The Passenger Pigeon 69 



flight, according to the testimony of many reliable ob- 

 servers, was a large one, and the birds must have 

 formed a nesting of considerable extent in some region 

 so remote that no news of its presence reached the ears 

 of the vigilant netters. Thus it is probable that enough 

 Pigeons are left to restock the West, provided that laws 

 sufficiently stringent to give them fair protection be at 

 once enacted. The present laws of Michigan and Wis- 

 consin are simply worse than useless, for, while they 

 prohibit disturbing the birds within the nesting, they 

 allow unlimited netting only a few miles beyond its out- 

 skirts during the entire breeding season. The theory 

 is, that they are so infinitely numerous that their ranks 

 are not seriously thinned by catching a few millions of 

 breeding birds in a summer, and that the only danger 

 to be guarded against is that of frightening them away 

 by the use of guns or nets In the woods where their 

 nests are placed. The absurdity of such reasoning is 

 self-evident, but, singularly enough, the netters, many 

 of whom struck me as intelligent and honest men, seem 

 really to believe in it. As they have more or less local 

 Influence, and, in addition, the powerful backing of the 

 large game dealers in the cities, it Is not likely that any 

 really effectual laws can be passed until the last of our 

 Passenger Pigeons are preparing to follow the great 

 auk and the American bison." 



In order to show a little more clearly the immense 

 destruction of the Passenger Pigeon in a single year 



