THE PASSENGER PIGEON IN PENNSYLVANIA 181 



kept. One old man in Brush Valley, Centre County, 

 Abe Royer, by name, did have some until about 1892. 

 A man in the backwoods of McKean County is said 

 to have had some much later than that. In most 

 sections of the Keystone State the fights were not seen 

 after 1881. Seth Nelson Jr., a noted netter of Round 

 Island, Clinton County, says he witnessed the last 

 flight in the fall of 187'6. William Wagner, of Antes 

 Fort, Lycoming County, saw the last flight in the fall 

 of 1881. He still has his net, in fairly good condition. 

 The nets were made by hand, usually by traveling net 

 makers, or by the trappers themselves during the 

 winter months. Many of the nets are in existence, 

 also the stools, the baskets in which the stool pigeons 

 were carried to the scene of operation, etc. Charles 

 K. Eldon has several such complete sets which he 

 has secured at various times from old netters in 

 Lycoming County. He presented one outfit to the 

 writer of this article. When unwinding this net, in 

 company with Mr. Chatham, so that it could be dis- 

 played to advantage, a solitary feather was found, 

 clinging to the yellowed cords. All that was left 

 of the probable thousands of birds that the net had 

 contained, only a single feather, yet more tangible 

 than all the words that have been spoken or written 

 concerning these wonderful vanished wonderers. 

 Pigeon Migrateur, as the French call them, they have 

 strayed across the seas, into the lands of romance, per- 

 haps even to that "bourne from which no traveler ever 

 returns", but we have a feather to prove to those 



