Published figures and plates of the extinct passenger pigeon

Given in memory of

Elisha Hanson
by

Letitia Armistead Hanson

Smithsonian Institution
Libraries

458

THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

PUBLISHED FIGURES AND PLATES OF THE
EXTINCT PASSENGER PIGEON1

By Dr. R. W. SHUFELDT

WASHINGTON; D. C.

(Photographs by the Author)

WITH the view of portraying its natural appearance in life, few
birds, either living or extinct, have exceeded the Passenger
Pigeon ( Ectopistes migratorius) as a subject for artists and engravers.
For nearly two centuries, representations of this now extinct species
have been published in all sorts of avenues, ranging all the way from
the cuts found in dictionaries and school-books to reproductions of
life-size colored figures illustrating the most sumptuous of the world’s
great works devoted to ornithology. It would seem to be quite a safe
statement to make that upwards of five hundred figures or more of this
bird, published in many quarters of the world, have appeared, illus¬
trating the great variety of accounts, both popular and scientific, that
avian biographers have given us upon its natural history.

No species of bird known to man, in all time, can in any way rival
the extraordinary series of chapters that go to make up the history of
the life-span of this now totally extinct pigeon. As a story filled with
romance, prodigality, cruelty and short-sightedness, it outranks the
most unbelievable fables of the ancients. For one among many who
witnessed the marvelous flight of these birds in the early seventies, I
never for a moment thought how soon the species would be in the same
category with those other birds, of which the world shall never again
see living specimens. We can now only regretfully look back on the
picture and systematize the data at hand with respect to the literary
part of this, and not a little has been accomplished by those competent
to undertake it. But with all this we have nothing to do here, as it is
a subject quite apart from a consideration of what we have by way of
portraits of a form that man shall never see again in life.

As just stated, there is a very extensive array of these portraits in
the many biographies that have appeared of the bird, and they repre¬
sent a great variety of grades of excellence, of caricature, of faithful¬
ness, and of grotesqueness. Many of these will here be ignored, as
they contribute nothing of any value in aiding one to correctly visualize
our subject: indeed, in most instances, such cuts convey a decidedly

jRead at the Thirty-eighth Stated Meeting of the American Ornithologists’
Union. Washington. D. C., November, 1920.

FIG. 1. AN OLD WOOD ENGRAVING FROM THE “ILLUSTRATED NATURAL HISTORY OF
THE ANIMAL KINGDOM" BY L. C. GOODRICH

AN IMMATURE WILD PIGEON. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY THE LATE DR.
C. 0. WHITMAN

EXTINCT PASSENGER PIGEON

461

erroneous idea as to how this bird appeared in life. This statement
may be relied upon coming from me, as not only have I shot a num¬
ber of specimens of them and handled them afterwards, but I have
seen them, close to, in all their natural attitudes in the forest; so
that, with such opportunities, added to what faculties I may possess
for memorizing the normal postures of birds in life, following upon a
study of any particular species of them for that purpose, 1 may be more
or less competent to judge of the faithfulness of portrayal in any pic¬
ture of the wild pigeon which, up to the present time, has been pub¬
lished.

Turning first, then, to a few of the minor cuts that have appeared
of this bird, it is to be noted that they are of a great variety, and based
on all sorts of data. Some are reduced woodcuts, or electros, or half¬
tones, made from the large plates in the standard works of the world’s
recognized ornithologists. Some are fanciful pictures reproduced from
drawings made by those who knew nothing of the wild pigeon, or who
had examined the figures or plates of others possessing more or less
reliable data upon which to base such productions. Not a few are
represented by excellent examples of pictorial piracy, with widely
varying success as to correctness of copy; in the case of still others,
attempts have been made to conceal the piracy, and the value of the
result rests upon the skill of the artist to succeed in such a trick. In a
few instances, the pirated picture appears to be truer to nature than
the one from which it was copied. And, again, such copies are duly
acknowledged, either under the cut or in the text which accompanies it.

L. G. Goodrich published his “Illustrated Natural History of the
Animal Kingdom” in 1861; it carried 1,500 engravings in the two
volumes, and came off the presses of Derby and Jackson, of New York
City. On page 231 of Volume II. there is an attractive woodcut of the
wild pigeon engraved by Lossing and Barritt. (Fig. 1.) In the fore¬
ground a single adult bird faces to the right, standing on the trunk of
a fallen tree; in the middle distance there are three more of these birds
in a tree to the left, while in the background we have a man, partly
concealed in a “blind,” netting pigeons. Numerous birds are on the
ground; others are in a near-by tree, while still others are coming down
to the lure, and a few others are, apparently, for the moment passing
in the form of an acute angle, with one bird directly behind another
in the two lines forming it.

