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The Passenger Pigeon 
long an average lease of life, although it was an object of constant pursuit 
by mankind. The destruction of most of the young birds for a series of 
years would bring about such a diminution of the species as occurred 
soon after 1878. One egg was the complement for each nest. Before 
the country was settled, while the birds were comparatively unmolested, 
they bred in large colonies. This, in itself, was a means of protection, 
and they probably doubled their numbers every year by changing their 
nesting-places two or three times annually, and rearing two or three 
„ . young birds to each pair. Under such conditions any 
Colonies” destruction by the Indians and the other natural 
enemies of these Pigeons, and by the many accidents 
of migration, was offset by the yearly increase. 
The change for the worse began with the settlement of the country 
by Europeans. Later, when all the resources of civilized man were 
brought to bear against them, their very gregariousness, which formerly 
protected them, now contributed to their destruction ; and when at last 
they were driven to the far North to breed, and scattered far and wide, 
the death-rate rapidly outran the birth-rate. Wherever they settled to 
roost or to nest, winter or summer, spring or fall, they were followed and 
destroyed until, unable to rear young, they scattered over the country, 
pursued everywhere as targets for thousands of shot-guns, with no hope 
of safety save in the vast northern wilderness, where the rigors of nature 
forbade them to procreate. Thus they gradually succumbed to the in- 
evitable and passed into the unknown. 
The food of the Passenger Pigeon consisted largely of vegetable 
matter. During the spring and summer, however, they lived more or 
less on insects and probably fed quantities of these to their young, for it 
is recorded that they destroyed all caterpillars in the oak-woods for 
many miles around their nesting-places. Doubtless 
Food that which gave the excellent flavor and delicacy to 
the flesh of these Pigeons, however, was the acorns, 
beech-nuts, chestnuts, and the seeds of the pine, hemlock, elm, and 
maple that the birds ate. They also ate wild fruits of many varieties and 
the tender shoots of vegetation. When wooded land was cleared and cut 
up into farms the Pigeons attacked grain, such as buckwheat and Indian 
corn. They often were destructive to oats and rye, and sometimes to 
peas and hemp-seed. In feeding on the forest-floor the hindermost birds 
were continually flying over the foremost birds in order to come at ground 
that had not been gleaned. Thus the flock appeared to roll along through 
the woods. 
Classification and Distribution 
The Passenger Pigeon belongs to the Order Colamba, and the Family 
Columbidcc. Its scientific name is Ectopistes migratovius. It formerly bred from 
the southern Canadian provinces to Kansas and Mississippi, and wintered chiefly 
from Arkansas and North Carolina southward to Florida and Texas. 
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