634 
PIGEON TRIBE. 
communities. But their most destructive enemy is man ; 
and as soon as the young are fully grown, the neighbour- 
ing inhabitants assemble, and encamp for several days 
around the devoted Pigeons with waggons, axes, and 
cooking utensils, like the outskirts of a destructive army. 
The perpetual tumult of the birds, the crowding and 
fluttering multitudes, the thundering roar of their wings, 
and the crash of falling trees, from which the young are 
thus precipitated to the ground by the axe, produces al- 
together a scene of indescribable and almost terrific 
confusion. It is dangerous to walk beneath these clus- 
tering crowds of birds, from the frequent descent of large 
branches, broken down by the congregating millions ; 
the horses start at the noise, and conversation can only 
be heard in a shout. These squabs , or young Pigeons, 
of which three or four broods are produced in the season, 
are extremely fat and palatable, and, as well as the old 
birds killed at the roosts, are often, with a wanton prodi- 
gality and prodigious slaughter, strewed on the ground 
as fattening food for the hogs ! At the roosts, the de- 
struction is no less extensive ; guns, clubs, long poles, 
pots of burning sulphur, and every other engine of de- 
struction, which wanton avarice can bring forward, are 
all employed against the swarming host. Indeed for a 
time, in many places, nothing scarcely is seen, talked of, 
or eaten, but Pigeons ! 
In the Atlantic States where the flocks are less abun- 
dant, the gun, decoy, and net are put in operation against 
the devoted throng. Twenty or even thirty dozen have 
been caught at a single sweep of the net. Wagon 
loads of them are poured into market, where they are 
sometimes sold for no more than a cent a piece. Their 
combined movements are also sometimes sufficiently ex- 
tensive. The Honorable T. H. Perkins remarks, that 
