208 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



Canne, or cane. — Name of a bird mentioned by Cartier in 1534 and 1535 In 

 the form caiinrs. The word is French for a female Duck, but Cartier's 

 use in at least two passages makes it plainly Ducks in general. In 

 another passage he gives cannes, cananiz, which, taken very literally, 

 M-ould niean Ducks and Drakes. So unimportant a distinction 

 betv.'een the two words has led Baxter (187) to give another meaning 

 to cannes in this passage, and he translates it Widgeons, at the same 

 time citing Stephens as translating it Plovers. It seems to me that 

 both translations are erroneous in view of the fact that elsev>'here 

 Cartier so clearly applies cannes to ducks in general, as indeed Baxter's 

 ■own translation shows. But if one had to find another meaning for 

 cannes in this passage he might well make it equal to Canne pctlere, 

 French name for the petite outarde. Since outarde is the Canada 

 Goose, petite Outarde might very well apply to the Brant, which 

 Cartier could have seen on the Saint Lawrence in September. 



Carcajou. — See Quincajou. 



Caribou. — First used by Lescarbot, with this spelling, and by many writers 

 thereafter. It is the Micmac name of the animal, (with the usual 

 substitution of the French r for the Indian 1), given by Rand as KalC- 

 hoo, meaning " the shoveller," in allusion to its habit of shovelling 

 away the snow with its broad feet to obtain the lichens on which it 

 feeds (Micmac Dictionarj^ 234). 



The name was first used in English by Josselj'n, in 1676, who 

 writes, " The Maccarib, Caribo, or Pohano .... the creature is 

 nowhere to be found but upon Cape Sable in the French Quarters. 

 Maccarib is evidently the Maliseet-Penobscot name of the animal, 

 MxKjaUp, sometimes written Megaleep. It therefore seems plain that 

 this word Caribou was early adopted from the Micmacs by the French 

 and from the French by New Englanders visiting Acadia. Richard- 

 son's derivation of the word from Quarré-Boeuf, meaning Square Ox, 

 is simpl^^ folk-etymology without any fact basis. Baird, in his Relation, 

 of 1611-1616, speaks of the Caribou as being an animal half ass 

 and half deer. Champlain, in 1632, compared it in size with Wild 

 Asses, while Sagard, 1636, and others later call it Caribou or Wild 

 Ass (Asne sauvage). By the English of Newfoundland it has ahvaj'S 

 been called Deer. The name is often mispelled Cariboo. The history 

 of the word is traced by A. F. Chamberlain in the American Anthro- 

 pologist, III, 1901, 587. 



Caplin, or Capelin. — Name used by the English for a small fish, called by 

 the French Lanson. Hakluyt in a marginal note to Parkhurst's nar- 

 rative of 1578, where there is described and called " a fish like a 

 smelt," says it is called by the Portuguese Cupel inas, thus implying a 

 Portuguese origin. 



Carpe. — Mentioned by Cartier in 1535 as Carpes, and by Champlain in his 

 list of 1632 as " Carpes de toutes sortes, dont y on a de trcs-(jrandes — " 

 The true Carp, early imported from China into Europe and well known 

 to our early voyagers does not occur in Canada, but the name is applied 