Whether this is the place where this picture was first published. I
am unable to state; but I am inclined to believe that it is not. for the
reason that we find, in Thomas NuttalTs “A Manual of the Ornithology
of the United States,” a picture of a wild pigeon which is evidently
the counterpart of the one in Goodrich. Here it is larger, however,
and the bird is turned to the left; the surroundings are changed some-

FIG. 3. A GROUP OF WILD PIGEONS FROM EATON’S “BIRDS OF NEW YORK.” LOUIS AGASSIZ FUERTES PAINTED THIS FINE
PICTURE. WHICH CONSISTS OF AN ADULT PAIR AND A BiRD-OF-THE-YEAR

EXTINCT PASSENGER PIGEON

46o

what, and the tree in the middle distance is absent. But in the back¬
ground we find the same scene as in Goodrich, apart from a few trivial
changes. This cut is on page 28 of Volume I. of Nuttall — the Land
Birds — the account of the Wild Pigeon being on pages 628 to 635 in¬
clusive. As this volume is dated 1832, or twenty-nine years before the
Goodrich volume was published, it is evident that a still earlier cut
of the kind existed, which was drawn upon by both the authors, or,
what is more likely, Goodrich’s engravers or his artist made up a wild
pigeon scene for the work, and copied Nuttall’s figure in the fore¬
ground, simply turning it to the right and slightly reducing it. Such
procedures were by no means uncommon in those times — a fact one
soon appreciates after studying the various published pictures of the
Wild Pigeon. Nuttall acknowledges who engraved for him in his
Preface to Volume I., on page vi., where he says: “The wood engrav¬
ings, not sufficiently numerous in consequence of their cost, have been
executed by Mr. Bowen, of Boston, and Mr. Hall, in the employ of
Messrs. Carter and Andrews, of Lancaster.” Cambridge was the place
of publication.

To illustrate the word “pigeon” or “passenger-pigeon,” we some¬
times find our extinct wild one selected for the purpose, and a good
example of this is seen in the case of the “Century Dictionary,” where
Thompson-Seton gives us a figure that is far above the average of such
cuts in points of excellence.

Perhaps Wilson’s rather quaint but attractive figure of the bird has
been more extensively used as the basis for smaller cuts than that of
any other artist. For example, Tenney used it in his text-book on
zoology, and Coues, borrowing it from him, reproduced it on page 711
of Volume II. of the fifth edition of his “Key to North American Birds.”
To some extent, this cut was altered; for, as we know, Wilson repre¬
sented his wild pigeon as standing on the top of a sawn-off stump of a
tree, while the cuts in Tenney’s and in Coues have the bird standing on
the ground. In doing this, no change was made in the posing of
the feet.

As we know, T. M. Brewer published an edition of Wilson’s “Amer¬
ican Ornithology'’ in 1852; and of all the colored plates known to me,
the ones illustrating this work are the most unsatisfactory and incor¬
rectly colored. They were reduced from the plates in Wilson’s folio
edition to a three-half, six-half size; and in my personal copy of this
work, the plate carrying the wild pigeon is so inserted as to cause the
bird to be up-side down. It has been tinted a curious shade of purple,
with pale purple outer tail feathers, and with a bright pink breast. In
this respect Audubon fared much better; for, with the exception of a
few indifferent cuts based on his magnificent plate of a pair of Wild
Pigeons, the latter has been reproduced in color in several works, a

FIG. 4. REPRODUCTION OF AUDUBON'S PLATE OF THE WILD PIDGEON

EXTINCT PASSENGER PIGEON

465

strikingly beautiful example of which may be seen in that most val¬
uable and interesting book on the bird by W. B Mershon, given us in
1907 by the Outing Publishing Company. This volume has two repro¬
ductions of photographs of mounted specimens of the Passenger
Pigeon that are above the average in the point of excellence; and,
finally, it has a beautiful plate of Dr. C. 0. Whitman’s photograph from
life of an immature bird of this species. (Fig. 2).

