154 The Passenger Pigeon 



From Mr. Neal Brown, Warsaw, Wis., May 20, 

 1904: 



Mr. W. B. Mershon, Saginaw, Mich. 



Dear Sir: — Your favor at hand with reference to 

 the wild pigeon. It was, I think, three or four years 

 ago that, in hunting with Mr. Emerson Hough near 

 Babcock in this State in September, we killed an unmis- 

 takable wild pigeon. I saw a few pigeons in the woods 

 in Forest County, in this State, about fifteen years ago. 

 About seven years ago I saw three near Wausau and 

 shot one of them. There was a pigeon roost for many 

 years in Wood County, in this State, but it has long 

 since disappeared. 



When I was a boy in southern Wisconsin in the 6o's 

 and 70's, wild pigeons were so numerous as to almost 

 darken the air. In the early 70's there was a small roost 

 on Bark River, near Ft. Atkinson, in this State. 



The wild pigeon had practically disappeared in 

 southern Wisconsin as early as 1880, in fact, it was two 

 or three years before that that I saw the last of them. 



Charles W. Ward of Queens, L. I., New York, re- 

 ports that in October, 1883, he saw a flock of at least 

 one hundred Passenger Pigeons along the Manistee 

 River in Township 26-5 and the following year about 

 one dozen nested in a Spruce swamp near Orchard Lake 

 on his old homestead. He often saw the nest and the 

 birds. He remembers the time as being the season of 



