440 



GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



of the flock was taken. Many escaped while they were tak- 

 ing out the forty-four dozen. Pigeons were abundant in that 

 locaHty until the fall of 1865, when a man could shoot in half 

 a day all that he could use. Mr. Stone says that hawks 

 ravaged the birds continually. He left Vermont in 1866, and 

 does not know how long afterward the Pigeons continued 

 plentiful. At that time there were still many Pigeons in 

 Massachusetts. There were bough houses and roosts erected 

 for shooting Pigeons, "Pigeon beds," nets and stool Pigeons 

 in almost every town. Old men remember this even now. 

 Thoreau speaks of the arrangements for Pigeon shooting in 

 Concord in the 50's. 



Mr. Warren H. Manning writes me of a method of taking 

 Pigeons which I have not seen described. He sends a sketch of 



a Pigeon basket (see Fig. 21) 

 which was used by Lucinda 

 Manning and her sisters at the 

 Manning Manse in Billerica, 

 Mass. This basket was used 

 as a receptacle for the Pigeons 

 after they had been taken. 

 Mr. Manning states that these 

 sisters had a Pigeon "bower" 

 and snares in the valley in 

 sight of the house, in the edge 

 of what was then pine woods. 

 "The snaring of Pigeons," 

 he says, "must have represented quite an income to these 

 sisters and their family before them." The old house was 

 used as a tavern for more than one hundred years, and the 

 tavern book, kept there from 1753 to 1796, is now in exist- 

 ence. Frequent references to the sale of Pigeons are made 

 therein. 



There are not many exact records of the flights of Pigeons 

 in Massachusetts during the early part of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury. They were of such regular occurrence that no one 

 thought of recording them. Dr. Samuel Cabot told Mr. 

 Brewster that from 1832 to 1836, while he was in college at 



Fig. 21. — Pigeon basket. 



