CHAPTER XVIII 

 Nesting Habits of the Passenger Pigeon 



By Eugene Pericles (Dr. Morris Gibbs), from "The Oologist, 1894." 



THERE are hundreds and perhaps thousands of 

 the younger readers of The Oologist who have 

 never seen a Passenger Pigeon alive. In fact, 

 there are many who have never seen a skin or stuffed 

 specimen, for the species is so rare now that very few 

 of the younger collectors have had an opportunity of 

 shooting a bird. And of the present generation of 

 oologists, the ones who have secured a set (one egg) 

 are indeed very few. 



Many of the older ornithologists can remember when 

 the birds appeared among us in myriads each season, 

 and were mercilessly and inconsiderately trapped and 

 shot whenever and wherever they appeared. I could 

 fill a book with the accounts of their butcheries, and 

 could easily cause astonishment in my readers by telling 

 of the immense flocks which were seen a quarter of a 

 century ago. But wonderful as these tales would ap- 

 pear, they would be as nothing compared to the stories 

 of the earlier writers on birds In America. 



Of course we know that the net and gun 

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