144 The Passenger Pigeon 



correspondence with the observer, W. F. Rightmire, to 

 whom I am indebted for the following details given in 

 his letter of Nov. 5, 1897: "I was driving along the 

 highway north of Cook, Johnson County, Neb., on 

 August 17, 1897. I came to the timber skirting the 

 head stream of the Nemaha River, a tract of some 

 forty acres of woodland lying along the course of the 

 stream, upon both banks of the same, and there feed- 

 ing on the ground or perched upon the trees were the 

 Passenger Pigeons I wrote the note about. The flock 

 contained seventy-five to one hundred birds. I did not 

 frighten them, but as I drove along the road the feeding 

 birds flew up and joined the others, and as soon as I 

 had passed by they returned to the ground and con- 

 tinued feeding. While I revisited the same locality, I 

 failed to find the pigeons. I am a native of Tompkins 

 County, N. Y., and have often killed wild pigeons in 

 their flights while a boy on the farm, helped to net 

 them, and have hunted them in Pennsylvania, so that I 

 readily knew the birds in question the moment I saw 

 them." I will here take occasion to state that in my 

 record of the Missouri flock {Auk, July, 1897, p. 316) 

 the date on which they were seen (Dec. 17, 1896) was,, 

 through error, omitted. 



RUTHVEN DeANE, 



Chicago, 111. 