An admirable plate in color of a pair of Passenger Pigeons by
Fuertes occurs as the frontispiece to the work just mentioned, the same
having been used by various other authors. This painting was
done in 1904, since which time, for all I know to the contrary, this most
industrious avian artist may have given us other colored plates of this
species, — at least I find a very beautiful one, and I may say a very
faithful one, in the first volume of Eaton’s magnificent work “The Birds
of New York,” where it is shown on Plate 42, upper figure, the group
consisting of a pair of adults and a young bird. (Fig. 3). In my opin¬
ion, this is one of the most accurate, and decidedly the most pleasing
of all the colored figures of the Wild Pigeon that have appeared up to
date. It leads Audubon’s plate for the reason that it is such a restful
one to study, while in the case of Audubon’s, the error he committed in
so many of his representations of birds is there repeated — that is to
say, that in technical ornithological works the portraits of birds should
never be shown in unusual poses or performing some action. (Fig 4).
In this criticism I found myself in agreement with the late, very dis¬
tinguished British Ornithologist, Alfred Newton, who, many years ago,
wrote me to that effect.

Eaton’s “Birds of New York” hears date of 1910— that is, three years
after Mershon, and two years before the splendid volume of Forbush
appeared on “A History of the Game Birds, Wild Fowl, and Shore
Birds of Massachusetts and Adjacent States” — a work too well known
to ornithologists to require description here. In it we find three plates
devoted to the Passenger Pigeon, one being of a beautifully mounted
specimen, while the remaining two are of exceptional value, in as much
as they are reproductions of photographs of living specimens of the
bird itself. In so far as my knowledge carries, these are the only pic¬
tures of the kind extant. I have already referred to one of them as
being an illustration in Mershon’s work “The Passenger Pigeon,” that
is, the one reproduced from C. 0. Whitman’s photograph; the other,
here to be noticed, is the reproduction of the last of all the Passenger
Pigeons that ever lived: It is the Enno Meyer photograph, taken of
the bird when it lived in the Zoological Garden of Cincinnati. (Fig.
5). It is quite unnecessary to comment on the value of this picture or
its uniqueness, as it represents one of those things that can never he
repeated.

FIG. 5. THE PASSENGER PIGEON IN LIFE. PHOTOGRAPHED BY ENNO MEYER OF THE
BIRD THAT LIVED IN THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS OF CINCINNATI, OHIO

FIG. 6. SAME SPECIMEN AS SHOWN IN FIGURE 5. MOUNTED AFTER ITS DEATH BY THE
LATE MR. NELSON R. WOOD AND NOW IN THE EXHIBITION SERIES OF THE UNITED
STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM

FIG. 7. THE COLORED FIGURE OF THE WILD PIGEON AS SHOWN IN THE WORK OF JAMES DE KAY (“NEW YORK FAUNA.”

EXTINCT PASSENGER PIGEON

469

This bird, after its death, was preserved by Mr. Wm. Palmer at my
residence, and I have published an account of its gross anatomy. There
are three other negatives of it posed by me at the photographic gal¬
leries of the United States National Museum, and they present the three
different views of the specimen, namely the ventral, the dorsal and the
lateral ones. After this specimen was mounted, I was permitted to
make a photograph of it, and this latter has been published in The
Conservationist, of Albany, N. Y., and in American Forestry, of
Washington. (Fig. 6).

If there be a figure of the Wild Pigeon in “The Game Birds of the
United States” by the late Dr. D. G. Elliott, I do not recall it, for a
copy of that work has not been in my hands for many years. This is
not the case, however, with respect to the “Zoology of New York,” or
the “New York Fauna,” by James E. de Kay. Part II. of this well-
known and much criticized work is devoted to the Birds, and on page
196 there is an half-page account of “Ecto pistes migratoria .” The
figure of the bird in color, five-eights natural size, is a male, engraved
by J. W. Hill and lithographed by Endicott of New York. It is Plate
74, being a rather pleasing, not to say fairly correct representation of
the species. (Fig. 7).

Coues, in his Biographical Appendix, gives the date of publication
of this work as 1884, and says that the birds “are figured in colored
lithographs, each plate containing two or three figures. The plates are
all recognizable illustrations, but not of the highest order of artistic
merit, the drawing being especially defective.” (p. 633.)

There has been published at least one plate on which is given no
fewer than fourteen Passenger Pigeons, representing both sexes and
young in apparently typical plumages. This is Plate XXIX, opposite
page 32 of “Studer’s Popular Ornithology — The Birds of North Amer¬
ica,” — a work illustrated throughout by Dr. Theodore Jasper, and edited
and published under copyright in 1881 by Jacob H. Studer and Co.,
of New York and Columbus, Ohio. (Fig 8). Neither the text nor the
plates of this folio volume seem to have met with favor in the eyes of
ornithologists anywhere; but of all this interesting history nothing will
be recorded here.

