EXTINCT PASSENGER PIGEON 
461 
erroneous idea as to how this bird appeared in life. This statement 
may be relied upon coming from me, as not only have I shot a num¬ 
ber of specimens of them and handled them afterwards, but I have 
seen them, close to, in all their natural attitudes in the forest; so 
that, with such opportunities, added to what faculties I may possess 
for memorizing the normal postures of birds in life, following upon a 
study of any particular species of them for that purpose, 1 may be more 
or less competent to judge of the faithfulness of portrayal in any pic¬ 
ture of the wild pigeon which, up to the present time, has been pub¬ 
lished. 
Turning first, then, to a few of the minor cuts that have appeared 
of this bird, it is to be noted that they are of a great variety, and based 
on all sorts of data. Some are reduced woodcuts, or electros, or half¬ 
tones, made from the large plates in the standard works of the world’s 
recognized ornithologists. Some are fanciful pictures reproduced from 
drawings made by those who knew nothing of the wild pigeon, or who 
had examined the figures or plates of others possessing more or less 
reliable data upon which to base such productions. Not a few are 
represented by excellent examples of pictorial piracy, with widely 
varying success as to correctness of copy; in the case of still others, 
attempts have been made to conceal the piracy, and the value of the 
result rests upon the skill of the artist to succeed in such a trick. In a 
few instances, the pirated picture appears to be truer to nature than 
the one from which it was copied. And, again, such copies are duly 
acknowledged, either under the cut or in the text which accompanies it. 
L. G. Goodrich published his “Illustrated Natural History of the 
Animal Kingdom” in 1861; it carried 1,500 engravings in the two 
volumes, and came off the presses of Derby and Jackson, of New York 
City. On page 231 of Volume II. there is an attractive woodcut of the 
wild pigeon engraved by Lossing and Barritt. (Fig. 1.) In the fore¬ 
ground a single adult bird faces to the right, standing on the trunk of 
a fallen tree; in the middle distance there are three more of these birds 
in a tree to the left, while in the background we have a man, partly 
concealed in a “blind,” netting pigeons. Numerous birds are on the 
ground; others are in a near-by tree, while still others are coming down 
to the lure, and a few others are, apparently, for the moment passing 
in the form of an acute angle, with one bird directly behind another 
in the two lines forming it. 
Whether this is the place where this picture was first published. I 
am unable to state; but I am inclined to believe that it is not. for the 
reason that we find, in Thomas NuttalTs “A Manual of the Ornithology 
of the United States,” a picture of a wild pigeon which is evidently 
the counterpart of the one in Goodrich. Here it is larger, however, 
and the bird is turned to the left; the surroundings are changed some- 
