SPECIES EXTINCT OR EXTIRPATED. 453 



Mr. E. T. Martin, one of the netters, gives what he calls the 

 " oflScial figures " of the number marketed as one million, one 

 hundred and seven thousand, eight hundred and sixty-six. 

 His " figures " are largely estimates, but he states that one 

 and a half millions would cover all the birds killed at the 

 Petoskey nesting that year. This is apparently a very low 

 estimate. Mr. W. B. Mershon shows that some of Mr. 

 Martin's figures are very far below the actual shipments. 



Professor Roney watched one netter at the Petoskey nest- 

 ing place, who killed eighty-two dozen Pigeons in one day; 

 and who stated that he had killed as many as eighty-seven 

 dozen, or ten hundred and forty-four birds, in a day. The 

 law regarding shooting and netting the birds at their nesting 

 places was ignored. Professor Roney states that the sheriff 

 drove out four hundred Indians from the Petoskey nesting in 

 one day, and turned back five hundred incoming Indians the 

 next; and that people estimated that there were from two 

 thousand to twenty-five hundred people at this nesting place, 

 engaged in the business of trapping, killing and shipping 

 Pigeons. Mr. H. T. Phillips, a grocer and provision dealer at 

 Cheboygan, Mich., says that from 1864 until " the Pigeons 

 left the country " he handled live Pigeons in numbers up to 

 one hundred and seventy-five thousand a year. He asserts 

 that in 1874 there was a nesting at Shelby, Mich., from which 

 one hundred barrels of birds were shipped daily for thirty 

 days. At forty dozen birds to the barrel, this would total 

 one million, four hundred and forty thousand birds. 



During the 70's most of the Pigeons concentrated in the 

 west. They often passed the winter in Texas, Arkansas, 

 Missouri, the Indian Territory and contiguous regions, and 

 the summer in Michigan and adjacent States and in the 

 Canadian northwest. At this time some very large nets were 

 used, grain beds were made, and the birds were allowed to 

 come and feed there until from two hundred to two hundred 

 and fifty dozen were taken sometimes at one haul. Mr. 

 Mershon gives many records of large catches, and the largest 

 number caught at one spring of the net (thirty-five hundred 

 birds) is attributed to E. Osborn; but Mr. Osborn himself 



