The Last Passenger Pigeon 



99 



goes to show, as we have said, that the Passenger was one of the most gar- 

 rulous of Pigeons, and would have made one of the most interesting of aviary 

 pets. 



The Last Passenger Pigeon 



By E. H. FORBUSH 



THE Passenger Pigeon undoubtedly was one of the greatest zoological 

 wonders of the world. Formerly the most abundant gregarious species 

 ever known in any land, ranging over the greater part of North America 

 in innumerable hosts, apparently it has disappeared to the last bird. Many 

 people now living have seen its vast and apparently illimitable hordes mar- 

 shaled in the sky, have viewed great forest roosting-places broken by its 

 clustering millions as by a hurricane, and have seen markets overcrowded to 

 the sidewalks with barrels of dead birds. Those of us who have witnessed 

 the passing of the Pigeons find it hard to believe that all the billions of indi- 

 viduals of this elegant species could have been wiped off the face of the earth. 

 Nevertheless, this is just what seems to have occurred. Even Prof. C. F. 

 Hodge, cheerful optimist that he is, after three years' search of North 

 America, practically gives up the quest, and acknowledges that the investi- 

 gation has not produced so much as a feather of the bird. 



The editor of Bird-Lore has asked me to write the story of the last Pas- 

 senger Pigeon; but I cannot allow this opportunity to pass without giving an 

 epitome of the causes which have brought about the extermination of the 

 species. John Josselyn, in his "Two Voyages to New England" published in 

 1672, describes the vast numbers of the Pigeons and says, "But of late they 

 are much diminished, the English taking them with nets." This seems to 

 indicate that the extirpation of the species began within forty years after the 

 first settlement of New England, and exhibits the net as one of the chief causes 

 of depletion. From soon after the first occupancy of New Engeland by the whites 

 until about the year i8g$, the netting of the Passenger Pigeon in North America 

 never ceased. Thousands of nets were spread all along the Atlantic seaboard. 

 Nets were set wherever Pigeons appeared, but there were no great markets 

 for them to supply until the nineteenth century. Early in that century, the 

 markets were often so glutted with Pigeons that the birds could not be sold at 

 any price. Schooners were loaded in bulk with them on the Hudson River for 

 the New York market, and later, as cities grew up along the shores of the Great 

 Lakes, vessels were loaded with them there; but all this slaughter had no 

 perceptible effect on the numbers of the Pigeons in the West until railroads 

 were built throughout the western country and great markets were established 

 there. Then the machinery of the markets reached out for the Pigeons, 

 and they were followed everywhere, at all seasons, by hundreds of men 

 who made a business of netting and shooting them for the market. 



