370 APPENDIX. 



The damming up of many of these forest brooks to supply saw 

 mills, and the disgraceful plan of stopping the now worthless fish on 

 their return from spawning, by brushwood weirs stretched com- 

 pletely across the stream, is fast shortening the supply of these 

 welcome visitors to the interior waters of the backwoods, thereby 

 also depriving many of the harbours of the anxiously-sought visits of 

 the mackerel, which come in vast shoals in search of the young fry 

 of the gaspereau and the smelt. To enable this fish to ascend the 

 rough waters and falls of the streams through which it must pass to 

 get to the lake, it is provided with a horny ridge or keel, passing 

 along the belly, and armed with recurved teeth like those of a saw, 

 enabling it to hold its ground and rest on the rocky bottom in the 

 roughest water. 



VOICES OF EEPTILIA IN SPRINO. 



The subjoined passages from my note books advert to the multi- 

 tudinous sounds emitted by reptile life in the warm nights of spring 

 and early summer, which to a stranger appear one of the most 

 striking features of New World natural history : — 



May 10th. — Driving homewards this evening our ears were almost 

 deafened by the chorus of frogs in the road-side swamps. For some 

 days past we have been cheered by their welcome voices, but to-night 

 they seemed to outdo themselves. The principal and noisiest per- 

 former is a little fellow, not more than three quarters of an inch in 

 length, and so shy and acute that it is almost impossible to get a 

 glimpse of him, even by the most artful approach. This is the 

 common peeper or cricket frog (Hylodes Pickeringii). Its quickly 

 repeated, chirping note is very like that of the common house cricket, 

 and equally joyous. If we stand by to listen, they somehow or other 

 slacken gradually, as if a warning of danger was being passed 

 through the community : we remove a few paces, and a solitary peep 

 of a bold frog announces that the danger is past, and away they all 

 start again into the maddest chorus, each trying to outvie the others. 

 At the edge of the swamp sits the common toad (B. americanus), 

 and, with a distended throat, pours out that rapid and peculiar 

 trilling note which may always be heard as an accompaniment to 

 the frog chorus throughout the warm nights of spring. He is not 

 quite such an ugly reptile as the English toad, though very similar 

 in general appearance and form ; the colour is lighter and brighter, 

 sometimes approaching an orange-yellow, and the spots and markings 



