The Zoologist— Apbil, 1869. 1C09 



Noifis on the Zoology of Xewfonndland. 

 By Henry Keeks, Esq., F.L.S., &c. 



Letter 1.— Ornithology. 



Before commencing a systematic list of the avi-fauna of Newfound- 

 land, it will perhaps be necessary to say a few words on the island itself. 

 Newfoundland, as my readers are probably aware, forms one of the 

 valuable British colonial possessions on the coast of North America. 

 Its geographical position lies between lat. 46'' 37' and 51° 40' north, 

 and long. 52"^ 41' and 59<=' 31' west: it is bounded on the north by the 

 Straits of Labrador, on the west by the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and on 

 the south and east by the Atlantic Ocean, and has a seaboard of nearly 

 two thousand miles. There is a chain of mountains, or rather in 

 many places high table-land, running almost throughout the island in 

 a N.E. and S.W. direction. The low land is made up of vast 

 savannas, intersected by extensive woods, lakes and rivers — one 

 inland lake alone being sixty-five miles long, and containing an 

 island as large as the Isle of Wight, and which seems to have been 

 the last stronghold of the Red Indians. Since the extermination of 

 this persecuted race (which probably took place not more than thirty 

 years ago) the whole of the interior of the country has been un- 

 inhabited. Several " histories" of Newfoundland have appeared from 

 time to time, and among the best of these I may mention one by 

 Chief Justice Reeves, published in 1793, another by Anspach in 

 1820, and the last by the Rev. C. Pedley in 1863 ; but, strange as it 

 may appear, none of these authors give any reliable information on the 

 natural history of this 'extensive island; which, besides being rich in 

 its fauna and flora, will, I have no doubt, prove equally so in minerals. 

 In some places I have also seen as good a surface-show of petroleum 

 oil as in the well-known oil-regions of Pennsylvania. A two years' 

 residence, under the most favourable circumstances, in a country 

 nearly as large as England, and where the forests are still primitive 

 and in many places almost interminable, is scarcely sufficient time to 

 warrant anything like a correct list of the animals or plants; but when 

 impeded by such a severe accident as I sustained from frost, and 

 which kept me a prisoner to the house for several months, no other 

 apology is necessary for the incompleteness of these " Notes," which 

 none can possibly regret more than the writer. There are few 



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