188 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



seas, and lie assures me that they are as plentiful as ever in 

 Long Island waters. It is quite beyond the limits of proba- 

 bility, however, that the Brant could have maintained their 

 numbers during the centuries of settlement without any pro- 

 tection whatever, — - and they never have had any along their 

 route of migration until quite recently. From the time that 

 they reached Hudson Bay on their journey southward until 

 they returned again to the Arctic Ocean they were pursued 

 by the whites wherever they stopped to rest, and Eskimos 

 hunted them during their breeding season in the north. 



A glance at their line of migration will explain their ap- 

 pearance in numbers at points on the Atlantic coast. The 

 breeding range of the White-bellied Brant is not well known, 

 but it is believed that it breeds mainly if not entirely in the 

 easterly portions of the northern part of the North American 

 arctic archipelago. The Brant arrive late in May or in early 

 June on the northwest coast of Greenland, and breed north- 

 ward probably as far as land extends. In these remote re- 

 gions ice begins to make late in August or early September, 

 and in September the Brant move southward, passing down 

 the Boothia peninsula and the west coast of Hudson Bay, 

 from whence they apparently cross the Canadian wilderness 

 to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Reaching the shore of the 

 gulf, they turn eastward toward Anticosti and Prince Edward 

 islands. They then proceed across the neck of the penin- 

 sula of Nova Scotia, down the Bay of Fundy, and steer direct 

 for the outer shore of Cape Cod. Sometimes they are de- 

 flected by the wind and run on to the Massachusetts coast, 

 but they usually round the cape and pass Nantucket, touch- 

 ing afterward only at outlying points on the coast until they 

 reach Virginia and North Carolina, where most of them 

 winter, although many winter at points farther north and 

 some in Massachusetts waters. The spring migration begins 

 here about the last week in February or the first of March, 

 and continues on the average six weeks or more. In April 

 large numbers have reached the Gulf of St. Lawrence, cross- 

 ing Prince Edward Island. Mr. E. T. Carbonnell writes me 

 that the Brant arrive at Prince Edward Island in spring. 



