Page:The Passenger Pigeon - Mershon.djvu/206

 CHAPTER XIV

A Novel Theory of Extinction

By C. H. Ames and Robert Ridgway

, March 8, 1906.

Mr. W. B. Mershon:


 * —Thank you for your note of the third in reply to mine of the first, in regard to your book on the Passenger Pigeon, I note that you say:

Thanking you for your courtesy in the matter, I beg to say that I have long had great interest in the problem of the so sudden and complete destruction of this great species, and have from the first been quite unable to believe that the ordinarily assigned agencies for the destruction of the pigeon were adequate, or anywhere near adequate, to make a destruction so sudden and complete.

Several accounts which have come to my notice have strengthened my view. I know well that the attack of man and beast upon the pigeons in their rookeries, or breeding places, was fierce, persistent and enormously