The Passenger Pigeon 
23 
to account for the disappearance of the Pigeons by attributing it to some 
other means than the hand of man. Stories have been published to the 
effect that the Pigeons migrated to South America or to Australia ; that 
they were destroyed by parasites or disease ; or that all were drowned 
in the Gulf of Mexico, in the Great Lakes, or in the Atlantic Ocean. 
There is nothing in substantiation of these tales that would be ac- 
cepted as evidence by any careful investigator. The species has never 
been recorded in South America or Australia, and the other explanations 
of its disappearance are either imaginary or rest on Erroneo 
hearsay evidence or rumors. Undoubtedly many Theories 
Pigeons periodically were confused by fog and 
drowned in the Great Lakes, and there are two possibly authentic stories 
regarding the drowning of large numbers of Pigeons at sea. 
None of these occurrences had any permanent effect on the numbers ■ 
of the Pigeons, although the destruction of the forests undoubtedly had 
some effect. There is evidence that large numbers of these birds went 
north from Michigan in 1878, and great flocks bred in Manitoba that year. 
As Pigeons were sometimes overwhelmed by unseasonable snow-storms 
in the breeding season in the United States, they must have been still 
more subject to them in northern. Canada ; and if they were driven by 
persecution to the far north to breed, they might have been unable to 
rear young during the succeeding summers. 
In his book, Michigan Bird-Life, Prof. Walter B. Barrows gives his 
opinion that some such catastrophe as this is accountable for a large part 
of the marked diminution in their numbers. This opinion is logical, 
though there is no direct evidence in support of it. Those who study with 
care the history of the extermination of the Pigeons will see, however, 
that all of the theories brought forward to account for the destruction of 
the birds by other causes than man’s agency are wholly inadequate. There 
was but one cause for the diminution of the birds, which was widespread, 
annual, perennial, continuous, and enormously destructive — their perse- 
cution by mankind. 
Every great nesting-ground known was besieged by a host of people 
as soon as it was discovered, many of them professional pigeoners, armed 
with all the most effective engines of slaughter known. persecuted to 
Many times the birds were so persecuted that they Death 
finally left their young to the mercies of the pigeoners, 
and even when they remained most of the young were killed and sent to 
the market, and the hosts of the adults were decimated. 
This Pigeon in nature probably lived not more than five years. Speci- 
mens may have lived twenty-five years or more in confinement, but this 
does not indicate, by any means, their average length of life when exposed 
to destruction by man, and by the natural enemies and vicissitudes of 
the Wild Pigeon’s migratory existence. Marked birds of smaller species 
have been known to return to their homes for four or five years in suc- 
cession and it seems not unreasonable to give the Passenger Pigeon as 
