He connected the presence of these birds with the remark-able exodus of wild pigeons from their haunts in the United States in the eighties.

Millions of pigeons at that time took their annual flight southward from Michigan, Indiana and other states in that region, and were never seen again.

What became of this prodigious cloud of birds still remains a mystery.

Knapendyke now advanced the theory that in skirting the Gulf of Mexico on their way to the winter roosts in Central America they were caught by a hurricane and blown out to sea.

By various stages the bewildered survivors of the gale made their way down the east coast of South America, only to be caught up again by another storm that carried them out into the Atlantic.