To appreciate Alexander Wilson’s figure of the Wild Pigeon, one
should see it in Volume V. of his folio set, which was published in
Philadelphia in 1812. We find it to be Figure I . on Plate 44, oppo¬
site page 102, where it is designated as Columbia migratoria, and rep¬
resented to be of natural size. On the same plate we find Figure II.,
the Blue Mountain Warbler, and Figure III., the Hemlock Warbler
(Fig 9). There is a peculiar quaintness and charm about Wilson’s
figures of birds that attaches but to few others. I must believe that
their pathetic history has something to do with all this, for we know
that Wilson drew all his own figures of birds, while they were engraved

FIG. 8. DOCTOR JASPER'S GROUP OF THE FOURTEEN WILD PIGEONS, FROM STUDER’S
••THE BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA." (PL. XXIX.)

EXTINCT PASSENGER PIGEON

471

by I. G. Warnicke, of the firm of Messrs. Lawson, Murray, and War-
nicke, his printers being Messrs. R. and W. Carr, a Philadelphia firm
of note in those days.

There is hut one criticism 1 would make of the Wild Pigeon as
portrayed by Wilson; it is that the sawn-off stump upon which it stands
is altogether too small. As the bird had a length between 16 and 17
inches, we can readily calculate what the diameter of that stump must
have been. Surely the tree could not have been of a size sufficiently
large to demand sawing across to fell it! This discrepancy has doubt¬
less been observed by others — hence the placing of Wilson’s Wild
Pigeon on the ground in some of our modern text-books in zoology.

On page 10 of his preface, Wilson gives us a paragraph, the senti¬
ment of which is quite as true to-day as in his time; he says: "‘Let
hut the generous hand of patriotism he stretched forth to assist and
cherish the rising arts and literature of our country, and both will most
assuredly, and that at no remote period, shoot forth, increase, and
flourish with a vigor, a splendor, and usefulness inferior to no other
on Earth.”

In skimming through that most useful piece of work, the Biograph¬
ical Appendix of Dr. Elliott Coues, we meet with various other works,
of a minor sort or otherwise, in which cuts of the Wild Pigeon occur,
or may occur, as those of E. A. Samuels, W. L. Bailey, W. P. Turnbull,
and others. In the important ornithological works of Baird, Brewer,
and Ridgway, only the heads of the birds described are figured; while
in Mr. Ridgway’s well-known “Manual” we find hut an excellent char¬
acter drawing, giving in outline simply the head, wing, tail, and foot
of the Passenger Pigeon.

There is a quaint figure of the bird under consideration in the earlv
wrork of P. Kalm, published in 1772, and entitled “Travels Into North
America,” with a very lengthy sub-title. The plate of the Wild Pigeon
is opposite page 74; while in 1785, or thirteen years after Kalm pub¬
lished, there appeared the well-known classic of T. Pennant, entitled
“Arctic Zoology.’ Here a very crude engraving of the Passenger
Pigeon is given on the same plate (which is No. XIV.) wfith the Caro¬
line Dove. (Fig. 10). This I examined in a copy of the work formerlv
in the personal library of the late Dr. Edgar A. Mearns, which is now-
in the library of the LTnited States National Museum. Who engraved
this plate is a fact still unknown to me, w-hile the work was printed
by Henry Hughs, of London. Volume II. is devoted to the Birds,
which are grouped in Class II., and it is on page 322 that we find
treated Order IV., the Columbine , under which a brief account of the
Wild Pigeon is given.

Ornithologists are familiar with the remarkable history that at¬
taches to the great folio work on Pigeons, of which C. J. Temminck is

cn

s

FIG. 9, THE PASSENGER PIGEON AS GIVEN US BY ALEXANDER WILSON. FIGURE 1 ON PLATE XLIV. OF

FOLIO SET

FIG. 10. PLATE FROM PENNANT’S “ARCTIC ZOOLOGY.” CAROLINA DOVE IN THE
FOREGROUND AND WILD PIGEON BEYOND. (PL. XIV.)

