Notes of a Vanished Industry 1 1 5 



timber. There are worlds of feed in the foothills, for 

 thousands of miles, to feed the birds. They are a 

 greedy bird and will eat everything from a hemlock 

 seed to an acorn. I have known them to nest on hem- 

 lock mast alone in Pennsylvania, and in Michigan on 

 the pine mast after the beech mast was gone. Most 

 of the nesting in Michigan happens March to July, 

 and then they skip farther north and return in wheat 

 seeding. 



Alma, Mich., February 24, i8g8. 

 Friend H. T. Phillips : 



I will give you a few catches. In 1862, at Monroe, 

 Wis., George Paxon, of Evans Center, N. Y., and 

 myself made one haul of 250 dozen five miles south of 

 the city on corn bait in a pen 32x64 feet with nets 

 sprung across the top. We fed at this bed over five 

 hundred bushels of corn at 25 cents per bushel, and at 

 our other beds nearly as much. After the flight-birds 

 were over, with a single net sprung on the ground we 

 have taken 100 dozen at a time. 



At Augusta, Wis., in 1871, Charles Curtin, then of 

 Indiana (dead now), over one hundred dozen; Will- 

 iam W. Cone of Masonville, N. Y., Samuel Schook of 

 Circleville, Ohio, and some other boys, 100 dozen and 

 over. L. G. Parker of Camden, N. Y., C. S. Martin, 

 the Rocky Mountain hunter of Wisconsin, E. G. Slay- 

 ton of Chetek, Wis., are old trappers and could tell of 



