67 



Before leaving home I had flatt#red myself that I should have an op- 

 portunity of seeing some of the rarer Rapacious birds, or the Iceland or 

 Greenland Falcon, Duck Hawk, &c. Strange as it may seem, during 

 the whole of my visit to the North Shore, I saw only a single bird of 

 this class — a fine Golden Eagle at Bras D'Or. I mention this, not as 

 proof that those birds are unknown, for I frequently found on the 

 shores unmistakable evidence of their visits, but to show with how 

 much caution the results of any individual's experience should be 

 received as positive evidence in Natural History. 



As Audubon has generally given the average dimension only of 

 the eggs of the birds described by him, which affords but a very in- 

 correct idea of the variation in size and shape, I have made careful 

 measurement of the extremes in length, breadth, and size of the eggs 

 of all the varieties procured by me, not, however, including those 

 which were evidently abnormal. In this class, I found eggs of the 

 common Cormorant and Herring GuU ; they were not more than one 

 quarter of the average size, without exception contained noth- 

 ing but albumen, and the shell was remarkably thick and strong. One 

 egg of the Cormorant was not sjTnmetrical in its longitudinal axis, 

 and had the appearance of having been deposited in a soft state on 

 a convex surface ; in other resj)ects it presented nothing remarkable. 

 I have been led to make these remarks because Naumann, in his de- 

 scription of the eggs of Uria troille, states that eggs of very smaU size 

 are found, caused by the birds laying more than their normal number. 

 I do not think that this is the cause, as the eggs found by me were in 

 nests with other eggs that presented no deviation from the ordinary 

 shape or size. 



Somateria molUssima Linn. This bird, though constantly harassed 

 by the fishermen and inhabitants, still breeds in great abundance 

 along the whole extent of the North Shore, and, as it is not gregarious 

 during the breeding season, and ranges over such an i mm ense extent 

 of island and shore, it will probably continue to do so, even if unpro- 

 tected, for many years. I found but few of their nests, placed under the 

 shelter of the dwarf firs and junipers ; their favorite breeding-places 

 seemed to me to be the small grassy islands found in bays, and par- 

 ticularly those where small spots of turf were protected by a rock 

 from the prevailing wind. On many of the islands a species of um- 

 belliferous plant grows abundantly, the thick foliage of which forms 

 an admirable shelter that they gladly avail themselves of. It is not 

 often that many nests are found on one island ; from one to a dozen is 

 the ordinary number, though on Greenlet Island, in the Straits of 

 Belle Isle, I foimd over sixty, probably not more than a quarter of 

 the whole number, as two other persons besides myself were searching 

 for them at the same time, and it is not probable that all the nests 

 would be discovered ; indeed, I found nearly as many returning as on 



