I30 THE STORY OF A BIRD LOVER 



most sportsmen in late September and October 

 took advantage of the well-known migrations of 

 pigeons. Many were taken with the gun. In ad- 

 dition, a number of the older farmers living along 

 the ridge used annually, in the early seventies, to 

 net pigeons in their fall flight. The method by 

 which this was accomplished is too well known 

 to be dealt with in detail. 



In the years of 1875 and 1876, in company 

 with Charlie Hubbard, I went regularly every 

 autumn to trap the birds in this way. In the 

 autumn of 1876 a single fall of the net resulted in- 

 obtaining upward of forty birds. This detail is 

 given to show how common this bird was at so 

 recent a date in New Jersey. 



At Ithaca, during my stay at Cornell, I wit- 

 nessed large flights of passenger-pigeons, and in 

 Virginia, in 1872, enormous flocks feasted on the 

 beech mast of the forest, as they passed through 

 each season. At present I think it is safe to say 

 that no wild pigeons have been observed in the 

 vicinity of Princeton for at least twelve or four- 

 teen years. They disappeared from Cambridge 

 much earlier. 



So far as we know, this disappearance has 

 affected a wide area in eastern North America ; 

 and the only point in the region where the pas- 

 senger-pigeon still exists and breeds in numbers is 

 in the state of Michigan. 



