THE PASSENGER-PIGEON 



A WELL-KNOWN American naturalist offers the extra- 

 ordinary reward of $3000 to any one who captures 

 ahve or proves the existence of a true wild specimen of 

 the passenger-pigeon. The reward has not yet been 

 claimed, despite the fact that a long and strenuous 

 search by expert ornithologists has been made in every 

 part of the United States, and it would seem that this 

 beautiful — and formerly most prolific — species of the 

 great order ColumbcB has, through indiscriminate and 

 inveterate slaughter, become as extinct as the great auk 

 and the dodo. 



Yet within comparatively recent years passenger- 

 pigeons were to be found in countless millions through- 

 out the North American continent during the seasons of 

 migration and nidification. The birds used to congre- 

 gate in such prodigious numbers as to surpass belief, 

 and had no parallel among any other feathered tribe 

 on the face of the earth, not even excepting the common 

 quail, hundreds of thousands of which delicious morsels 

 are netted or otherwise captured on the shores of the 

 Mediterranean and in other favoured countries during 

 the spring and autumn migrations. 



Very hardy must the passenger-pigeon have been, for 

 it was often found lingering in the northern regions 

 around Hudson's Bay so late as December, its appear- 

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