s seen. Then, of a sudden, some March or April they
come pouring over the horizon from the south or southwest, and for a few
days the land is alive with them.

The whole race seems to be collected in a few vast swarms or
assemblages. Indeed, I have sometimes thought there was only one such
in the United States, and that it moved in squads, and regiments, and
brigades, and divisions, like a giant army. The scouting and foraging
squads are not unusual, and every few years we see larger bodies of
them, but rarely indeed do we witness the spectacle of the whole vast
tribe in motion. Sometimes we hear of them in Virginia, or Kentucky
and Tennessee; then in Ohio or Pennsylvania; then in New York; then in
Canada or Michigan or Missouri. They are followed from point to point,
and from State to State, by human sharks, who catch and shoot them for
market.

A year ago last April, the pigeons flew for two or three days up and
down the Hudson. In long bowing lines, or else in dense masses, they
moved across the sky. It was not the whole army, but I should think at
least one corps of it; I had not seen such a flight of pigeons since
my boyhood. I went up to the top of the house, the better to behold the
winged procession. The day seemed memorable and poetic in which such
sights occurred.

[Footnote: This proved to be the last flight of the pigeons
in the valley of the Hudson. The whole tribe has now (1895)
been nearly exterminated by pot-hunters. The few that still
remain appear to be scattered through the Northern States
in small, loose flocks.]

While I was looking at the pigeons, a flock of wild geese went by,
harrowing the sky northward. The geese strike a deeper chord than the
pigeons. Level and straight they go as fate to its mark. I cannot tell
what emotions these migrating birds awaken in me,--the geese especially.
One seldom sees more than a flock or two in a season, and what a spring
token it is! The great bodies are in motion. It is like the passage of
a victorious army. No longer inch by inch does spring come, but these
geese advance the standard across zones at one pull. How my desire goes
with them; how something in me, wild and migratory, plumes itself and
follows fast!

"Steering north, with raucous cry,
Through tracts and provinces of sky,
Every night alighting down
In new landscapes of romance,
Where darkling feed the clamorous clans
By lone