218 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIII. No. 841 



Dr. McGee's paper is divided into two parts, 

 the first giving his recollections of the great 

 abundance and habits of the passenger 

 pigeon as seen by him in eastern Iowa nearly 

 half a century ago, the other an account of 

 birds supposed to be passenger pigeons seen 

 in arid southwestern Arizona as recently as 

 1905. His account of the abundance of these 

 birds during the spring migration in eastern 

 Iowa " in the sixties and early seventies " of 

 the last century is a fact of great interest 

 and is in accord with what is known to have 

 occurred in the eighteenth and the early part 

 of the nineteenth centuries in states further 

 to the eastward. But the habits of the Iowa 

 pigeons, as here detailed, during the breeding 

 season and until and during the fall migra- 

 tion, are wonderfully suggestive of the habits 

 of the mourning dove, and depart considerably 

 from the habits of the passenger pigeon as 

 observed and repeatedly recorded at points 

 further eastward; as, e. g., their laying two 

 white eggs, living in family groups during 

 and after the breeding season, and in this 

 manner taking their departure southward at 

 the approach of winter. 



The second or Arizona part of the paper is 

 entirely contrary to our previous knowledge 

 of the distribution of the species, and espe- 

 cially contrary to everything known of its 

 breeding area. It has not heretofore been 

 recorded as occurring west of the eastern 

 horder of the plains, while its knovrai breeding 

 area was the transition zone of the east. To 

 enable a bird with these geographical and 

 physiological restrictions to pass the hot sea- 

 son and rear its young in the subtropical 

 Lower Sonoran zone of southwestern Arizona 

 implies a most wonderful range of adaptabil- 

 ity, and one quite unparalleled in our present 

 knowledge of bird life. Not that some species 

 of birds, the mourning dove among others, do 

 not have breeding ranges that cover the 

 greater part of North America, and seem 

 equally at home, even in the breeding season, 

 in regions as unlike as the humid wooded dis- 

 tricts of the eastern states and the arid south- 

 west; but there are others, like the passenger 

 pigeon, which are restricted to a particular 



type of country, especially during the breed- 

 ing season. Prom their known distribution, 

 habits and food requirements, one would 

 almost as soon expect to find a colony of 

 ptarmigan, an alpine or semi-arctic bird, in 

 Florida as passenger pigeons in the arid, 

 almost forestless Lower Sonoran zone of 

 southwestern Arizona. The passenger pigeon 

 occupied the wooded districts of eastern North 

 America, breeding from eastern Kansas, 

 northern Mississippi, Tennessee, Pennsylvania 

 and New York northward to western Mac- 

 kenzie, central Keewatin, central Quebec and 

 Nova Scotia, and usually in large colonies, it 

 being at all times preeminently gregarious. 

 If formerly found west of the great plains, it 

 is very strange that none of the scores of 

 ornithologists who have either lived for many 

 years in the general region of Arizona and 

 New Mexico or have during the last two or 

 three decades thoroughly explored it in all 

 parts, down to and along the Mexican border, 

 have ever collected a specimen anywhere in 

 this whole area that has been identified by a 

 competent ornithologist as a passenger pigeon. 

 Again, Dr. McGee's account of the nesting 

 and other habits of the birds he took to be 

 passenger pigeons at Tinajas Altas in Arizona 

 are not incompatible with those of the mourn- 

 ing dove, its little brother, known to be of 

 common occurrence in just the situations de- 

 scribed. Furthermore, the bird there known 

 as the " Sonora pigeon," and referred to by 

 Dr. McGee as " seen singly and by twos and 

 threes, either distant or in flight," and " noted 

 as resembling the passenger pigeon," is the 

 white-winged pigeon (Melopelia asiatica, for- 

 merly M. leucoptera) . " The Sonora pigeon 

 (at least the bird observed at Tinajas Altas) 

 differs so widely as to be readily distinguish- 

 able from the mourning dove," and of course 

 also from the passenger pigeon. It is ex- 

 tremely to be regretted that " unexpectedly 

 hasty abandonment of the camp unfortunately 

 prevented preservation of skins of the birds," 

 for while no one will doubt the author's sin- 

 cerity and conscientiousness in placing on 

 record his recollections of these birds, it is 

 certain that ornithologists will desire more 



