EXTINCT PASSENGER PIGEON 
481 
plate of the Wild Pigeon; but we find one in Daubenton that appeared 
in about the year 1780. This latter is a small quarto with colored 
plates, but no text. It was intended to illustrate, or rather be a com¬ 
plimentary work to Buffon, illustrating what the latter had published 
on birds. Daubenton gives a colored plate, No. 176, of an immature 
Passenger Pigeon, which he designates as the “Tourterelle du Canada" 
which is recognizable, but hardly anything more; it is about two-thirds 
the size of life. 
Thomas E. Eyton published, in 1836, a small octavo in London, 
which he entitled “A History of the Rarer British Birds.” On page 30 
there is a small woodcut of the Passenger Pigeon which is fairly good, 
and he says of the species that “Our authority for introducing it into 
this work, as a member of the British Fauna, rests upon a specimen 
mentioned by Dr. Fleming in his ‘History of British Animals,’ shot at 
Westhall, in the parish of Monymeal, Fifeshire, on the 31st of Decem¬ 
ber, 1825. The feathers were quite fresh and entire, like those of a 
wild bird. The specimen in question was presented to Dr. Fleming by 
the Rev. A. Esplin, schoolmaster at Monymeal.” This specimen was 
evidently a “straggler” and very different from introduced birds, such 
as the lot that Audubon is responsible for turning loose in England in 
1830—an exploit described in Smart’s “Birds of the British List.” 
I have stated that it was perhaps Catesby who published the first 
plate of our Wild Pigeon; and it may now be asked: who holds the 
honor of having published the last plate of the bird? This is an event 
of only about a year ago, when the posthumous works of Charles Otis 
Whitman appeared. This great treatise, entitled “Inheritance, Fertility, 
and the Dominance of Sex and Color in Hybrids of Wild Species of 
Pigeons,” is edited by Mr. Oscar Riddle, and published by the Carnegie 
Institution of Washington in four handsome quarto volumes. Its care¬ 
fully executed colored plates were engraved by the Hoen Company, of 
Baltimore, and two plates of the Passenger Pigeon occur in the second 
volume. They are reproductions of the work of the well-known Japa¬ 
nese artist, Hayashi. Plate 28 (Fig. 14) represents an adult male 
bird (x. 06), and has not a little to recommend it. It may be sug¬ 
gested, however, that the limb upon which the specimen is represented 
as standing, is too vertical for the pose the artist has given the bird. 
The female, to which Plate 29 is devoted. (Fig. 15) is better, and 
to me, a far more pleasing figure. It is of an adult individual and 
beautifully tinted (x o .05). Mr. Hayashi also painted the picture of 
which this plate is a copy—indeed, I believe he is responsible for all 
the colored plates that illustrate this superb work—a veritable monu¬ 
ment to the department of scientific ornithology of which it treats. 
