THE PASSENGER PIGEON IN PENNSYLVANIA 33 



dom and was without arts of self -protection, other 

 than their swiftness of flight and great multitude in 

 one closely associated city, and in tlieir ingenuity for 

 massing great flocks in flight in narrow columns, in 

 numerous strata, one above another, and moving 

 rapidly in tandem, each flock following the one in 

 front, making the same curves and identical undula- 

 tions for the most part even to the turns and depres- 

 sions of the leading flock in a brigade, caused by the 

 swooping hawk and eagle on the front platoon that no 

 longer menaced the followers. 



In confinement they seldom raised any young and 

 they rejected all efforts toward domestication, so far 

 as they were made in northern Pennsylvania. They 

 were unwarlike and sought only pe-ice and plenty, to 

 thrive and multiply to the limit of food reserves in 

 regular rotation. They migrated to find their -favorite 

 food, as the snow line receded each spring; yet they 

 perished from the earth, or they haN-e adapted them- 

 selves to a dififerent mode of living and in a new en- 

 vironment in which ornithologists have failed to re- 

 cognize them, and have classified them under an alias. 



We saw them feeding, chiefly upon the beech-mast, 

 and yet geology seems to affirm that they lived in the 

 cretaceous age, before beech trees Imd been evolved 

 in plant form ; why not re-adaptatbn ? 



