I 



302 FOREST LIFE IN ACADIE. 



modified, and the shooting season as regards elk is now 

 from the 1st of August to the hist day of October, 



As, however, in Nova Scotia our best hunting season 

 is comprised in the first two winter months — the snow 

 being light, and so giving the moose every chance of 

 escape, whilst it enables the carcass, when shot, to be 

 taken easily out of the woods — it was deemed expedient 

 to terminate moose hunting with the last day of the year ; 

 and so the case now stands. 



In a country like Nova Scotia, where a gun is kept in 

 almost eveiy homestead bordering on the forest, or where 

 by the river side the barns are constantly occupied by 

 drying nets, whilst the placid pools are nightly enlivened 

 by burning birch bark, that its fish and wild unprotected 

 game of all descriptions should have rapidly declined in 

 abundance within the memory of comparatively young 

 people, is not much to be wondered at. The whole con- 

 tinent of North America, not only within its settled 

 districts but even in the remotest wilds penetrated by the 

 mercenary hunter, has undergone a great change in the 

 relation between the distribution of its animal life and the 

 other features of its physical geography within the last 

 quarter of a century. The Anglo-Saxon transplanted has 

 revelled in his inherent love of sport, which frequently 

 turns into a lust of slaughter, until the game of North 

 America has in many cases altogether disappeared before 

 the cruel tide of wanton destruction which has overtaken 

 it. T'his decrease is yearly accelerated by increasing 

 demand for the spoils of the chase or the products of the 

 waters, the inevitable result being extinction of species. 



And now our neighbours of the Northern States, who 

 have completely lost their salmon long since, and can 



