DEFINITIONS.—1. Ham'mock, a hanging or swinging bed, usu-ally made of netting or hempen cloth. 4. Trans'port, ecstasy, rapture. 5. Im-pearled' (pro. im-perled'), decorated with pearls, or with things resembling pearls. 7. 'Lar'ums (an abbreviation of alarums, for alarms), affrights, terrifies. 12. Dirge, funeral music.
NOTES.—13. Coral is the solid part of a minute sea animal, corresponding to the bones in other animals. It grows in many fantastic shapes, and is of various colors.
Amber is a yellow resin, and is the fossilized gum of buried trees. It is mined in several localities in Europe and America; it is also found along the seacoast, washed up by the waves.
CV. THE PASSENGER PIGEON.
John James Audubon (b. 1780, d. 1851). This celebrated American ornithologist was born in Louisiana. When quite young he was passionately fond of birds, and took delight in studying their habits. In 1797 his father, an admiral in the French navy, sent him to Paris to be educated. On his return to America, he settled on a farm in eastern Pennsylvania, but afterward removed to Henderson, Ky., where he resided several years, supporting his family by trade, but devoting most of his time to the pursuit of his favorite study. In 1826 he went to England, and commenced the publication of the "Birds of America," which consists of ten volumes—five of engravings of birds, natural size, and five of letterpress. Cuvier declares this work to be "the most magnificent monument that art has ever erected to ornithology." In 1830 Audubon returned to America, and soon afterwards made excursions into nearly every section of the United States and Canada. A popular edition of his great work was published, in seven volumes, in 1844, and "The Quadrupeds of America," in six volumes,—three of plates and three of letterpress, in 1846-50. He removed to the vicinity of New York about 1840, and resided there until his death.
1. The multitudes of wild pigeons in our woods are astonishing. Indeed, after having viewed them so often, and under so many circumstances, I even now feel inclined to pause and assure myself that what I am going to relate is a fact. Yet I have seen it all, and that, too, in the company of persons who, like myself, were struck with amazement.
2. In the autumn of 1813 I left my house at Henderson, on the banks of the Ohio, on my way to Louisville. In passing over the Barrens, a few miles beyond Hardinsburgh, I observed the pigeons flying, from northeast to southwest, in greater numbers than I thought I had ever seen them before, and feeling an inclination to count the flocks that might pass within the reach of my eye in one hour, I dismounted, seated myself on an eminence, and began to mark with my pencil, making a dot for every flock that passed.
3. In a short time, finding the task which I had undertaken impracticable, as the birds poured in in countless multitudes, I rose, and, counting the dots then put down, found that one hundred and sixty-three had been made in twenty-one minutes. I traveled on, and still met more the farther I proceeded. The air was literally filled with pigeons; the light of noonday was obscured as by an eclipse; and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose.
4. Whilst waiting for dinner at Young's inn, at the confluence of Salt River with the Ohio, I saw, at my leisure, immense legions still going by, with a front reaching far beyond the Ohio on the west, and the beech wood forests directly on the east of me. Not a single bird alighted, for not a nut or acorn was that year to be seen in the neighborhood. They consequently flew so high that different trials to reach them with a capital rifle proved ineffectual; nor did the reports disturb them in the least.
5. I can not describe to you the extreme beauty of their aerial evolutions when a hawk chanced to press upon the rear of a flock. At once, like a torrent, and with a noise like thunder, they rushed into a compact mass, pressing upon each other towards the center. In these almost solid masses, they darted forward in undulating and angular lines, descended and swept close over the earth with inconceivable velocity, mounted perpendicularly so as to resemble a vast column, and, when high, were seen wheeling and twisting within their continued lines, which then resembled the coils of a gigantic serpent.