196 The Passenger Pigeon 



Grounds district, where the blueberry and the cranberry 

 are very abundant." 



Mr. E. H. G. G. Hay, formerly police magistrate of 

 Portage la Prairie, now of St. Andrews, reports : 



"I came to the country in June, 1861, and found that 

 the pigeons were abundant previous to my arrival. To 

 give you an idea of their numbers, a Mr. Thompson of 

 St. Andrews some mornings caught with a net about 

 ten feet square as many as eighty dozen, and in the 

 spring of 1864 I fired into a flock as they rose from 

 the ground and picked up seventeen birds. 



"The birds were mostly migratory in what is now 

 known as Manitoba, and most of them went farther 

 north after the seeding season. I never heard of any 

 extensive rookeries such as those observed in the east 

 and south. The few that bred here frequented mixed 

 poplar and spruce. They seemed most numerous in the 

 sixties and began to show signs of decreasing about 

 1869 or 1870, and by 1875 they had all disappeared 

 and I have only seen an occasional bird since." 



Mr. William Clark of the Hudson's Bay Company, 

 Winnipeg, informs me: 



'The first place I remember having seen pigeons in 

 Manitoba was at White Horse Plains (St. Francois 

 Xavier) in 1865, where they were very numerous, 

 breeding in the oak trees in that district. Two years 

 after this I went to Oak Point on Lake Manitoba, but 

 do not remember the birds there then nor since." 



