ttle more slowly with other fine native species."

_Bird Study Book_ (Pearson), pages 128-29. "Passenger Pigeons as late as
1870 were frequently seen in enormous flocks. Their numbers during the
periods of migration were one of the greatest ornithological wonders of
the world. Now the birds are gone. What is supposed to have been the
last one died in captivity in the Zoological Park of Cincinnati, at 2
P.M. on the afternoon of September 1, 1914. Despite the generally
accepted statement that these birds succumbed to the guns, snares, and
nets of hunters, there is a second cause, which doubtless had its effect
in hastening the disappearance of the species. The cutting away of vast
forests, where the birds were accustomed to gather and feed on mast,
greatly restricted their feeding range. They collected in enormous
colonies for the purpose of rearing their young; and after the forests
of the Northern states were so largely destroyed, the birds seem to have
been driven far up into Canada, quite beyond their usual breeding range.
Here, as Forbush suggests, the summer probably was not sufficiently long
to enable them to rear their young successfully."

_Birds in their Relation to Man_ (Weed and Dearborn), pages 219-22.

_Educational Leaflet No. 6._ (National Association of Audubon
Societies.) "Those who study with care the history of the extermination
of the Pigeons will see, however, that all the theories brought forward
to account for the destruction of the birds by other causes than man's
agency are wholly inadequate. There was but one cause for the diminution
of the birds, which was widespread, annual, perennial, continuous, and
enormously destructive--their persecution by mankind. Every great
nesting-ground was besieged by a host of people as soon as it was
discovered, many of them professional pigeoners, armed with all the most
effective engines of slaughter known. Many times the birds were so
persecuted that they finally left their young to the mercies of the
pigeoners; and even when they remained, most of the young were killed
and sent to the market, and the hosts of the adults were decimated."

LITTLE SOLOMON OTUS

_Otus asio_, the Screech Owl, are the scientific and common names of our
little friend Solomon. Perhaps the fact that owls stand upright and gaze
at one with both eyes to the front, accounts in part for their looking
so wise that they have been used as a symbol of wisdom for many
centuries.

In the