Not more than two years ago, if so long, I read a lengthy and signed account in a Montreal paper of a similar catastrophe to a great flight of pigeons in attempting to cross Lake Michigan, and similar statement was made that for miles the beach above Milwaukee was heaped and piled with "windrows" of dead pigeons. Within two or three years several accounts have reached us, bearing every mark of believability, that considerable flights of geese, swans and ducks have been drowned in the surf off the New Jersey and Maryland shores. These flights of birds have been overwhelmed in a sudden storm or gale of wind, which beat them down into the surf where they were drowned, their bodies drifting about, and some of them being thrown up on the shore. These accounts have come from fishermen, sportsmen and others, and I see no reason whatever to doubt that a flight of birds of any species known could easily be destroyed if caught off shore in some of the wind storms of which we have so many instances. I have frequently in _Forest and Stream_ propounded my theory and asked for information about it before it became too late. The whole theory stands or falls, as it seems to me, with the ascertainment of the southern limit of the migration of the great pigeon flight. If the birds did not cross the Gulf of Mexico there is far less likelihood of my theory being the correct one, though my inquiries in _Forest and Stream_ elicited one very circumstantial account of an enormous destruction of pigeons on the Gulf Coast, the birds being blown into the Gulf and destroyed by a fierce "norther" which beat down the coast for two or three days. Persons familiar with this phenomena of the Texas "norther" need no help to their imaginations in seeing how a pigeon flight, being caught on the shores of the Gulf by such a wind could be practically destroyed. I do not know that you will think my theory worth any consideration, but I have finally interested a number of ornithologists who share my view that the final and sudden wiping out of the great bulk of the pigeon flight must have been by some cataclysmic agency. It seems to me that the question is one of great interest from the point of view of the naturalist and biologist, and well worth serious investigation by all who care for these things. I shall be pleased to know if what I have said seems to you of interest and to have any weight. Wishing you all success in your admirable undertaking, and anticipating with great pleasure the results of your studies in your proposed book, I am, Yours very truly, C. H. Ames. _Memorandum prepared by Mr. Robert Ridgway, Curator of the Division of Birds, U. S. National Museum, to accompany letter to Mr. W. B. Mershon, Saginaw, Mich._