CHAPTER X
Notes of a Vanished Industry
I have corresponded with many men who were actively interested in hunting and observing the Passenger Pigeon when its flocks still numbered uncounted millions of birds. Some of the data supplied in kind response to my queries is in the form of hastily jotted notes, which, when they are brought together, include more or less repetition of personal experiences. They have a certain value, however, when taken en masse, for they are the testimony of eye-witnesses who will soon be gone, after which the Passenger Pigeon will become as much a matter of written history and tradition as the auk or the buffalo.
I am under obligation to Mr. Henry T. Phillips, of Detroit, for much practical information regarding the capture of pigeons, and the business of marketing them as he knew it in those earlier days. There follows a portion of a letter written me by Mr. Phillips in October, 1904. — W. B. M.
I am in receipt of your letter asking for information about the wild pigeon, but I do not know that I can be of much benefit to you, though I will give you what information I can.
I began business in Cheboygan, Mich., in May, 1862, as a dealer in groceries and produce and added the commission business a little later, as I was fond of shooting, and I began advertising the sale of game. I have been credited by dealers in New York with being the largest shipper of venison in the United States. In 1864 (I think it was) I had a shipment of live wild pigeons which we brought down the Cheboygan River
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