Page:The Passenger Pigeon - Mershon.djvu/118

92 Cross Village and other lake ports, which were as many more. Added to this were the daily express shipments in bags and boxes, the wagon loads hauled away by the shotgun brigade, the thousands of dead and wounded ones not secured, and the myriads of squabs dead in the nest by trapping off of the parent birds soon after hatching (for a young pigeon will surely die if deprived of its parents during the first week of its life), and we have at the lowest possible estimate a grand total of 1,000,000,000 pigeons sacrificed to Mammon during the nesting of 1878.

The task undertaken in behalf of justice and humanity was a Herculean one, but backed up by such true sportsmen as A. H. Mershon and Wm. J. Loveland, of East Saginaw, and Judge Holmes, S. A. Van Dusen, D. H. Fitzhugh, Jr., and others of Bay City, as well as by the sentiment of every humane citizen of the State, we could not do other than follow the advice of Davy Crockett, and being sure we were right, we decided to "go ahead." The question of a wise protection to the game and fish of our State is one in which the writer holds a deep and fervent interest, and in serving this cause, he will swerve from no duty, nor shrink from consequences in the discharge of that duty.

The foregoing article is the result of an honest conviction that the best interests of the State demanded a full exposure of the methods by which the pigeon is threatened with extinction.