He advised us to dispose of them for 25 cents per dozen; this was the highest price pigeons were worth in Adrian. To please him we tried to sell them for that price, but could not, so, taking them to the express office, we shipped them. In about four days the returns came, netting us 70 cents per dozen, about the lowest price we ever got. They explained that the pigeons had been poorly handled or they would have brought more. This was thirty-five years ago, _and these were probably the first pigeons shipped from this State to New York_. We have shipped thousands since. They would probably average $2 per dozen. We have sold them as high as $3.75 per dozen and have seen them quoted as high as $6 per dozen. A pigeoner from Pennsylvania told us he shipped two barrels at one time and got $5.50 per dozen. We caught 2,400 one week, having them all on hand at one time. We got a market report from New York where they were quoted at $6.50 per dozen. We packed and shipped ours as soon as possible. When they reached market they sold for $1.50 per dozen. The army of pigeoners had struck a big nesting in the State of Wisconsin the same week we caught ours, and they shipped them to market by the wholesale. The market dropped from $6.50 to $1.25 in one week. The pigeon business was very profitable for men who were used to it, and there were probably from one to three hundred men in the trade. When the pigeons changed their location, the pigeoners would follow them, sometimes going over a thousand miles. When this army of men had good luck they would ship them by the hundreds of barrels. Probably as many as five hundred barrels have been shipped to New York and Boston in one day. Our commission man in New York wrote us that 100 barrels a day could be sold there without affecting the market but very little. I was at a pigeon nesting in the State of Pennsylvania where there were from three to five hundred men catching pigeons and squabs. It was a great sight to see the birds going back and forth after food. When nesting in such large bodies, they leave the food in the near vicinity for their young. If they can find plenty of food, they nest in large bodies; if not, they scatter over the country and nest in scattered colonies. The nesting I mentioned in Pennsylvania was within one mile of the cleared lands. We camped within two miles of the nesting. The pigeons kept up a continual roaring by their combined twittering and cooing, so that it could be heard for miles away by night as well as day. Sometimes it is almost impossible to catch the pigeons. At the nesting mentioned the most experienced hands found it impossible to take large numbers. The whole crowd of men could not catch more than one man ought to have caught under the circumstances.