“The vast quantity of food which these multitudes consume is a serious loss to the other animals, such as bears, pigs, squirrels, which are dependent on the fruits of the forest.  I have taken from the crop of a single wild pigeon a good handful of the kernels of beech nuts intermixed with acorns and chesnuts.  To form a rough estimate of the daily consumption of one of these immense flocks, let us first attempt to calculate the numbers above mentioned, as seen in passing between Frankfort and the Indian Territory.  If we suppose this column to have been one mile in breadth (and I believe it to have been much more), and that it moved at the rate of one mile in a minute, four hours, the time it continued passing, would make its whole length two hundred and forty miles.  Again, supposing that each square yard of this moving body comprehended three pigeons, the square yards in the whole space, multiplied by three, would give two thousand two hundred and thirty millions two hundred and seventy-two thousand pigeons!—­an almost incredible multitude, and yet far below the actual amount.  Computing each of these to consume half a pint of mast (nuts, and other seeds of trees) daily, the whole quantity, at this rate, would equal seventeen millions four hundred and twenty-four thousand bushels per day!  Heaven has wisely and graciously given to these birds rapidity of flight, and a disposition to range over vast uncultivated tracts of the earth; otherwise they must have perished in the districts where they resided, or devoured the whole productions of agriculture, as well as those of the forests.

“The appearance of large detached flocks of these birds in the air, and the various evolutions they display, are strikingly picturesque and interesting.  In descending the Ohio by myself, I often rested on my oars to contemplate their aerial manoeuvres.  A column of eight or ten miles in length would appear from Kentucky high in air, steering across to Indiana.  The leaders of this great body would sometimes gradually vary their course, till it formed a large bend of more than a mile in diameter, those behind tracing the exact route of their predecessors.  This would continue sometimes long after both extremities were beyond the reach of sight; so that the whole with its glittering undulations marked a space on the face of the heavens resembling the windings of a vast majestic river.  When this bend became very great, the birds, as if sensible of the unnecessarily circuitous route they were taking, suddenly changed their direction, so that what was in column before became an immense front, straightening all its indentures until it swept the heavens in one vast and infinitely extended line.  Other lesser bodies also united with each other as they happened to approach, and with such ease and elegance of evolution, forming new figures and varying these as they united or separated, that I was never tired of contemplating them.  Sometimes a hawk would sweep on a particular part of the column from a great height, when almost as quick as lightning that part shot downwards out of the common track, but soon rising again, continued advancing at the same height as before.  This inflection was continued by those behind, who, on arriving at this point, dived down almost perpendicularly to a great depth, and, rising, followed the exact path of those that went before.