22 
The Passenger Pigeon 
Nesting after nesting was broken up and the young destroyed until, 
about 1878, the Wild Pigeons, driven by persecution from other States, 
concentrated in a few localities in Michigan, where a tremendous slaughter 
took place. These were the last great nesting-grounds of which we have 
any record. Smaller nestings were known for ten years afterward, and 
large numbers of Pigeons were seen and killed; but after 1890 they be- 
Final came fewer and fewer until 1898, when the last 
Disappearance instances of their capture occurred that can be* sub- 
stantiated by preserved specimens. Since that time 
two apparently authentic instances of the capture of the Passenger 
Pigeon have been recorded, one in Ohio and the other in Wisconsin ; and 
my investigations have revealed a few more, which have been published 
in my History of the Game Birds, Wild Fowl and Shore Birds. 
Otto Widmann, who kindly undertook to look for me into the history 
of the Passenger Pigeon in the markets of St. Louis, states that F. H. 
Miller, a marketman in that city, received twelve dozen from Rogers, 
Arkansas, in 1902, and later a single bird, shipped to him from Black 
River in 1906. No exact dates can be given. Glover M. Allen, in his 
list of New England birds, published by the Boston Society of Natural 
History in 1909, records a specimen killed at Bar Harbor, Maine, in 1904. 
A careful investigation leads me to believe that this is an authentic record, 
although I have not yet seen the specimen. It was mounted by J. Bert 
Baxter, of Bangor, and was seen by Harry Merrill, who was perfectly 
competent to identify it. The specimen, when mounted, was returned 
to the man who shot it, but Mr. Baxter lost his record of the name of 
the owner. A. Learo, taxidermist, of Montreal, told me that a speci- 
men was taken by Pacifique Couture in St. Vincent, Province of Quebec, 
Canada, September 23, 1907. Mr. Learo asserted that he returned the 
bird to Mr. Couture, but I have been unable to find that gentleman or 
to learn anything more about the specimen. 
Now for the last Passenger Pigeon of which we have any informa- 
Death of the li° n - Whittaker, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 
Last One procured a pair of young birds in northern Wiscon- 
sin in 1888, and fifteen young were bred from this 
pair. A part of this flock finally passed into the possession of Prof. 
Charles O. Whitman, of Chicago University. In 1904 he had ten birds, 
but both his flock and the Whittaker flock weakened by confinement and 
inbreeding, gradually died out. 
In 1878 the Cincinnati Zoological Society bought ten pairs of 
pigeons, and these bred as long as they lived, but their offspring were 
almost unproductive. At last a single pair of the first generation alone 
survived, and the male died in 1911. The female, which, as the director 
of the Garden asserts, was born in 1885, lived until September 1, 1914, 
when it, too, expired, twenty-nine years old. By its death the species 
became extinct. 
Many attempts have been made by gunners, marketmen, and others. 
