178 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



Mount Auburn " these Pigeons " still bred in small numbers in the pine woods."^ 

 In 1869 I was living during the entire spring, summer and autumn in a house 

 situated less than a quarter of a mile from the woods to which Mr. Scott refers, 

 and during this year, and the five or six years immediately preceding, as well as 

 following, it, 'The Farm' was at all seasons one of my favorite and most productive 

 collecting grounds. It was also visited more or less frequently by H. W. Hen- 

 shaw, Ruthven Deane and several other excellent observers. Had Wild Pigeons 

 been found breeding anywhere in the neighborhood during this period it does not 

 seem likely that the fact would have been known only to Mr. Scott, especially 

 as we were all intimately acquainted with him and his field work when he was 

 at Cambridge. As it has been unknown, all thesfe years, to everyone else, I feel 

 justified in claiming that his statements, above quoted, require confirmation. 

 Probably they were based on his recollection of the capture of the young 

 birds to which I have just alluded, or on that of a female Pigeon which he him- 

 self shot on October 21, 1871, in an asparagus bed near Mount Auburn.^ All 

 these birds were quite strong enough of wing to have flown a hundred miles 

 or more, but it is not unlikely that some of them were reared in Middlesex County. 

 Indeed I have notes of the breeding of the Passenger Pigeon at two localities in 

 this county in 1875. On May 22 of that year a nest containing a single egg 

 was found in Weston by the late Mr. E. B. Towne. Later that same season my 

 friend, Mr. George H. Robbins, met with no less than three nests, on which the 

 birds were sitting, near his house in Carlisle. As he is a careful observer and 

 accustomed by long experience to distinguish Wild Pigeons from Carolina Doves, 

 I have entire confidence in the accuracy of this record. 



On April 23, 1875, I killed a fine adult male near the Lyman estate in 

 Waltham. It was the last Pigeon that I have seen, or am likely to see, alive in 

 the Cambridge Region, but on September 30, 1885, Mr. H. W. Henshaw and I, 

 while collecting in the 'Warren Run' (a little to the southwest of Crown Hill), 

 picked up an adult female which had evidently been dead only a few hours and 

 which proved, on dissection, to have been shot through the lungs. Both of these 

 birds, with the young female, taken on June 20, 1874, in our garden, are pre- 

 served in my collection. 



I find it difficult to believe that the Wild Pigeon has become wholly extinct, 

 but some of my ornithological friends, who have recently investigated the subject 

 rather carefully, are convinced that the only birds now living are a few captive 

 ones in the possession of Professor C. O. Whitman of Chicago, Illinois. 



1 W. E. D. Scott, Story of a Bird Lover, 1903, 39, 40. 



2 This is the only Wild Pigeon mentioned in Mr. Scott's catalogue of the birds which he collected 

 in the region about Cambridge, the original manuscript of which is in my possession. 



