174 The Passenger Pigeon 



destructive, and that at these breeding places the de- 

 stroyers gathered in great numbers, but, with my vivid 

 recollection of the tremendous flights of pigeons which 

 I myself saw in the '6o's in northern Illinois, the wide 

 distribution of the bird, and what I know of its migra- 

 tory habits ( I wish I knew very much more about these 

 habits) , I cannot think that in so few years the practical 

 destruction of the species could be effected by the means 

 referred to. 



Years ago — I cannot tell how many, but I am confi- 

 dent it must have been at about the time of the disap- 

 pearance of the great pigeon flights — I read an account, 

 either in or quoted from a New Orleans newspaper, giv- 

 ing the stories of several ship captains and sailors who 

 had arrived in New Orleans from the Gulf of Mexico. 

 They stated that they had, in crossing the Gulf, sailed 

 over leagues and leagues of water covered, and covered 

 thickly, with dead pigeons. The supposition was that 

 an enormous flight of the pigeons crossing the waters 

 of the Gulf had been overwhelmed by a cyclone, or 

 some such atmospheric disturbance, and that the birds 

 had been whirled into the surf and drowned. 



I have been told by competent ornithologists con- 

 nected with the Boston Society of Natural History that 

 Pigeon Cove, a well-known and much frequented ex- 

 tremity of Cape Ann, near Gloucester, Mass., received 

 its name from the fact that a large flight of pigeons was 

 similarly overwhelmed in flying along the Atlantic near 



