WILD PIGEONS AND DOVES 341 



he gave it up as impracticable. The air, he says, 

 seemed full of pigeons and the light of noonday to be 

 obscured as by an eclipse. Multitudes were destroyed, 

 and for many days the entire population seemed to eat 

 nothing but pigeons. The flapping of the wings 

 sounded like distant thunder. Wilson says the noise 

 was so great as to terrify their horses and that it was 

 difficult for one person to hear another speak. He 

 counted ninety nests on one tree. 



The wild pigeons vanished suddenly. There has 

 been much speculation as to the cause. The failure of 

 their food, which largely consisted of beech nuts, the 

 overshooting, the trapping, and the robbing of the 

 nests have all been advanced. I am of the opinion 

 that the combination of these causes was necessary to 

 exterminate the pigeons. The netting and the rob- 

 bing of the nests did the most damage. The shooting, 

 when every firearm in a neighborhood was out, was 

 excessive, and the cutting down of the forests de- 

 stroyed vast areas of feeding ground. There are a few 

 specimens remaining in captivity. I believe they have 

 been bred in confinement. Would that there were 

 enough to restore the flocks to the woods ! Such res- 

 toration by the Agricultural Department or the State 

 game authorities would interest me more than the im- 

 portation of foreign birds. 



The wild pigeons were not only used as food, but 

 thousands were taken alive to be used in shooting- 

 matches. Mr. Stephan, of the Cincinnati Zoological 

 Gardens, once saw eight thousand wild pigeons in 

 crates at the Dexter Park shooting grounds to be used 

 as targets in a live-bird shooting-match. 



