SPECIES EXTINCT OR EXTIRPATED. 463 



reason the above records are confined mainly to those cases 

 where at least one bird was taken. I cannot leave this sub- 

 ject without referring to various canards, some of which have 

 been taken seriously by too many intelligent people. 



Efforts have been made to account for the supposed sudden 

 disappearance of the Pigeons by tales of cyclonic sea disturb- 

 ances or lake storms, which are supposed to have drowned 

 practically all of them. Undoubtedly thousands of Pigeons 

 were destroyed occasionally, during their flights, in storms or 

 fogs at sea or on the Great Lakes. There are many rather 

 unsatisfactory and hazy reports of such occurrences. The 

 earliest of these is recorded by Kalm, who says, in his account 

 of the Passenger Pigeon, referred to on page 435, that in 

 March, 1740, about a week after the disappearance of a great 

 multitude of Pigeons in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, a sea 

 captain named Amies, who arrived at Philadelphia, stated 

 that he had seen the sea covered with dead Pigeons, in some 

 cases for three French miles. Other ship captains, arriving 

 later, corroborated this tale. It was said that from that date 

 no such great multitudes of Pigeons were seen in Pennsylvania. 

 Kalm published this in 1759, but after that date the Pigeons 

 again came to Pennsylvania in great numbers; which shows 

 that the drowning of this multitude had no permanent effect 

 on the numbers of the birds. This story in some form has 

 cropped up at intervals ever since. 



Giraud, in his Birds of Long Island (1844), states that he 

 has " heard " of great numbers of Pigeons floating on the water 

 which were seen by shipmasters. The old legend regarding 

 the dead Pigeons drifting ashore near Cape Ann, from which 

 occurrence Pigeon Cove is supposed to have received its name, 

 is possibly authentic; for the birds probably crossed Ipswich 

 Bay in their flight to the coast of Maine, and may have been 

 overtaken by a fog, become confused and fallen into the water, 

 or they may have been blown to sea and drowned. Neverthe- 

 less, this catastrophe did not wipe out the entire species, for it 

 had too wide a range. Schoolcraft (1821), while walking along 

 some parts of the shore of Lake Michigan, saw a great num- 

 ber of the skeletons and half-consumed bodies of Pigeons, 



