely in 12 hours, they must have travel- 
led probably 3 or 4 hundred miles in about the half of that 
