Adult female passenger pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius.
Print, after a painting by T. Hayashi. In: Posthumous Works of Charles Otis Whitman, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C., 1919).
Charles Otis Whitman, (Bowdoin B.A. 1868; Sc.D. 1894), a pre-eminent biologist and embryologist, founded the zoology departments at Clark University (Worcester, Massachusetts) and the University of Chicago; he was also the founding director of the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory. Whitman undertook his genetic studies observing a flock of many species of wild and domestic doves and pigeons. His flock of wild passenger pigeons was one of the last surviving groups — “Martha,” the last known passenger pigeon, very probably came from Whitman’s flock. She died in the Cincinnati Zoo on September 1, 1914.
K. Hayashi, one of two Japanese artists Whitman employed as illustrators, painted this mature female from life sometime between 1896 and 1907.