xii Introduction 



and the ever increasing slaughter could not help but 

 lessen their once vast numbers. 



The Passenger Pigeon laid only one egg in its nest, 

 rarely two, and although it bred three or four times a 

 year it could not replenish the numbers slaughtered by 

 the professional netters. Undoubtedly millions of the 

 birds perished at various periods along the Great Lakes 

 country, becoming confused in foggy weather and drop- 

 ping from exhaustion into the water, while snow and 

 sleet storms at times caused great mortality among the 

 young birds, and even among the old ones, which often 

 arrived in the North before winter had passed. 



The history of the buffalo is repeated in that of the 

 wild pigeon, the extermination of which was inspired 

 by the same motive: the greed of man and the pursuit 

 of the almighty dollar. We lock the barn door after 

 the horse is stolen. Our white pine forests and timber 

 lands in general have been wantonly destroyed with no 

 thought for the future. The American people are 

 wasteful. They are just beginning to learn the need of 

 economy in the use of that which Nature has flung at 

 their feet. When one recalls the destruction of that 

 noble animal, the buffalo, frequently for nothing else 

 than so-called sport, or the removal of a robe; when 

 one thinks of the burning of forest trees which took 

 centuries to grow, merely to clear a piece of land to 

 raise crops, it is not to be wondered at that the wild 

 pigeon, insignificant, and not even classed as a game 

 bird, so soon became extinct. 



