52 THE AUDUBON, BULLE Tis 
section contributed sixteen million. Another town killed and shipped 
over $4,000,000 worth. 
After this killing only scattering flocks were seen and from that time 
onward the diminution of the birds was continuous until they became 
extinct. | 
The largest flock and killing in Tennessee of which we have a record 
was at Nashville, in 1870. 
The Nashville Union and American for January 1 of that year stated 
that for several mornings wild pigeons had made their appearance there 
by the thousands and the heavens were clouded by the visitors. 
“In the suburbs their roosts have been surprised by the youngsters 
and gunning is brisk,” the paper stated. Then two weeks later on 
January 23 a news item in the same paper said: “One night last week 
Mr. Peter Ladd, who is about 70 years old and his two sons, killed 1500 
pigeons at the roost, and the next night the party bagged 1000, making 
2500 for the two nights’ slaughter. Yet some people talk about the 
mystery of the disappearance of this bird.” 
The ruthless destruction of this species had much to do with the pass- 
ing of our present game laws. No adequate attempt to protect them was 
made until they had virtually disappeared. Whenever a law looking 
toward the conservation of these birds was proposed in any state, its 
opponents argued before legislative committees that the pigeons “ needed 
no protection”; that their numbers were so vast, and that they ranged 
over such a great extent of country, that they were amply able to take 
care of themselves. Where laws were passed, they were not enforced. 
Audubon, in describing the dreadful slaughter of these birds at one 
time said that people unacquainted with them might naturally conclude 
that such destruction would soon put an end to the species; but he was 
satisfied himself, by long observation, that nothing but the gradual 
diminution of the forests could accomplish the decrease of the birds. 
The enormous multitudes of the pigeons made such an impression 
upon the mind that the extinction of the species seemed an absolute im- 
possibility. Nevertheless, it has occurred. In 1878 the Cincinnati 
Zoological Garden bought three pairs of pigeons. They hatched and 
raised several young. Then the old ones started to die off, as did some 
of the young, and finally only two were left, a male and a female. The 
male died in 1910 and the female in 1914. The last bird to die was pre- 
sented to the Smithsonian Institution at Washington. 
In 1910 the Zoological Garden offered $100 for a pair and in 1914 the 
offer was increased to $1000 but no one ever claimed the reward. So 
in thirty years the most numerous of all birds in the country vanished. 
The last record we have of a passenger pigeon being killed in the wild 
state occurred in 1908. 
Nothing could be sadder than the picture of a birdless America. 
America the greatest natural bird paradise in the world. Since the arrival 
