THE VANISHED PASSENGER PIGEON 

 covered the earth when they alighted in t lie fields t<> feed, and 



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darkened the >kv when they flew. 



As usual, that great abundance of wild life provoked meat 

 slaughter. Migrating Pigeons were killed by wholesale nieth- 

 ods. While breeding they were attacked in their nesting- 

 places, and in an incredibly short time the great flocks van- 

 ished. As in the case of the blotting out of the great northern 

 buffalo-herd, in 1884, many persons have wondered, and do 

 still, whether the great flocks of Pigeons have not migrated, 

 and found a permanent home elsewhere. There is not a 

 single fact on which to base either belief or supposition that 

 the Passenger Pigeon exists in Mexio I atral America 

 elsewhere. 



Among naturalists, the blotting out of this interesting 

 species has 1 >een a source of sincere regret. As usual, no one 

 thought of protecting it until it was entirely too late. 



When the first edition of this Natural History was pub- 

 lished li*«*4- the author permitted himself to believe that 

 there was a chance that the Pass g I' geon still survived 

 in a wild state, and actually was coming l>aek to our bird 

 fauna. The many circumstantial report- of a :i> observed 

 seemed to justify those conclusions. 



Vain hope! That view was entirely too optimistic, and 

 predicated altogether too much on faulty observations, all 

 of which were entirely erroneous We now place this bird 

 in the totallv extinct class, not only because it is extinct in a 

 w ild state, l>ut because only one solitary individual, a nineteen- 



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year-old female in the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens, now re- 

 mains alive. One living specimen, and a lew >kin>. skeletons 



