336 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Martha the Last Passenger Pigeon Dead 
*The Passenger Pigeon: Early Historical Records, 1534-1860 
By Albert Hazen Wright. 
Millions and millions, reduced to one and now 
naught but history, is the sad story of the pas¬ 
senger pigeon. On September first, Martha, the 
only remaining member of the once great fam¬ 
ily, died in her twenty-ninth year. This female 
passenger pigeon was born in Cincinnati Zoo in 
1878 and had spent her entire life in a commodi¬ 
ous cage in that institution. In 1878 eight pas¬ 
senger pigeons were sent to the Cincinnati Zoo, 
a number of hatches were made, but within a 
dozen years all died save Martha. An offer of 
one thousand dollars was made to anyone supply¬ 
ing a mate for the bird, but the time had past 
when another specimen was to be secured and, 
while many pigeons were sent to the Zoo with a 
view to collecting the reward, all proved to be 
mourning doves, band tail or something else, 
and so Martha remained a spinster to the end. 
She is said to have died from a stroke of apo¬ 
plexy, but whatever the cause may have been, 
she lived to a venerable old age. The remains 
together with the moulted feathers have been 
sent to Smithsonian Institute, where the bird will 
be stuffed and restored to the appearance she 
made before her illness and will remain on exhi¬ 
bition as the last passenger pigeon seen alive. 
Almost 'the only sources of ornithological 
knowledge of the earlier times in North America 
are historical annals, quaint narratives of ex¬ 
ploration, and travelers’ sketches. Our predeces¬ 
sors had intense interest in birds, now rare, 
near-extinct, or extinct. The flocking of the 
Passenger Pigeon, or other habits equally pe¬ 
culiar, were in such bold relief, and so patent, 
as to attract the attention of any layman, what¬ 
ever his mission. Only a small part of this 
mass of information from the contemporaries of 
the Pigeon can be presented, and this resume 
can consider but a few topics, which are largely 
clothed in the language of early observers. 
Migration .—The prodigious flights of these 
“millions of millions of birds” have exhausted 
the numerical superlatives of the English tongue. 
“They darkened the sky like locusts“the 
hemisphere was never entirely free of them;” 
“all the pigeons of the world apparently passed 
in review;” “their incredible multitudes were 
like thunder-clouds in heaven;” and countless 
other figures, mixed and pure, have entered the 
history of their migrations. In the early days, 
the writers apologized for such marvelous sto¬ 
ries. John Clayton, the early Virginian botanist 
(1688), remarked, “I am not fond of such sto¬ 
ries, and had suppressed the relating of it, but 
that I have heard the same from very many . . 
the Relators being very sober persons.” Bernaby, 
in 1759, felt that he must intrench himself, and 
asserted that “The accounts given of their num¬ 
bers are almost incredible, yet they are so well 
attested, and opportunities of proving the truth 
of them so frequent, as not to admit of their be¬ 
ing called in question.” One of the Jesuit Fa- 
* Resume of “Early Records of the Passenger 
Pigeon,” Auk, vol. 37, pp. 428-443; Auk, vol. 38, pp. 
346-366, 427-449. 
thers (1656) considered this migration one of 
the three remarkable facts of the natural history 
of America. LaHontan, in 1687, wrote, “that 
the Bishop had been forced to excommunicate 
’em oftner than once, . . .” The early colo¬ 
nists of New England and Maryland often 
thought of them as ominous presages of ap¬ 
proaching disasters, like Indian massacres, crop 
failures, etc. It was an old observation in Amer¬ 
ica, whether true or not, that Pigeons were 
quite numerous in the springs of sickly years. 
Several authors claimed that the Pigeons came 
north in the spring by a route different from 
that of their return in the fall. “Wild pigeons, 
in their passage northward, begin to appear in 
New England, end of February and beginning 
of March, but not in large numbers, because 
they travel more inland for the benefit of last 
autumn berries of several sorts in the wilder- 
Martha the Last Passenger Pigeon. 
ness; they return in their passage southward, in 
larger quantities, end of August; . . .they at 
that season keep toward the plantations for the 
benefit of their harvest” (Douglass, 1 755 )- 
Two descriptions of their flights from eye¬ 
witnesses will suffice: “A gentleman of the 
town of Niagara assured me (Weld, 1795) that 
once, as he was embarking there on board ship 
for Toronto, a flight of them was observed com¬ 
ing from that quarter; that, as he sailed over 
Lake Ontario to Toronto, forty miles distant 
from Niagara, pigeons were seen flying over¬ 
head the whole way, in a contrary direction to 
that in which the ship proceeded; and that, on 
arriving at the place of his destination, the birds 
were still observed coming down from the north 
in as large bodies as had been noticed at any 
one time during the whole voyage; supposing, 
therefore, that the pigetons moved no faster than 
the vessel, the flight, according to this gentle¬ 
man's account, must |at least have .extended 
eighty miles . .It is not oftener than once 
in seven or eight years, perhaps, that such large 
flocks of these birds are seen in the country. 
In 1844, Featherstonhaugh, in an excursion 
through the slave states, found that, “A new 
and very interesting spectacle presented itself, in 
the incredible quantities of wild pigeons that 
were abroad; flocks of them many miles long 
came across the country, one flight succeeding 
to another, obscuring the daylight, and in their 
swift motion creating a wind, and producing 
a rushing and startling sound, that cataracts 
of the first class might be proud of. These 
flights of wild pigeons constitute one of the 
most remarkable phenomena of the western 
country. . . when such myriads of timid birds 
as the wild pigeon are on the wing, often wheel¬ 
ing and performing evolutions almost as compli¬ 
cated as pyrotechnic movements, and creating 
whirlwinds as they move, they present an image 
of the most fearful power. Our horse, Missouri, 
at such times, has been so cowed by them that he 
would stand still and tremble in his harness, 
whilst we ourselves were glad when their flight 
was directed from us.” 
Pigeon Roosts .—If the accounts of the mi¬ 
grant hosts seem incredible, surely the most fer¬ 
vid imagination cannot conceive the numbers at 
the roosts. “Their roosting places are always 
in the woods, and sometimes occupy a large ex¬ 
tent of forest. When they have frequented one 
of these places for some time, the ground is 
covered several inches deep with their dung; 
all the tender grass and underwood are destroy¬ 
ed; the surface is covered with large limbs of 
trees, broken down by the weight of the birds 
blustering one above another; and the trees 
themselves, for thousands of acres, killed as 
completely as if girdled with an axe. The marks 
of this desolation remain for many years on the 
spot; and numerous places can be pointed out, 
where, for several years afterward, scarcely a 
single vegetable made its appearance” (Hinton). 
Of the dung, another writes (1806) that, “Under 
each tree and sapling, lay an astonishing quan¬ 
tity of dung, of which, from specimens we saw, 
there must have been not only hundreds, but 
thousands, of waggonloads. Round each rest¬ 
ing place was a hillock raised a considerable 
height above the surface, although the substance 
had been there eighteen months when we made 
our observations on the place. At that time the 
heaps were, no doubt, greatly sunk.” Faux, in 
1819, describes a Pigeon roost, which “is a sin¬ 
gular sight in the thinly settled states, particu¬ 
larly in Tennessee in the fall of the year, when 
the roost extends over either a portion of wood¬ 
land or barrens, from four to six miles in cir¬ 
cumference. The screaming no;se they make, 
when thus roosting, is heard at a distance of six 
miles; and, when the beechnuts are ripe, they fly 
two hundred miles to dinner, in immense flocks 
. . . They thus travel four hundred miles 
