Alabama, ip 15. 55 



LAST OF WILD PIGEONS DIES 



NiEWS of the death in Cincinnati of Martha, the last wild 

 1 pigeon in the world, according to all ornithological records, 

 88331 was conveyed recently to P. Gilbert Pearson, general execu- 

 tive officer of the National Audubon Societies, in a telegram 

 from Eugene Swope, the Ohio agent of the societies at Cincinnati. 

 The death of Martha, according to Mr. Pearson, is a calamity of as 

 great importance in the eyes of naturalists as the death of a Kaiser 

 to Germans throughout the world. 



Martha had been in poor health for several years in her cage at 

 the Zoological Garden in Cincinnati. Many efforts had been made 

 to find a mate for her, or to discover some other specimen of the 

 wild pigeon, but they were without avail. According to all ornitholo- 

 gical data available, Martha was the last of her tribute in the world. 



Members of the National Audubon Societies some time ago of- 

 fered a prize of $1,500 to any one who could find a wild pigeon nest. 

 All that was necessary was to find the nest, telegraph C. F. Hodge, 

 a naturalist of Clark University, and to await the findings of orni- 

 thologists whom he would immediately dispatch to the scene to 

 investigate the genuineness of the find. The Audubon Societies 

 received on an average 100 false alarms a year, but in not a single 

 case was the nest reported found to be a wild pigeon's. Instead 

 almost every such nest was found to be that of an ordinary turtle 

 dove. The wild pigeon resembles the ordinary wild dove, but is 

 considerably larger. 



The extinction of the wild pigeon was the more amazing be- 

 cause of the vast extent to which it had flourished in this country 

 prior to 1865. Wild passenger pigeons used to travel over the 

 country by millions. Audubon himself told of their roosting in cer- 



