EXTINCT PASSENGER PIGEON 
465 
strikingly beautiful example of which may be seen in that most val¬ 
uable and interesting book on the bird by W. B Mershon, given us in 
1907 by the Outing Publishing Company. This volume has two repro¬ 
ductions of photographs of mounted specimens of the Passenger 
Pigeon that are above the average in the point of excellence; and, 
finally, it has a beautiful plate of Dr. C. 0. Whitman’s photograph from 
life of an immature bird of this species. (Fig. 2). 
An admirable plate in color of a pair of Passenger Pigeons by 
Fuertes occurs as the frontispiece to the work just mentioned, the same 
having been used by various other authors. This painting was 
done in 1904, since which time, for all I know to the contrary, this most 
industrious avian artist may have given us other colored plates of this 
species,—at least I find a very beautiful one, and I may say a very 
faithful one, in the first volume of Eaton’s magnificent work “The Birds 
of New York,” where it is shown on Plate 42, upper figure, the group 
consisting of a pair of adults and a young bird. (Fig. 3). In my opin¬ 
ion, this is one of the most accurate, and decidedly the most pleasing 
of all the colored figures of the Wild Pigeon that have appeared up to 
date. It leads Audubon’s plate for the reason that it is such a restful 
one to study, while in the case of Audubon’s, the error he committed in 
so many of his representations of birds is there repeated—that is to 
say, that in technical ornithological works the portraits of birds should 
never be shown in unusual poses or performing some action. (Fig 4). 
In this criticism I found myself in agreement with the late, very dis¬ 
tinguished British Ornithologist, Alfred Newton, who, many years ago, 
wrote me to that effect. 
Eaton’s “Birds of New York” hears date of 1910—that is, three years 
after Mershon, and two years before the splendid volume of Forbush 
appeared on “A History of the Game Birds, Wild Fowl, and Shore 
Birds of Massachusetts and Adjacent States”—a work too well known 
to ornithologists to require description here. In it we find three plates 
devoted to the Passenger Pigeon, one being of a beautifully mounted 
specimen, while the remaining two are of exceptional value, in as much 
as they are reproductions of photographs of living specimens of the 
bird itself. In so far as my knowledge carries, these are the only pic¬ 
tures of the kind extant. I have already referred to one of them as 
being an illustration in Mershon’s work “The Passenger Pigeon,” that 
is, the one reproduced from C. 0. Whitman’s photograph; the other, 
here to be noticed, is the reproduction of the last of all the Passenger 
Pigeons that ever lived: It is the Enno Meyer photograph, taken of 
the bird when it lived in the Zoological Garden of Cincinnati. (Fig. 
5). It is quite unnecessary to comment on the value of this picture or 
its uniqueness, as it represents one of those things that can never he 
repeated. 
