102 Bird - Lore 



nine females. A part of this flock finally went to Professor C. O. Whitman, 

 of Chicago University, and several individuals of it are figured in this num- 

 ber of BiRD-LoRE. In 1904 Professor Whitman had ten birds, but his flock, 

 weakened by confinement and inbreeding, gradually decreased in number. 

 The original Whittaker flock decreased also, and in 1908 there were but seven 

 left. All of these died but one female, which was sent to the Cincinnati Zoological 

 Society. At that time the society had a male about twenty-four years of age, 

 which has died since. The female in Cincinnati, so far as I know, is living 

 still, and in all probability is the last Passenger Pigeon in existence. 



Protected and fostered by the hand of man, she probably has outlived all 

 the wild birds, and remains the last of a doomed race. 



Many attempts have been made by gunners, marketmen, and others, to 

 account for the disappearance of the Pigeons by attributing it to some other 

 means than the hand of man. Stories have been published to the effect that 

 the Pigeons migrated to South America or Australia ; that they were destroyed 

 by parasites or disease, or that they were all drowned in the Gulf of Mexico, 

 in the Great Lakes, or in the Atlantic Ocean. 



There is nothing in substantiation of these tales that would be accepted 

 as evidence by any careful investigator. The species never was recorded from 

 South America or Australia, and the other explanations of its disappearance 

 are either the result of fertile imagination or rest on hearsay evidence or rumors. 

 Undoubtedly many Pigeons periodically were confused by fog and drowned 

 in the Great Lakes, and there are two possibly authentic stories regarding 

 the drowning of large numbers of Pigeons at sea. None of these occurrences, 

 however, had any permanent effect on the numbers of the Pigeons, though 

 the destruction of the forests undoubtedly had some effect. There is evidence 

 that large numbers of these birds went north from Michigan in 1878, and 

 great flocks bred in Manitoba that year. As Pigeons were sometimes over- 

 whelmed by unseasonable snow-storms in the breeding season in the United 

 States, they must have been still more subject to them in northern Canada; 

 and if they were driven by persecution to the far north to breed, they might 

 have been unable to raise young during the succeeding summers. In "Michi- 

 gan Bird-Life," Professor Walter B. Barrows gives his opinion that some 

 such catastrophe as this was accountable for a large part of the great diminu- 

 tion in their numbers. This opinion is logical, though there is no direct evidence 

 in support of it. Those who study with care the history of the extermination 

 of the Pigeons will see, however, that all the theories that are brought forward 

 to account for the destruction of the birds by other causes than man's agency 

 are absolutely inadequate. There was but one cause for the diminution of 

 the birds, which was widespread, annual, perennial, continuous, and enor- 

 mously destructive — their persecution by mankind. 



Every great nesting-ground known was besieged by a host of people as 

 soon as it was discovered, many of them professional pigeoners, armed with 



