WILD GEESE AND BRANT. 1 95 



Brant shooting. The tides, wind, weather, all have their influ- 

 ence, and the birds are often very freakish and do not decoy well. 



The course they lay in departing is further on, somewhat de- 

 flected, so as to bring them into the Bay of Fundy, up which they 

 pass, lifting over the narrow neck of land to Northumberland 

 Straits, where again they find shoal water and good feeding 

 ground. Here, and along the shore of Prince Edward's Island, 

 they " feed and batten," till the end of May or fore part of June, 

 when they push along still further North. Between Cape Cod 

 and Prince Edward's Island, they rarely stop except when com- 

 pelled to do so by hard winds or a storm, nor have they at any 

 time ventured far inland or out to sea. Here, however, with an 

 accumulation of strength and adipose matter, they are prepared 

 for the long, tedious, and possibly somewhat dangerous journey 

 that is before them. Leaving the Gulf of St. Lawrence, they pro- 

 ceed along to westward of the Island of Anticosti, and at 65° or 

 66° west longitude, strike out boldly over the land in a north- 

 westerly direction to the Arctic Ocean. Navigators on Hudson's 

 Bay have not spoken of seeing them in such numbers as to war- 

 rant the belief that they make any considerable stop there. Their 

 line of flight from the St. Lawrence to the Arctic is not definitelj 

 known, and yet it is certain they pass north between Boothia and 

 Victoria Land, and between Melville Island and North Devon. 



That they arrive in the vicinity of Melville Island in vast num- 

 bers, and that they pass along Wellington Channel and other Arc- 

 tic waters to still more northern feeding and breeding grounds, is 

 well authenticated. Brant then, take a widely different route from, 

 and go much further north than the great mass of other migratory 

 birds. What we know, all we know, in fact, of the birds away up 

 in this inhospitable region is gathered from the fragmentary narra- 

 tion of Arctic explorers, and from the birds themselves. That they 

 do go north of seventy degrees, or even eighty-two degrees north 

 latitude, and go in large flocks, is well ascertained. Not, of course, 

 that all the Brant go north of eighty-two degrees, but that nearly 

 all that intend to reproduce their young do. Some from weakness 

 or weariness, caused by the long journey, or possibly from the pres- 

 sure of the &^<g for extrusion, or other causes, may drop out of the 

 flock and hence be seen in summer south of seventy degrees north 



