66 



The Canadian Field-Naturalist 



[Vol. XXXIII 



exploration. It might be of interest to note, in this 

 connection, that shells of Litorina irrorata Say, 

 which species now ranges no farther north than the 

 coast of Florida, were found in the refuse of a pre- 

 historic rockshelter near New Haven, Connecticut.-^ 

 Its place in Connecticut waters is now taken by 

 Litorina litorea. 



While we are on the subject, I might mention a 

 few other archaeological discoveries of interest to 

 the conchologist. The Mahone bay shell-heap, 

 besides shells of Mlja arenaria Linn., Pecten Magel- 

 lanicus (Gamelin), Venus mercenaria Linn., Spisula 

 solidissima (Dillwyn), Spisula pol})n\)ma (?) 

 (Stimpson), Mytilus edulis Linn., Ensis directus 

 (Conrad), Lunatia heros (Say), Purpura lapillus 

 (Linn.), and Buccinum undaium Linn., also yield- 

 ed two small shells of the oyster (Ostrea virginica 

 Gmelin.) So far as I can learn very few oysters 

 now occur in the bay. No oyster shells were 

 found in the prehistoric shell-heap near French 

 Village at the head of St. Margaret's bay.-- Only 

 a single fragment was discovered in a shell-heap on 

 Cole harbor, east of Halifax.-^ Dr. Matthew did 

 not find any oyster shells in the heap at Bocabec,-* 

 nor were they reported by Professor Baird from 

 the heaps at Oak bay, St. Croix river.-"^^ Oysters 

 seem very scarce on the Atlantic coast of Nova 

 Scotia, and according to Whiteaves only a few are 

 found at Jeddore Head, and in Country and Lips- 

 combe harbors, east of Halifax. The same author- 

 ity does not mention their occurrence anywhere on 

 the Bay of Fundy.-*^ 



Our shell-heap evidence therefore is interesting 

 as suggesting that the oyster also was scarce on the 

 whole outer or Atlantic coast of the Maritime Pro- 

 vinces in prehistoric times. Mr. Smith found many 

 oyster shells in the heaps on Merigomish harbor, 

 which accords well with the present more common 

 occurrence of the species in Northumberland straits. 



On the coast of Maine there is a scarcity of 

 oysters at the present day, but the prehistoric shell- 

 heaps are almost entirely composed of oyster shells, 

 some of the heaps, especially those on the Damaris- 

 cotta river, reaching a depth of from six to twenty- 

 five feet and covering many acres of ground. 



2iMacCurdy, G. G. : The Passing of a Connec- 

 ticut Rocltslielter, The American Journal of Science, 

 1914, Vol. XXXVIII, pp. 517-518. 



22jones, J. M., in Smithsonian Report, 1863, 

 p. 371, and G[ossip], W., On the Occurrence of the 

 Kjockkenmoedding on the Shores of Nova Scotia, 

 Proceedings and Transactions of the Nova Scotian 

 Institute of Natural Science for 1863-1866 (Halifax, 

 1867), Vol. I. 



23G[ossip], op. cit., p. 98. 



240p. cit. 



25Baird, Spencer F., Notes on Certain Aborig- 

 inal Shell Mounds of the Coast of New Brunswick 

 and of New England, Proceedings of the U.S. Nat- 

 ional Museum, 1881, Vol. IV, p. 293. 



26Catalogue of tlie ;Marine Vertebrata of 

 Eastern Canada (Geological Survey, Canada), Ot- 

 tawa, 1901, p. 115. 



THE PREHISTORIC FAUNA OF THE ST. LAWRENCE 

 AND OTTAWA VALLEYS. 



One can get a fairly good knowledge of the 

 fauna of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa valleys in 

 prehistoric times from a study of the animal bones 

 recovered from the Roebuck village ."ite. This is 

 the largest collection of animal bones from a single 

 site in any museum in Canada. The bones com- 

 prise those of mammals, birds, reptiles and fish, and 

 there also are shells of several species of land 

 snails and fresh-water shell-fish. My information 

 is as yet not complete enough to reconstruct the 

 entire fauna, so I will attempt to show how the 

 mammalian fauna alone could be reconstructed by 

 means of archaeological and other evidences. 



The first column in the table below iodicaces the 

 animals which are known to inhabit the country 

 surrounding the Roebuck village site. The second 

 column shows those whose former presence is 

 vouched for by old residents.-' In the third column 

 is indicated the species formerly and still living 

 elsewhere in the Ottawa valley within from fifty 

 to seventy-five miles of the site. The last column 

 gives the species represented by bones found at the 

 Roebuck village site. 



o 

 3 



O) 

 O 



O 3 



0-> 



X 

 X 



271 am indebted to Mr. George A. Drummond, 

 of Roebuck, Ont., and Mr. F. P. Smith, of Brock- 

 ville, for lists of mammals found in the vicinity of 

 the site. 



28it is interesting to note that neither Mr. 

 Drummond nor Mr. Smith mentions the White or 

 Southern Varying Hare. It has been known for 

 some time that the common Cotton-tail rabbit is 

 continually pushing its way farther to the north, 

 gradually displacing the hare. The hare goes with 

 the destruction of the coniferous forests and the 

 Cotton-tail comes in with the second-growth. 

 (See The Geographical Distribution of the Eastern 

 Races of the Cotton-tail, etc., by Outram Bangs, 

 in Proc. Boston Society of Natural History, 1895, 

 Vol. XXVI, p. 413). 



