CHAPTER XI 



Present Day Economics and Influence As Food 



Supply — Sketch of Indian and 



Pioneer Life 



SPECULATION about what became of the beech- 

 nut eating passenger pigeons now seems to be 

 futile. They are extinct, because the food they ate, 

 and which developed their chief characteristics, does 

 not grow in sufficient quantities upon the face of the 

 earth, in any locality, to sustain a colony of them 

 through a breeding period. In another environment 

 they would soon adapt themselves to new conditions 

 and become a new variety of pigeons. They were so 

 similar to the pigeons of other parts of the world, ex- 

 cept for their chief food requirements and their meth- 

 ods of life to avail themselves of it, to the greatest 

 possible extent ; and their manner of reducing damages 

 from their enemies to the minmum, by compact multi- 

 tudes in nesting cities, roosting places and their daily 

 flights in search of food, that to differentiate between 

 them is often extremely difficult. Plumage is a vary- 

 ing feature of many birds under different climates. 



Therefore, to reproduce them by selective breeding 

 from other similar pigeons would not be desirable, 

 until we first promote beech forests. 



Unless our forest becomes large their enemies will 

 destroy them in a very short time, and our farmers will 



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