280 FOREST LIFE IN ACADIE. 



foxes, marten, otter, beaver, or musk-rat. That of the 

 Arctic hare (Lepus Arcticus) is a handsome, though not 

 a very valuable skin ; the ears are tipped with black, the 

 rest of its winter dress being pure white. This animal 

 will attain a weight of fourteen pounds in Newfound- 

 land : it appears to present no appreciable ditference to 

 L. variabilis of Europe. It is said that there are two 

 species of ptarmigan on the island. If so, the other and 

 less common description is probably the somewhat 

 smaller and more slenderly-billed bird — Lagopus rupestris, 

 or rock ptarmigan. In its summer plumage, the former 

 species is one of the handsomest game birds the world 

 can produce. At this season, the wings only are white, 

 all the rest being a rich mottled chesnut ; an arch of 

 scarlet fringe over the eye. Grouse shooting (these birds 

 are called grouse on the island, or sometimes by the 

 fishermen and settlers — " pattermegans") begins in the 

 neighbourhood of St. John's, where they are protected, 

 and the law receives the assistance of a game society, on 

 the 25th August. The game laws are strictly observed in 

 the vicinity of the capital ; snipe are included in the Act. 

 Although the cariboo is generally dispersed through 

 the interior, it will have been seen that the great bulk 

 of these animals shift from the low-lying lake and 

 savanna country to the hills, and vice versa, in the spring 

 and fall. To reach the interior from their great strong- 

 hold in the high lands which form the extension of the 

 island towards the Straits of Belle-Isle, they must cross 

 the two chains of lakes and rivers which, overlapping 

 each other near the centre of the island, discharge their 

 waters respectively into the Bay of Islands and Notre 

 Dame. 