FIG. 11. MADAME KNIP'S PAINTING OF THE PASSENGER PIGEON. WHICH WAS PUBLISHED
IN HER PIRATED EDITION AS WELL AS IN TEMMINCK’S THE LATTER BEING THE AUTHOR
OF THE TEXT OF THE WORK

EXTINCT PASSENGER PIGEON

475

the author, and which was published in 1808 to 1811; and how it was
pirated, as a whole, by Madame Knip, nee Pauline de Courcelles, at the
time it was issued. Madame Knip was the artist who painted the life-
size colored figures of the large number of pigeons figured in this work,
while they were engraved by Cesar Macret, of Paris. Each species is
given a plate to itself, and that of the Wild Pigeon is No. 48, which is
said to be a male bird. As an artistic picture, it is excellent; but as a
correct figure of the species it purports to represent, it is a failure.
The model was evidently a skin, and this may account for the small
head and bill, but not for the short tail that Madame Knip has endowed
it with. ( Fig. 11) .

In 1857 to 1858, Charles Lucien Bonaparte published his magnifi¬
cent folio, entitled “Iconographic des Pigeons;” but as the plates only
gave such species as were not figured by Madame Knip, the Passenger
Pigeon does not appear in it.

We next have to consider the work of Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig
Reichenbach, who was born at Leipzig on the 8th of January, 1793, and
who died March 17, 1879, which made him eighty-six years of age at
the time of his death. He was the author of a work on the Columbidae,
entitled “The Complete Account of the Natural History of the Pigeons
and Pigeon-like Birds,” a copy of which I have examined. It appeared
in Dresden, in the German language, as a folio volume apart from the
text, and illustrated with colored plates. With respect to the text of
this work, I am indebted to Dr. Richmond for the opportunity to exam¬
ine it. It was probably published about 1861, being unbound, and of
a much smaller size than the plates. The account of the Wild Pigeon
on pp. 81-85 is chiefly from Audubon and others. Plate 154 of the
bound plates is devoted to Ectopistes migratorius (Fig 12), of which
there are three figures in color resting on the limb of a tree; they are
numbered 1374, 1378, and 1379, and all three are but indifferent repre¬
sentations of the species he aimed to delineate.

Reichenbach evidently got his middle figure of the Wild Pigeon
from John Prideaux Selby’s work, entitled “The Natural History of
Pigeons,” which appeared in Edinburgh in 1835, being one of the demi-
octavos of The Naturalists’ Library, edited by Sir William Jardine. It
is the volume devoted to the Pigeons, and is illustrated by 32 colored
plates of those birds together with numerous woodcuts. An account of
the Passenger Pigeon, or, as Selby called it, the “Passenger Turtle.”
is given in Volume V. on pages 177 to 188 inclusive, the colored figure
of the bird being Plate 19, opposite page 176. There is no question
but that Reichenbach reproduced this figure in his plate; changed the
limb and scenery, and then added another figure of the pigeon on
either side of it, which he may possibly have obtained from still
other sources. In doing this, the Selby figure was somewhat reduced

FIG. 12. A GROUP OF PASSENGER PIGEONS FROM THE ORNITHOLOGICAL WORK
OF REICHENBACH’S

EXTINCT PASSENGER PIGEON

477

in size. E. Lear drew Selby’s figures of the pigeons, and they were
engraved by Lizars.

We may now enquire as to who published the first figure or plate
representing the Wild Pigeon; and, in so far as I have been able to
discover, it would seem to have been Mark Catesby, whose elephant
folio work appeared in 1771; it is entitled “The Natural History of Car¬
olina, Florida, and Bahama Islands, with a lengthy sub-title. The col¬
ored plate of the Wild Pigeon occurs in Volume I., and is Plate 23,
its caption being “The Pigeon of Passage” (Palumbus Migratorius ) .
(Fig. 13).

The bird is quite recognizable, although figured in the quaint style
so characteristic of the ornithological artists of those times. The ac¬
cessories consist of the leaves and acorns of the Red Oak, the bird
standing on the upper surface of one of the separated leaves, the indi¬
cations being that the leaf is on the ground and not floating in mid-air.

There is an elaborate Preface to this work (pp. V.-XII.), on page
XI of which Catesby tells us that “As I was not bred a Painter, I hope
some faults in Perspective, and other Niceties may be more readily ex¬
cused, for I humbly conceive Plants, and other Things done in a Flat,
tho’ exact manner may serve the Purpose of Natural History, better in
some Measure than in a bold and Painter like way. In designing the
Plants, I always did them while fresh and just gathered: And the Ani¬
mals, particularly the Birds, I painted them while alive (except a few)
and gave them their Gestures peculiar to every kind of Bird, and where
it would admit of, I have adapted the Bird to those Plants on which
they fed, or have any Relation to.”

