CHAPTER XVI 

 The Pigeon in Manitoba* 



By George E. Atkinson 



WHILE the biological history of any country 

 records the decrease and disappearance of 

 many forms of life due to just or unjust cir- 

 cumstances, it remains for the historical records of 

 North America to reveal a career of human selfishness 

 which may be considered the paragon. Within four 

 centuries of North American civilization (or modified 

 barbarism) we can be credited with the wiping into the 

 past of at least three species of animal life originally 

 so phenomenally abundant and so strikingly character- 

 istic in themselves as to evoke the wonder and amaze- 

 ment of the entire world. And, sad to relate, so effect- 

 ual has been the extermination, that it is doubtful if 

 our descendants a few generations hence will be able to 

 learn anything whatever about them save through the 

 medium of books. While herein again we shall be just 

 subjects of their censure for having manifestly failed 



* This paper was read at a meeting of the Manitoba Historical and 

 Scientific Society at Winnepeg in 1905, by the author, a naturalist, residing 

 at Portage la Prairie. 



186 



