18 



FOREST LIFE IN ACADIE. 



seen at long intervals of time in different parts of the 

 province, and almost simultaneously, it rapidly scours 

 over the country, and retires to the continent. 



There are no deer now indigenous to Prince Edward's 

 Island, though the cariboo was formerly found there in 

 abundance. The Morse or Walrus, once numerous on 

 the coasts, seems to have entirely disappeared even 

 from the most northern parts of the Gulf : it was once 

 common in the St. Lawrence as far up as the Saguenay. 

 Another disappearance from the coast of Nova Scotia 

 is that of the Snow Goose (Anser hyperboreus), now 

 seldom seen south of the St. Lawrence. 



Of the former presence of the Great Auk (Alca im- 

 pennis) in the neighbourhood of the Gulf, it is to be 

 regretted tliat there are no living witnesses, or even 

 existing traditions. That it was once a resident on the 

 shores of Newfoundland is shown by the specimens 

 found in guano on the Funk Islands entombed under 

 ice. As has probably happened in the case of this bird, 

 it is to be feared that the retirement of other members of 

 the true Boreal Fauna within more Arctic limits forebodes 

 a gradual, though often inexplicable, progress towards 

 extinction. 



The newly-arrived emigrant or observant visitor can- 

 not fail to be impressed with the similarity of forms in 

 both the animal and the vegetable kingdoms to those 

 of western Europe, here presented. To the Englishman 

 unaccustomed to northern fir forests and their accom- 

 panying flora, the woods are naturally the strangest 

 feature in the country — the density of the stems in the 

 jagged forest lines which bound the settlements, the long 

 parallel-sided openings, cut out by the axe, which mark 



