28 PROCEEDINGS: BOSTON SOCIETY NATURAL HISTORY. 



English rabbits were introduced, and they multiplied so that they 

 formed an abundant source of food. Then rats escaping from wrecked 

 vessels reached the island and became so numerous as to be a plague, 

 eating up so much of the stores that Superintendent Morris and his 

 men were seriously threatened with starvation. Then the rats by 

 killing the young, nearly annihilated the stock of rabbits. The gov- 

 ernment sent out a number of cats, which killed the rats, and then 

 finished the rabbits. The cats soon became very wild and so num- 

 erous as to be troublesome. Dogs were then imported, and they, 

 helped by men with shot-guns, finished the cats. Rabbits were again 

 introduced and throve, until they were discovered by a snowy owl. 

 The owls soon came in numbers to this happy hunting-ground, and 

 they finished the rabbits. In 1882, rabbits were again introduced, 

 and the story is almost parallel with the foregoing. They multiplied 

 and became such a nuisance that in 1889, seven cats were brought 

 from Halifax, and in 1890, thirty more. While the cats were winter- 

 ing and fattening on the rabbits, seven red foxes were brought from 

 the mainland and in a single season they made an end of all the rab- 

 bits and cats. These records show in a very graphic way what hap- 

 pens when an additional species of animal is introduced on a small 

 island, what a severe struggle for existence takes place between it and 

 the species already there. 



SABLE ISLAND PONIES. 



From nearly every recent voyager to Sable Island, we get accounts 

 of more or less fullness about the wild ponies, but we must turn to 

 J. Bernard Gilpin 1 for the best record. He assumes that the pres- 

 ent gangs of Sable Island ponies are the descendants of a few horses 

 of ordinary New England stock landed there by the Rev. Andrew Le 

 Mercier about one hundred and fifty years before [1714]. This ap- 

 proximate date is earlier than Le Mercier's actual connection with 

 the island, for 2 "on the 6th of March, 1738, he wrote to Governor 

 Armstrong [of Nova Scotia], inclosing a petition for a grant of it, on 

 behalf of himself and his associates. His design was stated as being 

 to stcck it with such domestic animals as might be useful in preserv- 

 ing the lives of mariners who might escape from shipwrecks; though, 



1 Gilpin, J. Bernard : On Introduced Species of Nova Scotia. Trans N. 

 S. Inst. Nat. Sci. i. part 2. 60 (1864). 



2 Patterson, George: Sable Island: Its History and Phenomena. Trans. 

 Roy. Soc. Can. xii. 2. 11 (1894). 



