Page:The Passenger Pigeon - Mershon.djvu/166

 Rh remember having caught several in that way. As clearly as I can remember, they left all at once along about 1875. I have seen a few here along about 1882, and one fall in October, I think, of 1884, I saw two or three, the last I remember of them.

., June 13th, 1905.

It seems too bad that this noble bird should have been blotted out. The last flock, a small one, that I ever saw was in 1891. I saw pigeons in 1883, 1885 and 1886.

I have been in their nesting grounds. The males and the females sit on the nest on alternate days. When their big nesting was near South Haven in this State, the birds used to fly over this town every day in their quest for food, some of them going fully seventy-five miles in an air line from their nesting. One day it would be a continuous stream of male birds and the next day it would be the females.

How the netters did massacre them and ship them away by thousands and thousands. Many were kept alive and shipped all over the country for pigeon shoots. The last wild pigeons ever used for this purpose that I know of was at John Watson's Grand Crossing, Chicago, Illinois, in 1886. I asked Watson, in February last, where he got those birds, and he said