and was said to be upwards of forty miles in extent. In this tract
almost every tree was furnished with nests wherever the branches could
accommodate them. The pigeons made their first appearance there about
the 10th of April, and left it altogether with their young before the
25th of May.

"As soon as the young were fully grown, and before they left the nests,
numerous parties of the inhabitants, from all parts of the adjacent
country, came with waggons, axes, beds, cooking utensils, many of them
accompanied by the greater part of their families, and encamped for
several days in this immense nursery. Several of them informed me that
the noise in the woods was so great as to terrify their horses, and that
it was difficult for one person to hear another speak without bawling
in his ear. The ground was strewed with broken limbs of trees, eggs, and
young squab pigeons which had been precipitated from above, and on which
herds of hogs were fattening; hawks, buzzards, and eagles were sailing
about in great numbers, and seizing the squabs from their nests at
pleasure; while from twenty feet upwards to the tops of the trees, the
view through the woods presented a perpetual tumult of crowding and
fluttering multitudes of pigeons, their wings roaring like thunder,
mingled with the frequent crash of falling timber; for now the axemen
were at work, cutting down those trees which seemed to be most crowded
with nests, and contrived to fell them in such a manner, that in their
descent they might bring down several others, by which means the falling
of one large tree sometimes produced two hundred squabs, little inferior
in size to the old pigeons, and almost one mass of fat. On some single
trees, upwards of one hundred nests were found, each containing one
young only, a circumstance in the history of this bird not generally
known to naturalists. It was dangerous to walk under these fluttering
and flying millions, from the frequent fall of large branches, broken
down by the weight of the multitudes above, and which in their descent
often destroyed numbers of the birds themselves.

"I had left the public road to visit the remains of the breeding place
near Shelbyville, and was traversing the woods with my gun on my way to
Frankfort, when about one o'clock, the pigeons which I had observed
flying the greater part of the morning northerly, began to return in
such immense numbers as I never before had witnessed; coming to an
opening by