﻿228 SAND MARTENS. August, 



balsam poplars rise to the height of twenty feet, 

 and the white spruces to forty or fifty. Numbers 

 of sand martens burrow in the banks. These 

 birds winter in Florida. Mr. Audubon informs 

 us, that in Louisiana they begin to breed in March, 

 and rear two or three broods in a season. In the 

 middle states their breeding-time commences a 

 month later ; and in Newfoundland and Labrador 

 it rarely takes place before the beginning of June. 

 Near the mouth of the Mackenzie, the banks are 

 scarcely thawed enough to admit of excavation by 

 the feeble instruments of this bird before the end 

 of June ; and in the beginning of September, the 

 frosts prostrating the insects on which the martens 

 feed, they and their young broods must wing their 

 way southwards. I was unable to procure a speci- 

 men of this marten, though it breeds in multitudes 

 along the whole course of the Mackenzie, and am 

 therefore unable to decide whether it is the Hi- 

 rundo riparia or Hirundo serripennis of Audubon ; 

 but from its nearly even tail, I rather incline to 

 think it may be the latter; and if so, it may not 

 be the same species which breeds in the southern 

 states. The sand marten was first seen by us on 

 the 28th of May, as we were descending the River 

 Winipeg, near the 50th parallel, and we know, 

 from our observations in 1826, that it reaches the 

 delta of the Mackenzie by the beginning of July ; 

 affording thus an index to the progress of spring 



