SPECIES EXTINCT OR EXTIRPATED. 449 



great armies of Pigeons with food, and the cultivation of the 

 land and the raising of grain provided new sources of food 

 supply. Therefore, while the reduction of the forest area in 

 the east was a large factor in the diminution of the Pigeons, 

 we cannot attribute their extermination to the destruction of 

 the forest. Forest fires undoubtedly had something to do 

 w^ith reducing the numbers of these birds, for many were 

 destroyed by these fires, and in some cases large areas of forest 

 were ruined absolutely by fire, thus for many years depriving 

 the birds of a portion of their food supply. Nevertheless, the 

 fires were local and restricted, and had comparatively little 

 effect on the vast numbers of the species. 



The main factors in the extermination of the Pigeons are 

 set forth in a work entitled The Passenger Pigeon, by W. B. 

 Mershon (1907), which will well repay perusal, and in which 

 a compilation is made of many of the original accounts of the 

 destruction of the Pigeon during the nineteenth century. 

 From this volume many of the following facts are taken. 



In early days the Allegheny Mountains and the vast region 

 lying between them and the Mississippi River were covered 

 largely by unbroken forest, as was also much of the country 

 from the Maritime Provinces of Canada to Lake Winnipeg. 

 The only inhabitants were scattered bands of Indians. The 

 Pigeons found a food supply through all this vast region, and 

 also nesting places which w^ere comparatively unmolested by 

 man; but as settlement advanced, as railroads were built, 

 spanning the continent, as telegraph lines followed them, as 

 markets developed for the birds, an army of people, hunters, 

 settlers, netters and Indians found in the Pigeons a con- 

 siderable part of their means of subsistence, and the birds 

 were constantly pursued, wherever they appeared, at all 

 seasons of the year. They wandered through this vast region, 

 resorting to well-known roosting places and nesting places, 

 containing from a million or two of birds to a billion or more; 

 and there were many smaller colonies. Wherever they 

 appeared, they were attacked immediately by practically all 

 the people in that region. At night their roosts were visited 

 by men who brought pots of burning sulphur, to suffocate the 



