THE PASSENGER PIGEON. 113

surface strewed with large limbs of trees,
broken down by the weight of the birds
collecting one above another—a single
tree often containing one hundred nests—
and the trees themselves, for thousands
of acres, killed as completely as if girdled
with an axe. When these roosts are first
discovered, the inhabitants, from conesi-
derable distances, visit them in the night,
with guns, clubs, long poles, sulphur-pcts,
and various other engines of destruction,
and thus in a few hours fill sacks and
load horses with them. They commence
breeding early in the spring, and produce
two or three families in a year, of two
zach, and it is asserted they consist always
x; a male and a female.

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