428 A. H. Wright, Early Records of the Passenger Pigeon. [oct. 



SOME EARLY RECORDS OF THE PASSENGER PIGEON. 



BY ALBERT HAZEN WRIGHT. 



The publication of this paper is suggested by the present general 

 interest in the status of the Passenger Pigeon awakened partly by 

 the appearance of Mr. W. B. Mershon's recent volume ^ and partly 

 by the numerous rewards now offered for the discovery of living 

 representatives of the species. The records were gathered as a 

 "by-product" incidental to an inquiry into the primitive fauna 

 of Central New York. From the local nature of this inquiry and 

 the writer's lack of familiarity with purely historical literature 

 and methods this compilation is necessarily incomplete. It is 

 hoped that wider and fuller inquiries may be made by others. 

 The writer is greatly indebted to the officials of the Cornell Uni- 

 versity Library for aid in utilizing the rare collections of Andrew 

 D. White, Jared S. Sparks and Goldwin Smith. And lastly my 

 especial acknowledgments are due Prof. Burt G. Wilder for kindly 

 advice and criticisms. 



Naturalists are prone to complain because the voluminous 

 records of the Jesuits in New France are so crowded with their 

 hopes, their struggles and the detailed descriptions of individual 

 conversions, while only occasionally does an observant father 

 remark upon the natural objects at his very hand. Still, taken 

 altogether they furnish considerable information. 



In their very first Relations, 1610-1613 (Acadia), they mention 

 the great abundance of pigeons as the present note will indicate:^ 



"The birds are fully as abundant as the fishes. During certain 

 months of the year the pigeons sally forth from the woods into 

 the open country in such great numbers that they overload the 

 branches of the trees. W'hen they have settled upon the trees 

 at night they are easily captured and the savages heap their tables 

 with royal abundance." 



In Huron folklore pigeons entered, as Le Jeune, 1636, shows:' 



I The Passenger Pigeon. New York, 1907. 



" Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. By R. G. Thwaites and others, 

 1896. Vol. I, p. 253. 



3 Ibid., Vol. X, pp. 143, 287. 



