so as to pass over the mountains, behind which they disappeared before
the rear came up.

"In the Atlantic States, though they never appear in such unparalleled
multitudes, they are sometimes very numerous; and great havoc is then
made amongst them with the gun, the clap-net, and various other
implements of destruction. As soon as it is ascertained in a town that
the pigeons are flying numerously in the neighborhood, the gunners rise
_en masse_; the clap-nets are spread out on suitable situations,
commonly on an open height in an old buckwheat field, four or five live
pigeons, _with their eyelids sewed up_,[A] are fastened on a movable
stick, a small hut of branches is fitted up for the fowler at the
distance of forty or fifty yards. By the pulling of a string, the stick
on which the pigeons rest is alternately elevated and depressed, which
produces a fluttering of their wings, similar to that of birds
alighting. This being perceived by the passing flocks, they descend with
great rapidity, and finding corn, buckwheat, etc, strewed about, begin
to feed, and are instantly, by the pulling of a cord, covered by the
net. In this manner ten, twenty, and even thirty dozen have been caught
at one sweep. Meantime the air is darkened with large bodies of them
moving in various directions; the woods also swarm with them in search
of acorns, and the thundering of musquetry is perpetual on all sides
from morning to night. Wagon loads of them are poured into market, where
they sell from fifty to twenty-five and even twelve cents per dozen; and
pigeons become the order of the day at dinner, breakfast and supper,
until the very name becomes sickening."

[Footnote A: To-day, we think that the fowlers of the roccolos of
northern Italy are very cruel in their methods of catching song-birds
wholesale for the market (chapter xi); but our own countrymen of