OF NATURAL HISTORY OF CANADA 



35 



PASSENGER PIGEON (Ectopistes migratorius) 



On September 1st, 1914, aged twenty years, departed this life 

 the sole surviving passenger pigeon. This brief obituarj' records 

 the disappearance from earth not only of the last sunnvor of a 

 notable American game bird, but, what is infinitely sadder, the 

 passing of a species. The history- of the passenger pigeon from 

 the first settlement to and including our own times reads like a 

 romance, but a romance tinged on everA' page with man's cruelty, 

 rapacity, and shortsightedness. Early accounts of the enormous 

 numbers of this pigeon that migrated from section to section read 

 like fables, but they are too well attested to be doubted. Wood's 

 account of the passenger pigeon (1629-34) is so quaint I subjoin 

 part of it : 



"These birds come into the countrj-,. to go to the North parts 

 in the beginning of our spring, at which time (if I may be counted 

 worthy to be believed in a thing that is not so strange as true) I 

 have seen them fly as if the Ayerie regiment had been pigeons; 

 seeing neither begining nor ending, length or breath of these 

 Millions of Millions" 



Audubon states that he rode through a winter roosting-place 

 in Kentuckj^ which was more than forty miles long and three miles 

 wide. It may be doubted if in the prime daj'S of this pigeon its 

 number were ever equalled by am- bird either in the Old World 

 or the New. Only its great numbers enabled it to survive the assaults 

 of its enemies as long as it did. Then came the market netter, 

 and everywhere the hapless pigeon was taken in season and out 

 of season with eggs in their bodies ready for the nest and nests full 

 of youngs. While neither the netter nor the sportsman is respon- 

 sible for the extermination of the last passenger pigeon, it is never- 

 theless true that b}' the combined assaults of the two, the species 

 was i-educed to such a low webb that it could not recover. Pro- 

 tective legislation was too late. 



(Henry W. Henshaw) 



