PASSENGER PIGEON 399 



Petoskey, Cheboygan, Cross Village, and other like 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, and the myriads of squabs 

 dead on the nest. 



The profit from these transactions was the lure that led to the 

 annihilation of the passenger pigeon. Barrows (1912) says: 



Dr. Isaac Voorheis, of Frankfort, Michigan, told the writer personally that in 

 1880 or 1881, when there was a large nesting in Benzie County, he took at one 

 throw the net 109 dozen and 8 pigeons (1,316 birds), and that six catches of 

 the net brought him $650. These birds were kept alive until a schooner load 

 was obtained, when they were sent directly to Chicago for trap shooting. 



A provision dealer at Cheboygan, Mich., is said to have shipped 

 live pigeons in numbers up to 175,000 a year from 1864 until the end. 

 Kumlien and Hollister (1903) say of Wisconsin: 



Mr. J. M. Blackford, now residing at Delaware, states the last large 

 catch of nesters was in 1882. The following spring but 138 dozen were taken 

 in the best pigeon ground in the State, and this was practically the end. 



Kuthven Deane (1896) wrote in 1895 to N. W. Judy & Co., of St. 

 Louis, Mo., dealers in poultry and the largest receivers of game in 

 that section, as to their dealings in passenger pigeons and they 

 replied : " We have had no wild pigeons for two seasons ; the last 

 we received were from Siloam Springs, Ark. We have lost all 

 track of them and our netters are lying idle." 



This firm, Widmann (1907) says, "handled more dead and live 

 pigeons than any other firm in the country, and had their netters 

 employed all the year around, tracing the pigeons to Michigan and 

 Wisconsin in spring and to the Indian Territory and the south in 

 winter." 



This is the last word on the commercial extinction of the passenger 

 pigeon by its greatest of all enemies, so-called civilized man. 



DISTRIBUTION 



Range. — Eastern North America, casual in Bermuda, the West 

 Indies, and in Mexico. 



Breeding range. — The breeding range of the passenger pigeon ex- 

 tended north to Montana (" latitude 49°," Great Falls, and the 

 Yellowstone River) ; North Dakota (Fort Berthold) ; Manitoba 

 (Waterhen River) ; Minnesota (Lake Itasca and Northern Pacific 

 Junction) ; Wisconsin (Stockholm, Shiocton, and West Depere) ; 

 Michigan (Petoskey, Brant, and Detroit) ; Ontario (Moose Fac- 

 tory) ; Quebec (Fort George and Quebec) ; New Brunswick (Grand 

 Falls); Prince Edward Island; and probably Newfoundland (St. 

 Johns). East to probably Newfoundland (St. Johns) ; Nova Scotia 

 (Halifax and Yarmouth) ; New Hampshire (Conway and Webster) ; 



