50 GILPIN — ON THE MAMMALIA OF NOVA SCOTIA. 



in either place all but invisible, with her ever vigilant eye vratehing 

 every object, her great pendulous ears thrown toward every vibra- 

 tion, and her soft feet ready for a swift and noiseless retreat. JSTo 

 wonder she escapes our observation, or that in the stillness of 

 the northern forest we marvel where the hordes are, that last 

 night left their thousand footprints on that feathery rime that 

 covers the hard crusted snow, on each day's night of those brilliant 

 sunny March days of our tardy Spring. 



This ends our list of Rodentia, yet one introduced species must 

 be added to it. The domestic rabbit (Xe cunicularius,) which 

 introduced about seventy years ago on Sable Island, suffered to be- 

 '€ome wild, and never recrossed by new individuals, has entered its 

 iferal state. They have grown larger in size and have almost entire- 

 ly assumed a common livery of silver gray with white collar. They 

 l)urrow in the sands of the Island, feed upon its rich grasses, and 

 \wild pea vines, and apparently live without water, as colonies of 

 them live at least five miles from any fresh pond. 



We come n^xt to the Ruminantia, passing over the orders of 

 lEdentata, Solidungula and Pachydermata, of whom we have no 

 a'epresentative in the Province except of the Solidungula, in the 

 horse introduced into Sable Island some hundred years ago, and 

 euffered to assume the feral state, and on which a paper has already 

 Tbeen read before the Institute. Our ruminantia include only two 

 individuals, but they make up for their fewness by their beauty, 

 :and the majesty of their antlered proportions — the Cariboo and 

 the Moose deer. We cannot refrain from some few generalisations 

 arrived at in the study of a boreal fauna. We find animals of the 

 most opposite construction, braving a northern w^inter. It is not 

 ;as if there were animals fitted for the pole, and others fitted for the 

 equator, but as if both kinds w€re mixed together and tropical 

 foorms live beside the arctic. Thus we have the marmot, a true 

 boreal form protected from the cold by hybernation ; and the mouse 

 ;a cosmopolite but with the thin coat and naked leg also protected 

 by hybernation. We might say #iis is his natural protection, 

 unable to endure the cold he sleeps dirough it ; but we are met by 

 the fact of the shrews with still finer coats^ and limbs so fragile that 

 they seem needles, bearing the lowicst temperature, active and 



