Curious to determine how long this appearance would continue, I took out my watch to note the time, and sat down to observe them.

It was then half-past one; I sat for more than an hour, but instead of a diminution of this prodigious procession, it seemed rather to increase, both in numbers and rapidity; and anxious to reach Frankfort before night, I rose and went on.

About four o'clock in the afternoon I crossed Kentucky River, at the town of Frankfort, at which time the living torrent above my head seemed as numerous and as extensive as ever.

Long after this I observed them in large bodies that continued to pass for six or eight minutes, and these again were followed by other detached bodies, all moving in the same south-east direction, till after six o'clock in the evening.

The great breadth of front which this mighty multitude preserved would seem to intimate a corresponding breadth of their breeding-place, which, by several gentlemen who had lately passed through part of it, was stated to me at several miles." From these various observations, Wilson calculated that the number of birds contained in the mass of pigeons which he saw on this occasion was at least two thousand millions, while this was only one of many similar aggregations known to exist in various parts of the United States.