CHAPTER L . 



Retrospective Lore and Legend — Characteristics, 

 Habitat and Description 



A 



MONO native birds of North America the Passen- 

 ger Pigeon was, in several characteristics, most 

 wonderful, the living, pulsing, throbbing and pic- 

 turesque illustration of the abundance of food, pre- 

 pared by bountiful Nature, in all her supreme ecstasy 

 of redundant production of life and energy, that the 

 native tribes and our early pioneers ever knew, or im- 

 agined as essential to their Happy Hunting Grounds 

 and other blest abodes beyond the veil of physical en- 

 vironment, where the longings of baffled minds should 

 vanquish the fears of sinister evils and realize har- 

 mony in the triumphant existence, and the rapture of 

 attaining the ideals of unalloyed peace. 



The Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius)was 

 known, east of the Rocky mountains from the Gulf of 

 Mexico to Hudson Bay, wherever food was abundant, 

 and not covered by snow ; for pigeons could not endure 

 snow, although the cold affected them little when the 

 air was dry. They have been reported around the 

 shores of Hudson Bay in November, and in southern 

 Pennsylvania, as late as the first of February, when 

 the ground was bare and food was plentiful. Migra- 

 tors seem to have been in quest of more inviting feed- 



7 



