138 SEA FOWL IN NOVA SCOTIA—GILPIN. 
pebbles, just as the Carboniferous Conglomerates of the Cobe- 
quid mountains in Nova Scotia are the obvious secondary source 
of many of the rounded boulders and pebbles of Syenite, Diorite — 
and Porphyries which are found in our post pliocene drift. 
The Jasper pebbles are supposed to come from the post-pliocene, 
so that they may have come from Gaspe. 
Gypsum was once an article of export to Canada. It is not 
now exported ; Nova Scotian Gypsum is preferred. 
Art, IIf—On THE Semi-ANNUAL MicRATION OF SEA FowL IN 
Nova Scotia.—By J. Bernarp Gitpin, A. B., M. D., 
M. RB. CoS. 
(Read March 15, 1880.) 
In this paper I wish to call the attention of the Institute to 
that part of the great semi-annual migration of sea fowl which 
passes the whole eastern coast of North America, belonging to 
the coasts of Nova Scotia; of the separate genera and species 
of which it is composed ; of the monthly periods of their pass- . 
ing; and of the modifications both in time, in frequency and in 
species, which advancing civilization has produced. From the 
earliest writers and voyagers, not only along the New England 
coasts, but also of our own Province, we notice mention of these ~ 
migrations, and are amazed by their numbers, darkening the air 
and blackening the shores along which they passed. With no 
enemy save those natural ones, which the economy of nature 
always provides, they passed north and south without fear or 
molestation. For the last three hundred years, an advancing 
population at almost every point on their passage, from Labrador 
to Florida, has thinned their numbers, altered their route, and 
perhaps, in one or two instances, changed their route entirely, or 
destroyed a species. The small part which the shores of our 
Province of Nova Scotia take in these migrations, or indeed the 
still smaller part that has come beneath my own personal obser- 
vation, aided by one or two friends, will be the subject of this 
paper. 
List of water fowl and sea fowl personally noticed in Neva 
d 
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