Page:The Passenger Pigeon - Mershon.djvu/172

 CHAPTER XII

The Last of the Pigeons

From "The Auk," July, 1897, under the title "Additional Records of the Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius.)"

of the notes on the Passenger Pigeon recorded in the past year have referred to single birds or pairs. It is with much pleasure that I now call attention to a flock of some fifty, observed in southern Missouri. I am not only greatly indebted to Mr. Chas. H. Holden, jr., for this interesting information, but for the present of a beautiful pair which he sent me in the flesh, he having shot them as they flew rapidly overhead. Mr. Holden was, at the time (December 17, 1896), hunting quail in Attie, Oregon County, Mo. The residents of this hamlet had not seen any pigeons there before in some years.

Simon Pokagon, Chief of the remaining Pottawattamie tribe, and probably the best posted man on the wild pigeon in Michigan, writes me under date of October 16, 1896: "I am creditably informed that there was a small nesting of pigeons last spring not far from the headwaters of the Au Sable River in Michigan." Mr. Chase S. Osborn, State Game and Fish Warden of Michigan, under date, Sault Ste. Marie, March 2, 1897,