d the money yet, and it would be a great
adventure, don't you think, to seek that nest? If you find it, you must
not disturb it, you know, or take the eggs or the young, or frighten the
father- or mother-bird; for the people who offered all that money did
not want dead birds to stuff for a museum, but hoped that someone might
tell them where there were live wild ones nesting.

You see the news had got about that the dove that is called Passenger
Pigeon was lost. No one could believe this at first, because there had
been so very many--more than a thousand, more than a million, more than
a billion. How could more than a billion doves be lost?

They were such big birds, too--a foot and a half long from tip of beak
to tip of tail, and sometimes even longer. Why, that is longer than the
tame pigeons that walk about our city streets. How could doves as large
as that be lost, so that no one could find a pair, not even for one
thousand dollars to pay him for the time it took to hunt?

Their colors were so pretty--head and back a soft, soft blue; neck
glistening with violet, red, and gold; underneath, a wonderful purple
red fading into violet shades, and then into bluish white. Who would not
like to seek, for the love of seeing so beautiful a bird, even though no
one paid a reward in money?

Shall we go, then, to Kentucky? For 'twas there the man named Audubon
once saw them come in flocks to roost at night. They kept coming from
sunset till after midnight, and their numbers were so great that their
wings, even while still a long way off, made a sound like a gale of
wind; and when close to, the noise of the birds was so loud that men
could not hear one another speak, even though they stood near and
shouted. The place where Audubon saw these pigeons was in a forest near
the Green River; and there were so many that they filled the trees over
a space forty miles long and more than three miles wide. They perched so
thickly that the branches of the great trees broke under their weight,
and went crashing to the ground; and their roosting-place looked as if a
tornado had rushed through the forest.

Must there not be wild pigeons, yet, roosting in Kentucky--some small
flock, perhaps, descended from the countless thousands seen by Audubon?
No, not one of all these doves is left, they tell us, in the woods in
that part of the country. The rush of their wings has been stilled and
their evening uproar has been silenced. Men may now walk