[ g o 7 ] The Disappearance op the Passenger Pigeon. 737 



records ceased after this till 1898 when three birds were taken at 

 points widely apart, an adult male at lake Winnipegosis, Man.> 

 on April 14, (5) an immature male at Owensboro, Kentucky, on 

 July 27, now in the Smithsonian Institution, and another imma- 

 ture bird taken at Detroit, Michigan on September 14 (5) is ia 

 my collection, these are the last records that can be based on 

 specimens. (6) 



In 1903, I published a list (5) including sight records one as 

 late as May 1902, this latter is possibly open to doubt, but th* 

 ones I gave for 1900 are, I feel confident, correct, as the b : rds. 

 were seen more than once and by different observers. For all 

 practical purposes the close of the nineteenth centuary saw the 

 final extinction of the passenger pigeon in a wild state and there 

 remained only the small flock, numbering in 1903 not more than 

 a dozen, that had been bred in captivity by Prof. C. O. Whitman 1 

 of Chicago. These birds the descendants of a single pair, had. 

 long before that ceased to breed and it was in an effort to obtain 

 fresh blood for; this flock that I started a newspaper enquiry 

 that brought many replies none of which could be substantiated 

 as records of the passenger pigeon and many referred to the 

 mourning dove. I am aware that there has been lately widely 

 spread and persistant rumours of the return of the pigeons, but' 

 no rumour has borne investigation, and I feel that Prof. Whit- 

 man's small flock now reduced in 1906 to five birds arje the lasb! 

 representatives of a species around whose disappearance mystery 

 and fable will always gather. 



(5) Auk, XX, 1903, 66. 



(6) There is a mature female in the collection of the Carnegie Institutior 

 of Pittsburg- Pa. marked "Pennsylvania" August 15th 1898 but without furthen 

 locality. 



/J0$^ 



