45 2 



RECREA TION. 



martens, bounding, running, climbing, 

 pressed to the quarry; while eagles and 

 falcons, of different species, flew down to 

 take part of such rich booty. The sports- 

 men then in their turn entered into the 

 midst of the dead, the dying, and the 

 wounded. The pigeons were piled in 

 heaps. Each took what he wished and the 

 pigs were left to satiate themselves on the 

 remainder." 



So said Audubon. When man came in 

 a business way to the nesting grounds it 

 was worse. He butchered where the wild 

 beasts only ate, and so one great nesting 

 place after another was deserted by the 

 welcome visitors, and one state after an- 

 other was totally abandoned. 



After the remorseless system of exter- 

 mination was inaugurated the birds disap- 

 peared from the East. They abandoned 

 New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. In 

 Michigan and Wisconsin they nested 

 some years later. Then they went, and 

 came back no more. Man's rapacity was 

 too deadly for them. Their last attempt, 

 of any magnitude, at habitation in the 

 United States, was made in the Indian Ter- 

 ritory nearly 20 years ago. Their enor- 

 mous nesting there was made the subject 

 of traffic, and the birds were shot from 

 their nests, and were shipped, by car-loads, 

 through the country, selling in the St. 

 Louis market as low as 25 cents a dozen. 



Spring came again, after the autumn of 

 that great slaughter, and men looked into 

 the upper depths for the pigeon flight, but 

 saw it not, and never will see it again. 

 What became of the passenger pigeon? 

 Even the butchers, of the last year of the 

 pigeons in the United States, must have 

 left millions of them alive. Where have 

 they gone? To learn what has become of 

 them has been a subject of my research and 

 the cause of no little correspondence, for 

 several years. The result has not been al- 

 together satisfactory; but a brief summary 

 of what has been done may not be unin- 

 teresting. 



First, search was made to learn whether 

 or not the passenger pigeon had ever re- 

 appeared in the Northern Middle States 

 after its last great nesting. There was 

 much correspondence with naturalists and 

 hunters and it was discovered that some 

 of the birds had really come back again, in 

 a pitiful, seeking way, and had continued to 

 do so even up to as late as 4 or 5 years ago. 

 In Illinois a close lookout has been kept 

 for them. A leading Chicago naturalist, 

 Mr. Edward B. Clarke, in April some 4 

 years ago, saw one in Lincoln park, Chi- 

 cago. He says of the now novel spectacle: 



" He was perched on the limb of a maple 

 tree, and was facing the rising sun. I had 

 never seen, in any cabinet, a more perfect 

 specimen. The tree on which he was rest- 

 ing was at the Southeast corner of the park. 

 There were no trees between him and the 



lake, to break from his breast the fulness 

 of the glory of the rising sun. The pigeon 

 allowed me to approach within 20 yards 

 and I watched him through a powerful 

 glass that permitted as minute an examina- 

 tion as if he were in my hand. I was more 

 than astonished to find here, close to the 

 spires of a great city, the representative of 

 a race which always loved the wild woods, 

 and which I thought had passed away from 

 Illinois forever. But then bird observation 

 excursions are always full of pleasant sur- 

 prises. 



" The sun made the bird's every feather 

 shine. Tennyson needed no special poetic 

 license to speak of this traveller of his kind 

 as a ' burnished dove.' Not a single feather, 

 was misplaced, and about the neck there 

 was the brilliancy of gems. I was joined, 

 during my watching of the pigeon, by a 

 man 50 years old who confessed that while 

 he had heard of the birds, frequently, he 

 had never seen one. That man, during the 

 first 25 years of his life, must have been 

 afflicted with blindness. He thought it 

 would be a good idea to get a gun and 

 shoot the pigeon. He had no soul above 

 pigeon pie. 



" It was a low limb on which the bird 

 perched, and when I had satisfied my eyes 

 I wanted to flush him, that I might once 

 again see the graceful, rapid flight familiar 

 to me as a boy. I approached the pigeon 

 slowly. As I neared him he began moving 

 his head, first to one side and then to the 

 other; though with a half forward move- 

 ment, as is the custom of his tribe. I 

 diminished the distance by 5 yards. He 

 still clung to his perch. Five yards more; 

 I was within 30 feet of him. Then he 

 launched outward from the limb, and, to 

 my dismay, winged his arrowy flight 

 straight down the Lake Shore Drive, to- 

 ward the heart of the city. 



" Within 2 years a pair of these birds 

 appeared at Lake Forest. They perched 

 side by side on a tree, in the grounds of 

 one of the handsome residences of the sub- 

 urb. Both were killed, with a single dis- 

 charge of a gun, and were thus sacrificed 

 to a mistaken idea of science." 



A year or 2 later hunters, in one of the 

 preserves on the Illinois river, stumbled 

 on a group of perhaps a dozen, where a 

 cock and hen were shot. Other groups, 

 not large enough to be called flocks, have 

 been met with in Missouri and in the Ind- 

 ian Territory; but there is no record to 

 the effect that any have been seen in quan- 

 tity within the last 10 or 15 years, though 

 inquiry, wide and exhaustive, has been 

 made and has been cordially assisted in by 

 those who could aid most. 



Early in the spring of the present year a 

 newspaper paragraph went the rounds, to 

 the effect that the wild pigeon — that is, the 

 passenger pigeon — had appeared again in 

 the United States, this time West of the 



