THE PASSING OF THE AMERICAN PASSENGER PIGEON. 
493 
would be tossed in tlie air, and the sight of it 
fluttering to the ground would cause the passing 
birds to alight in the trees near by. Then on a 
padded disc another blinded or stool-pigeon was 
placed. A cord running to this disc, which was on 
an arm or lever, being pulled, would raise the bird 
a few feet in the air, and then letting it go would 
cause the bird to drop, and as soon as the stool- 
bird felt it was being dropped it would flutter its 
wings as if it were naturally alighting. A profes- 
sional netter had all these things calculated to such 
a fine point that it was almost a sure thing that 
he could cause a flock of pigeons to alight on a bed 
if they were in the neighbourhood. When the first 
flock had alighted more would come, and the netter, 
watching his opportunity from the bough-house, 
when the bed was sufficiently filled with wild birds, 
would give the rope to which the net was fastened a 
good hard pull, and the saplings would spring back, 
the net being released and thrown with an upward 
and over movement so as to cover the entire bed ; 
then the heads would stick through the net, and the 
netter would kill the birds either by biting them 
or by using a pair of heavy pincers and crushing the 
skulls. The birds were then taken out, put in the 
bough-house, things smoothed up again for another 
catch, and so it Avould continue all the morning. 
I am writing this from memory, for it is over 
thirty years since I saw a ihgeon-net ; but, as I 
remember it, that was the process. 
I frequently hear reports of wild jiigeons having 
been seen of late ; but I do not believe there are any 
]>assenger pigeons left at this date, 1905. When I 
have been fishing in northern Michigan I have 
heard these reports, and have been told by guides 
who ought to know what they are talking about 
that they had recently seen a flock of pigeons ; but 
I believe the}^ were mistaken, and that it was only 
the common dove. 
I do not believe we hav'e to look beyond the netter 
or the market trapper for the cause of the extinction 
of the passenger pigeon. Like the buffalo, it dis- 
appeared almost in a day. The old birds were netted 
continually, and had no chance to rear their young. 
The cutting off of the forests and natural feeding- 
grounds, and disseminating of the large flights, made 
it impossible for the scattered bands to adopt a new 
habit of living and adapt themselves to the changed 
conditions, and thus the birds that were left after 
the general extinction of the mighty host failed to 
reproduce their species and soon became extinct. 
The wild pigeon has existed in America farther 
back than the history of white pine ; the first 
settlei’s found them, and the early English travellers 
told great tales of them on their return home. 
Father Gravier, going down the Mississippi River 
in 1700, tells of the tremendous flights of pigeons 
until October 16, below the mouth of the Wabash 
River, and says : ‘ We saw so great a quantity of wild 
pigeons that the air was darkened and quite covered 
by them.’ 
Alex. Henry the younger speaks of them south 
of Winnipeg in 1800, finding them in great quantities 
and using them for food for his party of trappers. 
Audubon gives the following most grapliic descrip- 
tion of their enormous numbers : ‘ In tlie autumn of 
1813 I left my house at Henderson, on the banks 
of the Ohio, on my way to Louisville. In passing 
over the barrens a few miles beyond Hardinsburgh, 
I observed the pigeons flying from north-east to 
south-west in greater numbers than I thought I 
had ever seen them before. I travelled on, and 
still met more the farther I proceeded. The air 
was literally filled with pigeons. The light of the 
noonday vaas obscured as if by an eclipse. The 
dung fell in spots like melting flakes of snow, and 
the continued buzz of the wings had a tendency to 
lull my senses to repose. 
‘ Before sunset I reached Louisville, distant from 
Hardinsburgh fifty-five miles. The jiigeons were 
still passing in undiminished numbers, and con- 
tinued to do so for three days in succession. The 
people were all in arms. The banks of the Ohio 
were crowded with men and boys incessantly shoot- 
ing at the pilgrims, which flew lower as they passed 
the rivei’. Multitudes were thus destroyed. For 
a week or more, the populace fed on no other flesh 
than that of pigeons. The atmosiffiere was during 
this time strongly imj^regnated with the peculiar 
odour that emanates from the sj^ecies.’ 
In estimating the number of these mighty flocks, 
and the food consumed by them daily, he adds : 
‘ Let ITS take a column of one mile in breadth, which 
is far below the average size, and suppose it passing 
over us at the rate of one mile per minute and 
continuing for three hours. This will give us a 
parallelogram of one hundred and eighty miles by 
one, covering one hundred and eight}^ square miles ; 
and allowing two pigeons to the square yard, we 
have one thousand one hundred and fifteen millions 
one hundred and thirty-six pigeons in one flock ; 
and as every pigeon consumes daily fully half a 
pint, the quantity reqirired to feed such a flock 
must be eight million seven hundred and twelve 
thousand bushels per day.’ 
I could make quotations from many writers to 
show the enormous quantity of these birds. 
Their last general nesting, used for commercial 
purposes, was in 1879 in the northern part of the 
lower peninsula of Michigan. There were probably 
over two million birds shij)ped from this one nest- 
ing that season by professional netters. 
H. T. Phillips, now living at Detroit, Michigan, 
has given me access to his records, and they show 
that during that year he alone shipped one hundred 
and seventy- five thousand wild pigeons alive. They 
were shipped in crates and used largely at that time 
for trap-shooting purposes. As late as 1881, at a 
sliooting tournament held at Coney Island, New 
York, twenty thousand wild pigeons were used for 
so-called sport. 
But after 1879 the nestings were so small that 
the business did not pay commercially, and no large 
numbers of birds were seen after 1888. From that 
