A Popular Handbook of the Ornithology of Eastern North America (Electronic book text)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3a wanton prodigality and prodigious slaughter, strewed on the ground as fattening textit{food for the hogs. At the roosts the destruction is no less extensive; guns, clubs, long poles, pots of burning sulphur, and every other engine of destruction which wanton avarice can bring forward, are all employed against the swarming host. Indeed for a time, in many places, nothing scarcely is seen, talked of, or eaten, but Pigeons. In the Atlantic States, where the flocks are less abundant, the gun, decoy, and net are put in operation against the devoted throng. Twenty or even thirty do2en have been caught at a single sweep of the net. Wagon-loads of them are poured into market, where they are sometimes sold for no more than a cent apiece. Their combined movements are also sometimes sufficiently extensive. The Honorable T. H. Perkins remarks that about the year 1798, while he was passing through New Jersey, near Newark, the flocks continued to pass for at least two hours without cessation; and he learnt from the neighboring inhabitants that in descending upon a large pond to drink, those in the rear, alighting on the backs of the first that arrived (in the usual order of their movements on land to feed), pressed them beneath the surface, so that tens of thousands were thus drowned. They were likewise killed in great numbers at the roosts with clubs. Down to twenty years ago immense flocks of Pigeons were seen yearly in every State of New England, and they nested i n communities that were reckoned by thousands. Now, in place of the myriads that gathered here, only a fejv can be found, and these are scattered during the breeding-season, each pair selecting an isolated site for the nest. Twenty years ago the Wild Pigeon was exceedingly abundant in the Maritime Provinces of Canada; now it is rare. Mcllwraith...