PASSENGER PIGEON 173 



at once." So "all at once" disappeared the 

 well-known flocks from their native sky. They 

 must, it was argued, have become tired of the 

 yearly disturbance and gone farther into the 

 unsettled forest to roost and to breed. They 

 would come back some day. But that is not the 

 way birds live. Remember that birds do not 

 change their yearly nesting locations to any 

 great extent. Their return to the same spot may 

 be fatal, but return they must and will. A spe- 

 cies persecuted to disappearance from a given 

 locality has not moved elsewhere, but is killed 

 out of that particular region; and if its flocks 

 be undergoing everywhere a similar extermina- 

 tion, it means that this species is slowly but 

 surely vanishing from the face of the earth. 



The last recorded nesting of Passenger Pig- 

 eons occurred in Michigan in 1881. The last 

 wild specimens of which we have any definite 

 record were shot (of course!) in 1898. Eight 

 birds were kept for some years in the Cincinnati 

 Zoological Park; but they are too free and active 

 by nature to thrive in captivity, and the last 

 widowed survivor of the whole race died Sep- 

 tember 1, 1914. 



Rewards of several thousands of dollars have 

 since been offered without bringing to light a 

 single living specimen of this superb member of 

 the Dove family. We can never call back the 



