EXTINCT PASSENGER PIGEON 
475 
the author, and which was published in 1808 to 1811; and how it was 
pirated, as a whole, by Madame Knip, nee Pauline de Courcelles, at the 
time it was issued. Madame Knip was the artist who painted the life- 
size colored figures of the large number of pigeons figured in this work, 
while they were engraved by Cesar Macret, of Paris. Each species is 
given a plate to itself, and that of the Wild Pigeon is No. 48, which is 
said to be a male bird. As an artistic picture, it is excellent; but as a 
correct figure of the species it purports to represent, it is a failure. 
The model was evidently a skin, and this may account for the small 
head and bill, but not for the short tail that Madame Knip has endowed 
it with. ( Fig. 11). 
In 1857 to 1858, Charles Lucien Bonaparte published his magnifi¬ 
cent folio, entitled “Iconographic des Pigeons;” but as the plates only 
gave such species as were not figured by Madame Knip, the Passenger 
Pigeon does not appear in it. 
We next have to consider the work of Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig 
Reichenbach, who was born at Leipzig on the 8th of January, 1793, and 
who died March 17, 1879, which made him eighty-six years of age at 
the time of his death. He was the author of a work on the Columbidae, 
entitled “The Complete Account of the Natural History of the Pigeons 
and Pigeon-like Birds,” a copy of which I have examined. It appeared 
in Dresden, in the German language, as a folio volume apart from the 
text, and illustrated with colored plates. With respect to the text of 
this work, I am indebted to Dr. Richmond for the opportunity to exam¬ 
ine it. It was probably published about 1861, being unbound, and of 
a much smaller size than the plates. The account of the Wild Pigeon 
on pp. 81-85 is chiefly from Audubon and others. Plate 154 of the 
bound plates is devoted to Ectopistes migratorius (Fig 12), of which 
there are three figures in color resting on the limb of a tree; they are 
numbered 1374, 1378, and 1379, and all three are but indifferent repre¬ 
sentations of the species he aimed to delineate. 
Reichenbach evidently got his middle figure of the Wild Pigeon 
from John Prideaux Selby’s work, entitled “The Natural History of 
Pigeons,” which appeared in Edinburgh in 1835, being one of the demi- 
octavos of The Naturalists’ Library, edited by Sir William Jardine. It 
is the volume devoted to the Pigeons, and is illustrated by 32 colored 
plates of those birds together with numerous woodcuts. An account of 
the Passenger Pigeon, or, as Selby called it, the “Passenger Turtle.” 
is given in Volume V. on pages 177 to 188 inclusive, the colored figure 
of the bird being Plate 19, opposite page 176. There is no question 
but that Reichenbach reproduced this figure in his plate; changed the 
limb and scenery, and then added another figure of the pigeon on 
either side of it, which he may possibly have obtained from still 
other sources. In doing this, the Selby figure was somewhat reduced 
