Page:The Passenger Pigeon - Mershon.djvu/117

Rh shipped by steamer to Chicago 128 barrels of dead birds and 108 crates of live birds. On the next Sabbath following our arrival the shipments were only forty-three barrels and fifty-two crates. Thus it will be seen that some little good was accomplished, but that little was included in a very few days of the season, for the treasury of the home clubs would not admit of keeping their representatives longer at the nesting, the State clubs, save one, did not respond to the call for assistance, and the men were recalled, after which the Indians went back into the nesting, and the wanton crusade was renewed by pigeoners and all hands with an energy which indicated a determination to make up for lost time.

The first shipment of birds from Petoskey was upon March 22, and the last upon August 12, making over twenty weeks, or five months, that the bird war was carried on. For many weeks the railroad shipments averaged fifty barrels of dead birds per day—thirty to forty dozen old birds and about fifty dozen squabs being packed in a barrel. Allowing 500 birds to a barrel, and averaging the entire shipments for the season at twenty-five barrels per day, we find the rail shipments to have been 12,500 dead birds daily, or 1,500,000 for the summer. Of live birds there were shipped 1,116 crates, six dozen per crate, or 80,352 birds.

These were the rail shipments only, and not including the cargoes by steamers from Petoskey, Cheboygan,