Catesby had considerable trouble, on account of the expense, in
securing an engraver; but as he adds in his Preface, “At length by the
Kind Advice and Instructions of that inimitable Painter Mr. Joseph
Goupy, I undertook and was initiated in the way of Etching them my¬
self, which, though I may not have done in a Graver-like manner,
choosing rather to omit their method of cross-Hatching, and to follow
the humour of the Feathers, which is more laborious, and I hope has
proved more to the purpose.”

Next follows a long discussion of the colors used in this work, and
other matters of interest.

This ancient classic is still consulted from time to time, and we turn
to it for many reasons in a reverential way; and by no means the least
one of the reasons is, that nearly a century and a half ago, its author
published for us a plate of the Passenger Pigeon, little dreaming as he
did so that this splendid species, then existing in unnumbered millions
in this country, would so soon be utterly exterminated by those living
in the regions where it occurred.

It would appear that Count de Buffon never published a fisure or

FIG. 13. PROBABLY THE FIRST PLATE OF THE WILD PIGEON PUBLISHED. A PHOTOGRAPHIC COPY
OF THE PIGEON IN MARK CATESBY’S ORNITHOLOGY (1771)

FIG. 14. HAYASHI’S FIGURE OF THE MALE WILD PIGEON IN THE WORK OF
DR. C. O. WHITMAN

i

BY THE SAME ARTIST WHO PAINTED THE PIGEON HERE SHOWN IN FIGURE 14. THIS IS THE FEMALE, AND IS PLATE

29 OF WHITMAN’S WORK ON THE PIGEONS

EXTINCT PASSENGER PIGEON

481

plate of the Wild Pigeon; but we find one in Daubenton that appeared
in about the year 1780. This latter is a small quarto with colored
plates, but no text. It was intended to illustrate, or rather be a com¬
plimentary work to Buffon, illustrating what the latter had published
on birds. Daubenton gives a colored plate, No. 176, of an immature
Passenger Pigeon, which he designates as the “Tourterelle du Canada"
which is recognizable, but hardly anything more; it is about two-thirds
the size of life.

Thomas E. Eyton published, in 1836, a small octavo in London,
which he entitled “A History of the Rarer British Birds.” On page 30
there is a small woodcut of the Passenger Pigeon which is fairly good,
and he says of the species that “Our authority for introducing it into
this work, as a member of the British Fauna, rests upon a specimen
mentioned by Dr. Fleming in his ‘History of British Animals,’ shot at
Westhall, in the parish of Monymeal, Fifeshire, on the 31st of Decem¬
ber, 1825. The feathers were quite fresh and entire, like those of a
wild bird. The specimen in question was presented to Dr. Fleming by
the Rev. A. Esplin, schoolmaster at Monymeal.” This specimen was
evidently a “straggler” and very different from introduced birds, such
as the lot that Audubon is responsible for turning loose in England in
1830 — an exploit described in Smart’s “Birds of the British List.”

I have stated that it was perhaps Catesby who published the first
plate of our Wild Pigeon; and it may now be asked: who holds the
honor of having published the last plate of the bird? This is an event
of only about a year ago, when the posthumous works of Charles Otis
Whitman appeared. This great treatise, entitled “Inheritance, Fertility,
and the Dominance of Sex and Color in Hybrids of Wild Species of
Pigeons,” is edited by Mr. Oscar Riddle, and published by the Carnegie
Institution of Washington in four handsome quarto volumes. Its care¬
fully executed colored plates were engraved by the Hoen Company, of
Baltimore, and two plates of the Passenger Pigeon occur in the second
volume. They are reproductions of the work of the well-known Japa¬
nese artist, Hayashi. Plate 28 (Fig. 14) represents an adult male
bird (x. 06), and has not a little to recommend it. It may be sug¬
gested, however, that the limb upon which the specimen is represented
as standing, is too vertical for the pose the artist has given the bird.

The female, to which Plate 29 is devoted. (Fig. 15) is better, and
to me, a far more pleasing figure. It is of an adult individual and
beautifully tinted (x o .05). Mr. Hayashi also painted the picture of
which this plate is a copy — indeed, I believe he is responsible for all
the colored plates that illustrate this superb work — a veritable monu¬
ment to the department of scientific ornithology of which it treats.