MIGRATORY PIGEON. 301 
spread out on suitable situations, commonly on an open 
height in an old buckwheat field ; four or five live 
pigeons, with their eyelids sewed up, are fastened on 
a movable stick ; a small hut of branches is fitted up 
for the fowler, at the distance of forty or fifty yards ; 
by the pulling of a string, the stick on which the 
pigeons rest is alternately elevated and depressed, which 
produces a fluttering of their wings similar to that of 
birds just alighting; this being perceived by the passing 
flocks, they descend with great rapidity, and, finding 
corn, buckwheat, &c. strewed about, begin to feed, and 
are instantly, by the pulling of a cord, covered by the 
net. In this manner ten, twenty, and even thirty 
dozen, have been caught at one sweep. Meantime the 
air is darkened with large bodies of them, moving in 
various directions ; the w oods also sw arm with them 
in search of acorns ; and the thundering of musketry 
is perpetual on all sides, from morning to night. 
Wagon loads of them are poured into market, w here 
they sell from fifty to tw enty-five, and even twelve 
cents, per dozen ; and pigeons become the order of the 
day at dinner, breakfast, and supper, until the very 
name becomes sickening. When they have been kept 
alive, and fed for some time on corn and buckwheat, 
their flesh acquires great superiority; but, in their 
common state, they are dry and blackish, and far inferior 
to the full grown young ones, or squabs. 
The nest of the wild pigeon is formed of a few dry 
slender twigs, carelessly put together, and with so little 
concavity, that the young one, when half grown, can 
easily be seen from below. The eggs are pure white. 
Great numbers of hawks, and sometimes the bald eagle 
himself, hover about those breeding places, and seize 
the old or the young from the nest amidst the rising 
multitudes, and with the most daring effrontery. The 
young, when beginning to fly, confine themselves to 
the under part of the tall w^oods where there is no brush, 
and where nuts and acorns are abundant, searching 
among the leaves for mast, and appear like a prodigious 
