THE GREAT MASSACRE 97 



*'IVe shot hundreds of 'em," said the pot- 

 hunter; "they used to come round here in flocks 

 bigger 'n yo' could count." 



"Seen any lately?" 



Bull Adams puckered his forehead in thought. 



"I ain't seen none in twenty years," he said. 

 *' What's come to 'em?" 



"There aren't any more to see," answered the 

 Biological Survey expert, "they've gone where 

 the buffalo has gone. ' ' 



"But there used to be millions an' millions of 

 'em!" exclaimed the old woodsman. 



"Yes," agreed the other, "they used to be one 

 of the wonders of the world. Nothing to be com- 

 pared with the Passenger Pigeon flocks existed 

 anywhere on this earth. As you say, they trav- 

 eled in flights of over a billion birds. 



"Wilson, a famous early American ornitholo- 

 gist, observed one such flock near Frankfort, Ky., 

 in 1808. The birds moved in a column whose front 

 was more than a mile in width, they were flying 

 at the rate of a mile a minute in a cloud so dense 

 tbat they darkened the afternoon sun, and the 

 column took four hours to pass. After a careful 

 calculation, Wilson estimated that this flock alone 

 contained nearly two and a quarter billion pigeons. 



