1885.] McKinlay, Field Notes from Pictou County, N. S. £Q 



tauk Point, says, "Do not see them every winter. They appear to be a 

 very dumb bird. I picked this one up on the beach alive, and was going 

 to send it to you that way, but it died before I could do so. The Captain 

 of our Station says 'to the best of his knowledge he has never seen one 

 before.' He has been in the Life-Saving Service twelve years." At South 

 Ovster Bay and Rockaway, which are but a few miles from the western 

 end of the Island, the gunners and Life-Saving men had never seen them 

 before, and at the former place the single one shot was considered so rare 

 that it was preserved and mounted. 



FIELD NOTES FROM PICTOU COUNTY, NOVA 

 SCOTIA. 



BY JAMES MCKINLAY. 



Shortly after the commencement of the present century the 

 Pictou Academy was founded, and its first superintendent was Dr. 

 Thomas McCulloch, a gentleman of high literary attainments, 

 who numbered among his friends the illustrious Audubon. With 

 a view to promote the various branches of scientific research he 

 early directed his attention to the establishment of a museum in 

 connection with the Academy, intending among other objects to 

 gather there a complete representation of the zoology of the 

 Province of Nova Scotia, especially that of the eastern portion, at 

 that time called the District of Pictou. So energetically was the 

 scheme prosecuted that little more than a quarter of a century 

 had elapsed ere the enterprise had attained a high degree of ex- 

 cellence, and the collection was pronounced by Audubon, who 

 visited it, to be surpassed by none other, at that time, in Ameri- 

 ca. Unhappily, however, that valuable collection was suffered 

 to pass entirely out of our Province, which is the more to be 

 regretted as many of the species represented have since become 

 extinct or extremely rare to our fauna. 



This applies to the mammals as well as to the birds, but the 

 change is most marked numerically in certain aquatic species of 

 the feathered race, for instead of the vast multitudes which in 

 former days were wont to visit our bays and harbors in early 

 spring and in autumn, now we meet but a few small and scat- 



