Notes of a Vanished Industry 107 



I bought from Dr. Slyfield 600 dozen at $1 per 

 dozen, agreeing to pay only in one-hundred-dollar bills. 

 He traveled two days to get twelve dozen to make up 

 the shortage. The pigeons at that time wintered in 

 southern Missouri and the Indian Nation, and were 

 shot at night by natives and marketed in St. Louis. As 

 they fed on pine-oak acorns, which tainted the meat, 

 the market was poor and prices low. The traveling 

 netters usually worked at something else while South. 



The pigeons started north about the last of March, 

 and usually located the last of May, according to 

 weather. If food was plentiful they nested in large 

 bodies; if not, they divided and nested in fewer num- 

 bers. In Wisconsin I have seen a continual nesting for 

 100 miles, with from one to possibly fifty nests on every 

 oak scrub. 



In Michigan usually the feeding grounds were across 

 the straits, where blueberries were abundant, until fall, 

 when the birds scattered back in small bodies, feed- 

 ing on stubble and elm seed. Frequently they would 

 go into a roosting place, and make it a home for weeks 

 before leaving for the South. Traveling north, they 

 usually flew until about ten or eleven in the morning 

 and again in the evening. I have known of large quan- 

 tities being drowned in Lake Huron, crossing from 

 Canada on the way north, and have had lake captains 

 tell me of passing for three hours through dead birds, 

 which had been caught in a fog. 



