84 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



whole field. We had no way of eradicating it but 

 to hand-pull it; in extreme cases I have known it 

 to cost $5 per acre to pull it from a single wheat 

 crop. I myself once hired out to pull this weed 

 at fifty cents a day; but I soon abandoned the job 

 for my wages scarcely sufficed to purchase liniment 

 enough to cure my backache. 



We got rid of the pigeon weed finally by chang- 

 ing the crop rotation. The birds that brought it, 

 however, served us both for food and sport. To 

 catch them a net, twelve feet broad and thirty 

 feet long, was laid in a rope-like mass near the 

 woods on the north side in the spring and on 

 the south in the fall and so arranged that it 

 could be quickly raised, spread and brought to the 

 ground by means of small ropes. Two pigeons 

 having been caught, the lids of their eyes were 

 stitched together ; to the leg of one the flier 

 a long string was attached and the other was 

 fastened to a stool which could be raised or low- 

 ered two or three feet by means of a cord from 

 the bush-house. In front of the net the ground 

 was baited with wheat. When the pigeons were 

 heard coming over the woods up went the flier, into 

 the bush-house dodged the boy. When the flier 

 got to the end of its string it would hover as 

 pigeons do when they are about to alight to eat. 



