If possible more ruthless and in- 

 human was the carnage waged 

 against the noble Buffalo, the count- 

 less thousands of which roaming over 

 virgin prairies excited the wonder and 

 amazement of the entire sporting and 

 scientific world, and which, to-day, 

 are represented only in zoological 

 parks where all individuality will 

 eventually be lost in domestication. 

 While the greater portion of our liter- 

 ature dealing with them is so exag- 

 gerated and so fantastically inter- 

 woven with fiction with a view of 

 creating author heroes that its scien- 

 tific value is almost nil. 



Co-incident almost with the passing 

 of the buffalo we have to record the 

 decline and fall of the passenger pig- 

 eon, the subject of this paper. A bird 

 which aroused the excitement and 

 wonder of the entire world during the 

 first half of the last century because 

 of its phenomenal numbers. 



A bird also which -stood out unique 

 in character and individuality among 

 the 300 described pigeons of the world 

 and .which won the admiration of 

 every ornithologist who was fortunate 

 enough to have experience with it liv- 

 ing or dead. Yet witihal not exempt 

 from the oppression of its human foe 

 who has been instrumental through in- 

 terference witt. the breeding and feed- 

 ing grounds and through a continued 

 persecution and ruthless slaughter for 

 the market, in reducing the species al- 

 most beyond the hope of salvation 

 which now rests upon the possibility 

 of a few isolated pairs unauthentical- 

 ly recorded, still remaining which may 

 be able to perpetuate the species. 

 Should these fail the species is doom- 

 ed to be one of the past. 



The Passenger pigeon, the species 

 under observation, was first described 

 under the genus Columiba or Type 

 Pigeons, but subsequently Swalnson 

 separated it from these and placed it 

 under a genus Ectopistes because of 

 the greater length of wing and tail. 



Genericariy named Ectopistes — 

 meaning moving about or wandering, 

 and specifically named Migratoria, 

 meaning migratory, we have a techni- 

 cal name implying not only a species 

 migrating annually to and from their 

 breeding ground but one given to 

 moving about from season to season 

 selecting the most congenial environ- 

 ment for both breeding and feeding, 

 Audubon especially remarked of this 

 species that the food supply was u 

 much greater factor in regulating 

 their movements than was the tem- 

 peratures and that they would appear 

 in one district for a time and disap- 

 pear from it as soon as the food sup- 

 ply became inadequate, and we can 

 readily appreciate how rapidly the 

 supply would become exhausted in 

 the most productive districts with the 



demand upon it necessary to supply 

 the immense multitudes of the birds 

 recorded for the first half of the last 

 century. 



It would appear that the birds fol- 

 lowed the line of the Mississippi Val- 

 ley, spreading eastward to the line of 

 the Alleghany mountains, northward 

 into Ontario and up the Red river 

 Valley to the very shores of Hudson's 

 Bay, selecting locations for nesting 

 accommodation for colonies aggregat- 

 ing from thousands to millions as the 

 food supply guaranteed. With 

 all the knowledge we have possessed 

 of the unestimable multitudes which 

 existed during the early part of the 

 last centurj and with their decline 

 begun and noted generally in the later 

 sixties and early seventies', we still 

 find that no steps whatever were 

 taken to prevent their possible deple- 

 tion and few records of any value are 

 made of the continuance or speed of 

 this decrease and not until the last 

 decade of the century do we awake 

 to the fact that the pigeons are gone 

 beyond t^e possibility of a return in 

 any numbers. When a few years later 

 reports are made that pigeons still 

 exist and are again increasing scien- 

 tific investigation shows that the 

 Mourning Dove has been mistaken for 

 the pigeon or that the Band-tailed pig- 

 eon of California is taken for the old 

 Passenger pigeon and so we have con- 

 tinued since the early nineties inves- 

 tigating rumors of their appearance 

 from all over America, north and 

 ^outh, and the West Indian Islands, 

 but all reports point us to the past for 

 the pigeon and some other species un- 

 der suspicion. 



I doubt very much if the historian 

 desirous of compiling any historical 

 work would find himself confronted 

 with such a decided blank in histori- 

 cal records during an important per- 

 iod than that confronted in the com- 

 pilation of a historical record of the 

 Passenger pigeon within any district 

 which it formerly frequented during 

 the period from about 1870, when the 

 decline was first noticed, to 1S90, when 

 the birds had practically passed away. 

 In this- matter Mr. J. H. Fleming, of 

 Toronto, in writing me, says: "The 

 pigeons seems to have gone off like 

 dynamite. Nobody expected it and no- 

 body haa prepared a series of steins, " 

 and to this I can add that no one 

 seems to have made any series of rec- 

 ords of the birds from year to year. 

 Since their disappearance, however, 

 things have changed; everybody is 

 alert for pigeons, and everybody has 

 a theory, but beyond affording sub- 

 ject of social conversation or awak- 

 ening a recital of old pigeon experi- 

 ences from the old timers, these rum- 

 ors and theories seem to return to the 

 winds froim whence they came. 



