CHAPTER Y. 
BREEDING COLONIES. 
“ Here, too, all forms of social union find, 
And hence let reason, late, instruct mankind : 
Here subterranean works and cities see: 
There towns aerial on the waving tree.” 
Pope. 
The sociable characteristics of birds are nowhere so 
visibly demonstrated as in those localities selected by 
certain species, where they breed in communities. There 
we find flocks united, which vie with, and in some cases 
exceed in number, the population of our largest towns : 
in such places we see assemblages of birds so immense 
as “ to eclipse the light of the sun in their flight, 
deafen the ear with their screams, and cover even the 
rocks with their bodies when they alight,” and cause 
us such astonishment as almost to make us doubt the 
evidence of our senses. 
Wilson and Audubon saw flocks of Passenger Pigeons 
passing over them, which, taken at the lowest possible 
computation, must have out-numbered the united human 
population of the earth! The figures given us by these 
naturalists amounted not to hundreds and thousands, but 
to hundreds of millions ! It is difficult to imagine such 
a phenomenon, and utterly impossible to give a satisfac¬ 
tory description of such a sight. For this reason we will 
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