A Sportsman 241 



indicated, not only by its ferocity shown when trapped 

 and alive, but on the scarred skins taken from the 

 bodies of the males, indicating sanguinary battles 

 which must occur among them at certain seasons of 

 the year. Nearly every male skin taken exhibited 

 numerous scars, and a few old ones were so fur-bitten 

 as to make their pelts worthless. These animals, 

 as with the beaver and otter swimming below the 

 ice, have a faculty of expelling the air from their lungs, 

 which rises beneath the ice to the under surface, of 

 sucking in the globules of air and thus renewing its 

 supply. This is frequently taken advantage of by 

 hunters with otter which have been driven into the 

 water beneath a thin ice, where their movement could 

 be observed and followed, by striking an axe hole over 

 the air bubbles, and by this wear out the object of 

 pursuit, until completely exhausted, when it would 

 be secured. 



On the Schoodic group I found one five feet higher 

 than the one below, connected by a small stream at 

 the head of which was an old log dam, pretty well 

 decayed. Here, camping for the night, we broke 

 away a portion of the dam, letting a good flow from 

 the upper lake into the lower, over the old stream 

 bed. As it looked promising in the morning when 

 the flow reached the lower lake, I made a cast, getting^^ 

 a rise, and at the second, hooked a fine salmon, fol- 

 lowed by one or two more, and apparently could 

 have secured more, if desired, showing the attraction 

 of moving water at that season for the salmon below. 



Deer were plentiful, and I could have probably 

 secured several, if any necessity had existed, but at 

 that season the does were with fawns, and we had a 



