'^4 ti^^lLPll? — O^ NOTA SCOTIAX MAMMALS. 



Circle, may have sported and wallowed over Blomidon or the 

 Cobequid. Following them, came those fur clad fish, the seals ; 

 then, no doubt, the polar bear now long extinct, may have 

 denned on the Ardoise or trapped seals in Bedford Basin. This 

 accords with geological facts, the shelled mollusks are the floors 

 of ancient oceans. Fish appear long before air breathers in 

 carboniferous strata. The slowly emerging Province may now 

 Bave dried itself into bog and morass, insect life is hummi:ig 

 about the marshy pools. Our one species of bat so like the ptero- 

 dactyle harmonizes Avell with the moose, whose stilted leg and 

 cavernous head closely resemble the extinct fauna of ancient 

 time. The caribou or reindeer on whose horn pre historic man 

 has left his early rude carving, soon joined him ; then one would 

 suppose the hybernating class, all those who slept out the long 

 Arctic winter's night, the bear, the l)eaver, the musk-rat, the 

 marmot, the mice and squirrels, all vegetable eaters but the 

 bear, (and he no doubt then,) would follow ; the hare would very 

 early put in her appearance together with the porcupine. A 

 more genial clime and a warmer sun now lights our landscape. 

 The Arctic currents turned aside by the rising continent, have 

 swept away the ice bergs. The moose and cariboo browse over 

 the barrens, the beaver and musk-rat form their rushy domes, the 

 various mice collect with the squirrel their little stores of cones 

 and seeds, the hare and porcupine gather their frugal meal of 

 grass or pine. The most of them sleeping out the long Avintry 

 night, none preying on the other. And now come the carnivora. 

 The feast has been for ages preparing, the voracious guests steal 

 slyly in to devour it. The shrews, those hardy imps whose 

 tiny limbs are ones wonder, making their needle tracks on snow 

 whose temperature is 18 below zero, may have been of the first 

 arrivals. The fierce and bloody weasels now attack the mice 

 and the hares, on the land, the fish on the water ; the corpulent 

 bear now changes his vegetable diet ; the northern lynx creeps 

 ^loiig, followed ages afterwards by her congener the wild cat ; 

 the crafty foxes and stealthy wolves follow, and the guest roll is 

 complete. These now, b}'' natural laws, keep at a poise produc- 

 tioil, and supply. Presently man makes his appearance, and 

 both guests and viands begin to disajjpear. By stoue arrow 



