THE PASSENGER PIGEON. 227 
The Passenger Pigeon. 
F. J. WENNINGER 
The habit of association in large herds common to some 
animals served to protect them under primeval conditions. 
But when man came upon the earth, these very conditions op- 
erated to the disadvantage of the animals in question. Among 
the best known examples to be cited in illustration of this fact 
are the Bison, the Beaver, and Wapiti and Deer, the history of 
whose extermination is too well known to require repetition. 
Just now, we are confronted with the fact that another of 
our once common animals has become so scarce that it is ques- 
tionable of existence. This time it is a bird,— the Passenger 
Pigeon (Ectopistes Migratorius). 
This bird was once exceedingly common, so common that 
reports on the number of this pigeon contained in some of the 
treatises on Ornithology of the last century, are little short of 
fabulous. In 1813, the celebrated Audubon observed a flock of 
passenger pigeons numbering at least 1,115,000,000 individ- 
uals. Studer in his “Birds of North America” published sev- 
enty-five years after Audubon’s work, refers to the size of the 
. flocks of these birds which he observed. He says, “the flocks 
were very large but none even one-fourth the size of those 
seen by Audubon.” In “Bird Neighbors,” by Neltje Blanchan, 
1898, only a decade after Studer’s calculations were made, the 
passenger pigeon had already become so scarce that the writer 
remarks, “the bird is now too rare to be included among our 
bird neighbors.” Again, in 1901, an observer writing for the 
“Library of Natural History,” gives a detailed description of 
the bird and its habits. This author also concludes with a ref- 
erence to the growing scarcity of the bird. “The vast num- 
bers of this pigeon,” he writes, “have greatly diminished dur- 
ing recent years and now the bird is on the verge of extinction. 
It is certain that unless laws are made for its protection, its 
extermination is only a matter of time.” Reed’s, “Bird Guide,” 
1909, contains no mention whatever of the bird. 
