392 



BIRDS OF THE WILDERNESS. 



however at an end; for in 1890, when Mr. Leffing- 

 well's book was published, this race of beautiful birds, 

 the Passenger Pigeon of the United States, was so 

 greatly reduced in numbers, as to be to all intents 

 and purposes nearly extinct. The question therefore, 

 that might easily arise in the minds of all who read 

 the foregoing, would be "Was it these massacres of 

 young birds, and destruction of nests, that has nearly 

 exterminated this pigeon ? " 



To this we should be inclined to reply, that while 

 it is of course difficult to assign any positive cause 

 for the vast diminution of the numbers of this bird in 

 the United States, we can hardly think these butcheries 

 of the squabs, as they are called, could account for 

 it; because it must be evident that if many were killed, 

 many also survived and escaped : therefore, we believe, 

 some other cause must be sought for, to account for 

 the annihilation of the whole race. 



This cause, we consider, will more than probably 

 lie in the destruction of the forests themselves, by axe 

 and fire. To the latter cause alone, the destruction 

 of hundreds and even thousands of square miles of 

 primeval forest by one single fire, has more than once 

 been recorded. * The passenger pigeon was a bird 

 of wild and migratory disposition which (as we have 

 already mentioned) shunned the neighbourhood of human 

 society, probably because its principal source of food was 

 found only in the primeval woods and wastes of Nature : 

 consequently, the destruction of the forest and the 



* Instance The great Miramichi forest fire of 1825, in Xew Bruns- 

 wick, stated to have extended over an area of nearly 6000 square 

 miles, on both sides of the river of that name; for at least 100 miles* 

 on each bank it destroyed everything, including towns and villages: 

 more than 600 persons perished in the flames (See Echoes from tin- 

 Back Woods, by Capt. R. G. A. Levinge, 1849, Vol. i, p. 41). 



