150 SEA FOWL IN NOVA SCOTIA—GILPIN. 
these semi-migrations that touched the shores of Nova Scotia, 
endeavored to show the different families of sea and fresh water 
fowl which compose it, their various routes, and the causes that 
produce this variety. Some passing over the land, aerial, scarce- 
ly noticed save by the fowler or naturalist, others taking the 
inland water courses, and those which visit us being almost 
involuntary stragglers from this great western flow. Others 
again making the sea their pathway, and whose numbers make 
them common in our markets and observed by ali. I have only 
stated what came personally to my notice or from a few friends, 
thinking that the narrowness of the range might be made up by 
the more exactness of the matter, and that perhaps others on 
other parts of the route may, or perhaps are now doing the 
same, and thus a complete account of the entire migration 
from personal facts be obtained. Whoever studies it is now 
aware he is studying a feathery stream that no longer overflows 
its banks, but is ever growing narrower and narrower, species 
dropping out, individuals diminishing, its route altering, perhaps 
lengthening. It is beyond doubt that that amazing feathery 
stream, that darkened the air, blackened the coasts it alighted 
upon, that had streamed on for ages, indifferent to the arrows of 
the thinly scattered red man, made its breeding quarters far to 
the southward of their present home. It is certain the snow and 
the Canadian goose once visited Nova Scotia, and the extinct 
auk spent his June in Connecticut. These, perhaps, are the 
most arctic species now, and we have a right to infer that the 
less arctic ones followed their habits. The very presence of 
man, with his boats and ships, has done much towards this; but 
the alteration of their food from the ocean, caused also by his 
presence, his works, his wharves and docks, his pollutions, have 
driven away their food fish, and made them seek it in northern 
climes. 
By whatever means, however, this feathery stream has been 
diminished, altered or shortened, it leaves us some speculations 
of the past and for the future. Are those arctic forms now 
breeding at Hudson’s Bay the same as once bred in sunny Con- 
necticut ; have they changed in three hundred years, or are we 
