Passenger pigeon.
Passenger pigeon. Chromolithograph, from a design by Theodore Jasper. In: Jacob Henry Studer’s Studer’s Popular Ornithology (Columbus, Ohio, 1878).
Studer’s Popular Ornithology, first published in parts (just as Audubon’s The Birds of America had been) from 1872-1878, proved attractive enough to go through several reprintings up to 1903. The work aimed “to disseminate and promote natural science information as well as to gratify universal taste.” With 119 one-quarter scale illustrations based on drawings by Theodore Jasper, it proclaimed: “No similar work, containing so many beautiful and faithful pictures of living birds has ever been published.”
Called by one reviewer “a ponderous and unimportant book” with figures of indifferent quality, it posed no threat to Audubon’s work. Still, Jasper’s image of the passenger pigeons does show the gregarious birds clustered on broken limbs, recalling the destruction that the tremendous weight of the flocks could wreak on even large trees. The bird shown at the top preens while the rest show off back view, side view, and three-quarter view from right and left.