Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1906-06-11
THE VANISHED MULTITUDE.


An authenticated dispatch to an
eastern sportsman's journal reporting
a numerous flock of wild or passenger
pigeons, awakens interest and arouses
recollection of bird supposed to have
been extinct. Men who remember the
wild pigeon are all growing old, and
flights of these birds are past middle
age and on the way to the bourne to
which the passenger pigeon has de-
parted.
The little boys who saw the last
great flight of the passenger pigeon are
now middle-aged men. One flight, not
widely general but confined mostly to
Wisconsin, occurred in 1877 The birds
nested near Crooked Lake, Wisconsin,
in that year. Their nesting place COW
cred a strip twenty -eight miles long
and averaging between three and four
miles wide. The nests We're crowded.
Anyone with a taste and capacity for
figures may calculate the numbers of
the birds. There is little danger of
over estimating them.
The writer.of this article was a small
boy in Illinois thirty odd years ago,
when the last big flight swept over
that country. For hours that stretched
into days focks of pigeons reaching
from one horizon TO the other passed
over, one flock succeeding another with
perhaps a quarter mile of distance sep
arating them. The dead trees in the
groves were covered with perching
pigeons. They swooped down on a
plowed field and rolled over it, the
birds behind continually flying over
those in front, thus giving the appear
ance Of an immense moving cylinder.
Not a seed remained when the army OF
devastation had passed. These mon
ster focks obscured the sun. They
crushed forests where they roasted
Their numbers were countless, and the
w uolGSdlc oSSlI uClIOll NlSlteu upon
them was absolutely imperceptible.
They came in such numbers as to be
utterly beyond human comprehension.
They were slain by millions. Boys
with long poles lay in wait behind
the hedges on hilltops and struck down
thousands from the low-fving focks
Every kind of frearm was busy 1t
was impossible to miss. "A charge of
fine shot sent into the flying masses
brought down dozens and even hun
dreds. One man with a shot from an
old army musket heavily charged with
con beds were baited with wheat and
great nets set above them. The pig
cons swarmed down on these beds until
the ground was covered with a. fut-
tering, struggling mass. Then the net
came down. One trapper caught over
one thousand dozen at one cast. Boys
with fish seines and even fly nets trap
ped immense numbers. They were
picked, packed in barrels and shipped
to market, eaten at home, fed to hogs,
and sold to trap shooters.
Where has the passenger pigeon
gone? Where the buffalo went and the
prairie chicken is going. Theorists ar
que a flight out over the ocean and
wholesale drowning of a species, but
the passenger pigeon has become ex-
tinct because in the new economy of
the continent no place is left for 1t.
The forests are gone and the feeding
places destroyed. Audubon estimated
that eight ounces of food was neces-
sary to the daily existence of each pig
con. Multiply the billions of the old
time focks by half-pound each and
find a place where they might feed.
The buffalo and elk and antelope and
the wild pigeon have made way for the
homes spread all over the once bound
less west, where not long ago 1.-The rank
thistle nodded in the wind and the wild
fox dug his hole unscared." They are
of the types that fade before civiliza-
ton.
Excursion Tickets to Council Bluffs,
Via the North Western Line will be
sold June l9 and 20, limited TO return
until June % inclusive. on account OF
State S. S. Assn. Apply TO agents.
CHICAGO & North " estern R'y.