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 138 would show that they had been to water prior to their return flight, while at other times the food in their crops would be dry.

Some other boys and I had a lot of wild birds that we bought alive from a netter. We put the birds in the loft of a big barn where there was a lot of beans that had not been threshed. We would put in a big trough of water for them every day. The way those birds threshed out those bean pods was a caution. They became very fat and fairly tame. What wouldn't I give to hear the call note of Tete! Tete! Tete! of the pigeons once more.Yours truly,

J. S. Van Cleef of Poughkeepsie, N. Y., wrote in Forest and Stream of May 20, 1899, as follows:

For many years up to about 1850, flocks of wild pigeons in the fall were quite abundant, and were very often taken with nets, which was a very favorite way of capturing them at that time, but very few, if any, have been taken in this manner since that time. A few small flocks appeared in the fifties, but not to such an extent that an attempt was made to capture them through the aid of pigeon nets, and I find upon inquiry that the experience of others agrees with my own.

The last flight of pigeons of which I have any knowledge occurred in the seventies, where they nested in the