A Week in Gaspe. 327 



ferent species. The skull, the only part that I have examined, 

 corresponds with that of Gray's Delphinus ( Globirephalus ?) 

 intermedins. The singular and beautiful white porpoise of 

 the St. Lawrence, Beluga Catodon, and the common porpoise, 

 Phocaena Communis, though well known, do not appear to be 

 among the species to which the Gaspe whalers trust for their pro- 

 fits. It would well deserve the time and attention of any young 

 naturalist to spend a few months with the whalers, and draw and 

 describe with accuracy these various species, most of which are 

 as yet very imperfectly known. The " Canadian Naturalist" 

 would welcome a contribution on the subject. We could only 

 glean a little information from persons who had been engaged in 

 the fishing, and collect a few specimens of the large bones that 

 the whalers have left on the beach. 



On the long sand point that, stretching far into the bay, shelters 

 the harbour, and along which we walked in search of whales' bones 

 and shells, I observed an appearance new to me, and of some 

 geological interest. Shoals of the American Sand Launce, (Am- 

 modytes Americanus) a little fish three or four inches in lengthy 

 had entered the Bay, and either seeking a place for spawning 

 or sheltering themselves from their numerous enemies, had run 

 into the shallow water near the point, and according to their usual 

 habit, had in part buried themselves in the sand which they 

 throw up by means of their long pectoral fins. In this situation 

 countless multitudes had died or been thrown on shore by the 

 surf, and the crows were fattening on them, and the fishermen 

 collecting them in barrels for bait. Acres of them still remained 

 whitening the bottom of the shallow water with their bodies. It 

 was impossible not to be reminded by such a spectacle of the beds 

 full of capelin in the post-pliocene clay of the Ottawa, and the 

 similar beds filled with fossil fishes, in other deposits as far back 

 as the old red sandstone. Geologists have often sought to account 

 for such phenomena, by supposing sudden changes of level or 

 irruptions of poisonous matter into the waters ; but such catas- 

 trophes are evidently by no means necessary to produce the effect. 

 Here in the quiet waters of the Gaspe Bay, year by year immense 

 quantities of the remains of the Sand Launce may be embedded 

 in the sand and mud without even a storm to destroy them. Si- 

 milar accidents, I was told, happen to the schools of capelin, so 

 that there is nothing to prevent the accumulation here of beds, 

 equally rich in the remains of fishes with those other deposits of 

 ichthyolites that have excited so much interest and wonder. 



