a large extent of forest.  When they have frequented one of these places for some time, the appearance it exhibits is surprising.  The ground is covered to the depth of several inches with their droppings; all the tender grass and underwood destroyed; the surface strewed with large limbs of trees, broken down by the weight of the birds clustering one above another, and the trees themselves, for thousand of acres, killed as completely as if girdled with an axe.  The marks of this desolation remain for many years on the spot, and numerous places could be pointed out, where for several years after scarcely a single vegetable made its appearance.

“When these roosts are first discovered, the inhabitants from considerable distances visit them in the night with guns, clubs, long poles, pots of sulphur, and various other engines of destruction.  In a few hours they fill many sacks, and load their horses with them.  By the Indians, a pigeon roost or breeding place is considered an important source of national profit and dependence for the season, and all their active ingenuity is exercised on the occasion.  The breeding place differs from the former in its greater extent.  In the western countries before mentioned, these are generally in beech woods, and often extend in nearly a straight line across the country for a great way.  Not far from Shelbyville, in the state of Kentucky, about five years ago, there was one of these breeding places, which stretched through the woods in nearly a north and south direction, which was several miles in breadth, 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