SPECIES EXTINCT OR EXTIRPATED. 441 



Cambridge, Pigeons visited the town regularly, both in spring 

 and autumn, sometimes in immense numbers.^ 



Mr. Clayton E. Stone writes that Mr. M. M. Boutwell, 

 brother of the late Governor, George S. Boutwell, knew of a 

 nesting place of the Passenger Pigeon in the northern part of 

 Lunenburg, Mass., from his earliest recollection until 1851 or 

 1852. He states that an old gunner, Samuel Johnson, used to 

 visit this place every year to get sc^uabs. It was situated in 

 the northern part of the town, on a tract of land which up to 

 1840 or 1845 was almost an unbroken forest for miles. It is 

 said to have comprised something like five acres. Mr. Bout- 

 well says that anywhere in any fall, until the year 1860, a 

 man could get in an hour all the Pigeons he could use. 



Mr. James W. Moore of Agawam, Mass., states that after 

 1850 great flocks of Pigeons still visited that region; and that 

 as a boy he was sent to drive them from the rye, when it had 

 been sown but not harrowed in. "We boys," he says, "had 

 Pigeon beds, and caught them in nets." 



About this time indications of the disappearance of the 

 Pigeons in the east began to attract some notice. They 

 became rare in Newfoundland in the 60's, though formerly 

 abundant there. They grew fewer in Ontario at that time; 

 but, according to Fleming, some of the old roosts there were 

 occupied until 1870. 



Mr. C. S. Brimley states that they were seen in some 

 numbers near Raleigh, N. C, up to about 1850. For thirty 

 years he has not seen one, which would fix the date of their 

 disappearance there about 1880. Mr. Witmer Stone believes 

 that they became rare in New Jersey about that time. 



During the ensuing decade they became very rare in 

 Massachusetts; but Mr. August B. Ross states that the 

 Pigeons were "quite plenty" in rye fields on the plains at 

 Montague, Mass., about 1879; and Mr. Robert O. Morris 

 says that a small flock was seen in Longmeadow in the spring 

 of 1880; but there is no authentic record of a Pigeon seen or 

 taken in that vicinity since 1884. This seems to mark approxi- 



1 Brewster, William: Memoirs, Nuttall Orn. Club, No. IV, Birds of the Cambridge Region of 

 Massachusetts, 1906, p. 176. 



