116 THE WORLD OF LIFE CHAP. 



Even more remarkable has been the disappearance of 

 the passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratoria), so called from 

 its great powers of flight and its migration in vast flocks all 

 over North America. The population of this bird was almost 

 incredibly great, as described by the American ornithologists 

 Audubon and Wilson in the early part of the nineteenth 

 century. It inhabited the whole of the wooded parts of North 

 America from Mexico, within the tropics, to the northern 

 shores of Hudson's Bay, and its former history is now the 

 more interesting, because it has already become a creature 

 of the past. In the American periodical, The Auk, of last 

 year, is the following note : 



"THE PASSENGER PIGEON ONLY ONE PAIR LEFT. I have taken 

 a special interest in the remaining birds belonging to the Milwaukee 

 and Cincinnati flocks which have been in confinement for many 

 years. In my last remarks on the species (Auk, 1908, p. 18) I 

 stated that the remnants of these flocks then numbered but seven 

 birds, with little or no chance of further reproduction. The 

 number is now reduced to a single pair, and doubtless the months 

 are numbered when this noble bird must be recorded as extinct. 

 Ruthven Deane, Chicago, 111." 



In view of the above statement it will be both interesting 

 and instructive to state briefly what were the facts as to the 

 numbers of these birds about a hundred years ago (1811). 

 Alexander Wilson gives the following account in his 

 American Ornithology : 



" The roosting-places are always in the woods, and sometimes 

 occupy a large extent of forest. When they have occupied one of 

 these places for some time the appearance it presents is surprising. 

 The ground is covered to the depth of several inches with their 

 dung ; all the tender grass and underwood destroyed ; the surface 

 strewed with large limbs of trees broken down by the weight of the 

 birds collecting one above another ; and the trees themselves for 

 thousands of acres killed as completely as if girdled with an axe. 

 The marks of their desolation remain for many years. When these 

 roosts are first discovered, the inhabitants from considerable dis- 

 tances visit them in the night, with guns, clubs, long poles, pots of 

 sulphur, and various other engines of destruction. In a few hours 

 they fill many sacks and load horses with them. 



"The breeding-place differs from the roost in its greater extent. 

 In the western countries, viz. the States of Ohio, Kentucky, and 



