IN TIMBER AND BRULEE. 233 



The French- Canadian family, which lives in or upon 

 the skirts of the woodland, invariably possesses one or 

 more guns, generally muzzle-loaders of the kind that 

 cost from l to 28s. in our money, and without which 

 no member of the household above the height of four 

 feet or so ever seems to move far from the door. The 

 result is that the ruffed and Canada grouse which 

 haunt the edges of the bush roads, and which these folk 

 always shoot sitting, are being sadly thinned. Nearer 

 to the cities the Sunday sportsman considers all that 

 flies or is in any way eatable as fair quarry, the bird 

 locally known as a " robin " being regarded in the light 

 of a prize. 



Recently some speculative individual has introduced 

 five thousand Swiss rifles into the province of Quebec 

 alone. These weapons, which carry a very killing cart- 

 ridge, are retailed at about $3.50 apiece, and at this 

 not exorbitant price the original stock of five thousand 

 has been nearly sold out ; so that, although it is to be 

 doubted whether the majority of the purchasers will 

 ever push far afield, it yet is certain that any person 

 walking in the "bush" near a village will be well 

 advised for the future to proclaim his presence by 

 whistling, or song, or in some other definitely human 

 manner. Should he fail to do so, the consequences may 

 easily be disastrous, as the temptation to try his rifle 

 on any creature that moves in the woods may prove 

 irresistible to the local pot-hunter, especially as a moose 

 very occasionally, and whitetail almost habitually, wander 

 about the isolated dwellings of man. 



A first trip in any country is invariably fertile in the 

 gaining of experience, and even more so in the paying 

 for it a truth which we realised some days later when, 



