446 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



into the woods during the night, because of the falHng 

 branches. 



The nesting places sometimes were equal in size to the 

 roosting places, for the Pigeons congregated in enormous num- 

 bers, to breed in the northern and eastern States. When food 

 was plentiful in the forests, the birds concentrated in large 

 numbers; when it was not, they scattered in smaller groups. 

 Mr. Henry T. Phillips, a game dealer of Detroit, who bought 

 and sold Pigeons for many years, states that one season in 

 Wisconsin he saw a nesting place that extended through the 

 woods for a hundred miles. ^ 



The last great nesting place of which we have adequate 

 records was in Michigan, in 1878. Prof. H. B. Roney states, 

 in the American Field (Vol. 10, 1879, pp. 345-347), that the 

 nesting near Petoskey, that year, covered something like one 

 hundred thousand acres, and included not less than one hun- 

 dred and fifty thousand acres within its limits. It was esti- 

 mated to be about forty miles in length and from three to ten 

 miles in width. It is difficult to approximate the number of 

 millions of Pigeons that occupied that great nesting place. 



Audubon, who described the dreadful havoc made among 

 these birds on their roosting grounds by man, says that people 

 unacquainted with them might naturally conclude that such 

 destruction would soon put an end to the species; but he 

 had satisfied himself, by long observation, that nothing but 

 the gradual diminution of the forests could accomplish the 

 decrease of the birds, for he believed that they not infre- 

 quently quadrupled their numbers during the year, and always 

 doubled them. The enormous multitudes of the Pigeons made 

 such an impression upon the mind that the extinction of the 

 species at that time, and for many years afterwards, seemed 

 an absolute impossibility. Nevertheless, it has occurred. 



How can this apparent impossibility be explained.'^ It 

 cannot be accounted for by the destructiveness of their 

 natural enemies, for during the years when the Pigeons were 

 the most abundant their natural enemies were most numerous. 

 The extinction of the Pigeons has been coincident with the 



> Mershon, W. B.: The Passenger Pigeon, 1907, p. 107. 



