HAMLYN'S MENAGERIE MAGAZINE. 
A VANISHED RACE. 
THE LAST AMERICAN WOOD PIGEON. 
From an American Correspondent. 
A short time ago there died in the Cincinnati 
Zoological Gardens, at the ripe age of 23 years, a 
passenger pigeon — the last of the American wood 
pigeons, and a terrible example of man's power 
to overthrow the balance of nature and in his 
perversity to destroy the strongest and most pro- 
lific races. 
The passenger pigeon was a bird of rapid and 
sustained flight, bearing with ease the greatest 
extremes of climate, and equally at home in the 
ricefields of South Carolina or the beech mast 
of New York, and so suited to the possibilities 
of life that one breeding migration of 1813 was 
computed to contain 2',2!30, 000,000 birds! The 
woods where they nested often broke under 
their weight, and a whirr of wings was like a 
hurricane. 
The pigeons were a pleasant change of diet, 
and the nesting woods when they were ready 
for flight became a huge camp. For weeks 
■everyone ate pigeon, and as many birds as possi- 
ble were salted for winter use. The railways 
that brough down more and more trappers, and 
provided a ready market for the produce in 
creased the slaughter tremendously. The birds 
brought 6d. or Is. per dozen, but they were so 
easily taken , at nesting-time, or were netted in 
such numbers by cap-nets with a decoy, that the 
sport was well worth while. 
In 1869 the town of Hartford, Michigan, sent 
•off three carloads a day for forty days— a total of 
over 11,500,000 birds — and this at a time when 
their diminution was so> marked that protection 
for the race was under discussion. The bare 
idea of its necessity was in gentral scoffed at; 
what efforts were made were only half-hearted, 
and the flocks continued to diminish with ever- 
increasing rapidity. 
In 1876 there was still a breeding-place 28 
miles long by three or four miles wide. In 1881 
the biggest was only eight miles long. London 
Zoological Gardens got their last representative 
in 1883. Cincinnati obtained the bird that has 
just died in 1892. A wild specimen fell to the 
gun at Detroit on September 14, 1908, and $5,000 
reward has failed to find another. So lately has 
it gone that all the natural histories retain it in 
their pages without comment. The pigeon trap- 
pers, like the pelt hunters who went before them 
and killed off the buffalo*, would not and will not 
credit the result of their folly. They believe that 
the great flocks have but altered their migration 
for a time to> Mexico and will soon return. Then- 
are keeping their hands in by exterminating in 
the meantime other valuable birds whose loss they 
will soon have equal cause to regret. 
THE NEW ZOOLOGICAL PARK AT 
BUENOS AIRES. 
By G. DE Southoff, F.Z.S. 
(Translated by F. Fixx). 
The town of Buenos Aires had already pos- 
sessed for a number of years, a magnificently-in- 
stalled zoological garden, the numerous and in- 
teresting collection in which was duly appreciated 
and was the admiration of visitors to the capital 
of Argentina; but the Municipality of this city 
wanted to go further and give Buenos Aires a 
real zoological park. With the rapidity of exe- 
cution which shows well-directed energy, they 
ordered the management of the zoological garden, 
over which M. Clemente Onelli so judiciously 
presides, to convert some waste land situated at 
the south of the city, near the workers quarter 
into a park containing a set of houses for the 
accommodation of the animals, and embellished 
with broad avenues. This park covers about two 
hectares (a hectare is 2 acres, 1 rood, 35 perches) 
and is specially intended for the benefit of work- 
ing people, who will find it a means of instructive 
recreation; thus the Municipality of Buenos 
Aires has undertaken an enterprise of real social 
value. 
The original idea in this establishment is 
that the animals are housed in buildings of classi- 
cal Greek and Roman construction, copied from 
ancient models. The general view of the whole 
is delightful, and very instructive, All the build- 
ings, even those for the sale of sweets, refresh- 
ments, etc., are reproductions of ancient monu- 
ments. One might fancy one's-self in Greece 
or on the Roman Campagna, for the Argentine 
sun gilds the arcades and colonnades with the 
same warm tones. A section of the aqueduct of 
Claudius on the Apponstay houses the carnivores 
under its arcades. An almost exact copy of the 
Erechtheum at Athens serves as an aviary for a 
number of passerine birds. Two Roman pigeon- 
cotes house pigeons which fly loose. Another 
avairy is like the Temple of Vesta. Walking 
along the paths, bordered with myrtles, oleanders 
and acanthus, one comes across a Temple of 
Virile Fortune, another of Jupiter, and other 
splendid architectural works, ornamented with 
decorations and .statues of a pure style, and, 
finally, a statue of the Roman she-wolf which in 
its wholeness stands conspicuous over everything 
in this classical bit of ground. 
The exceptionally favourable climate of 
Buenos Aires allows of a collection comprising 
Monkeys, Lions, Bengal Tigers., Jaguars, Pumas, 
Bears from Syrice and from the Caucasus, 
Wolves, Jackals, and Foxes, as well as of numer- 
ous small South American mammals, living under 
the shelter of these monuments. The wiring is 
light and unobstrusive, and space for the animals 
