310 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [11:7— Oct., 1915 



When a boy or a girl has acquired the habit of accurate observa- 

 tion, not only has a power of great value been cultivated, but that 

 very ability carries the young student a long ways toward becoming 

 a good naturalist; and a good naturalist — in the broadest sense 

 of that term — is one of the rarest of individuals to be met with in 

 the human family, no matter in what part of the world we may look 

 for one. 



When animals of any kind are met with in their natural haunts— 

 from mammals to insects — there are, with respect to identifying 

 them, three things in chief to be borne in mind, demanding the 

 exercise of our best powers of accurate observation ; the matters of 

 form, color, and size. Correct discernment in regard to these may, 

 in many instances, be supplemented — with respect to promptly 

 recognizing the forms observed — by the knowledge possessed on 

 the part of the observer of the habits, behavior under certain 

 circumstances, and the habitats (the places where they are usually 

 found) of the animals observed. Within comparatively recent 

 time, one of the most beautiful of American wild birds has been 

 completely exterminated — chiefly through the agency of man. 

 This bird was the Wild Pigeon {Ectopistes migratorius), which 

 occurred, in the early part of the last century, in certain parts of 

 Eastern United States in unnumbered millions. Not one of these, 

 nor a single descendant of any of them, are in existence; the bird 

 is entirely extinct. Since its extinction, high rewards have been 

 offered to any one locating a nest containing a fresh clutch of eggs 

 laid by a female of that species. Although these rewards have 

 been standing for two or three years, no such nest has been either 

 found or reported ; and it is perfectly safe to predict that no such 

 nest will ever be found again in this world, or, as for the matter of 

 that, in any other; for a species once extinct is never again repro- 

 duced in nature. 



While no nests of the Wild Pigeon were found, scores of reports, 

 from all parts of the country, have been coming in for several 

 years past from persons who claim to have seen, all the way from a 

 Wild Pigeon or two, to a flock numbering from seventy-five to 

 seven hundred of these birds. Not long ago, a man wrote me from 

 California that he knew where the Wild Pigeon existed in thousands 

 in that State, and that he was on his way to shoot them at the time 

 of his writing me. I offered him one hundred dollars in cash if he 

 would send me the tail feathers of a male Wild Pigeon, taken 



