A Novel Theory of Extinction 175 



that place, and that their bodies covered the shore in 

 "windrows." 



Not more than two years ago, if so long, I read a 

 lengthy and signed account in a Montreal paper of a sim- 

 y J ilar catastrophe to a great flight of pigeons in attempt- 

 ing to cross Lake Michigan, and similar statement was 

 made that for miles the beach above Milwaukee was 

 heaped and piled with "windrows" of dead pigeons. 



Within two or three years several accounts have 

 reached us, bearing every mark of believability, that 

 considerable flights of geese, swans and ducks have 

 ,' been drowned in the surf off the New Jersey and Mary- 

 ^ land shores. These flights of birds have been over- 

 whelmed in a sudden storm or gale of wind, which beat 

 them down into the surf where they were drowned, their 

 bodies drifting about, and some of them being thrown 

 up on the shore. 



These accounts have come from fishermen, sports- 

 men and others, and I see no reason whatever to doubt 

 that a flight of birds of any species known could easily 

 be destroyed if caught off shore in some of the wind 

 storms of which we have so many instances. I have 

 frequently in Forest and Stream propounded my 

 theory and asked for information about it before it 

 became too late. The whole theory stands or falls, as 

 it seems to me, with the ascertainment of the southern 

 limit of the migration of the great pigeon flight. If 

 the birds did not cross the Gulf of Mexico there is far 



