•6 Gli^PIlfr— ON NOVA 6COT1A3S MAMMALS. 



cpiJQ almost extinct in those countries. These barrens and 

 intricate impassable swamps will be in future ages to Nova 

 Sootia, what the Black forest is to modern Europe. There the 

 wild bull which the Imperial Komau described, still defies in 

 his impenetrable haunt the throng of modern men, and so in 

 ages, to come our moose will hold good his feeding ground. 

 Men with their governments will crumble, but the same un- 

 utterly barren ranges will still exist ; the same countless 

 withered ramj)ikes will rear their spiked heads as now ; the 

 same dwarf and scrubby pines will clothe their bases as to-day ; 

 yet those whose camp fires are wreathing round these withered 

 spectres, will not be our worthy President, or our friend and 

 member Captain Hardy, whose graphic notes of these scenes we 

 have just published, but perchance the young Princes Eoyal of 

 Cs^^rolina, who have come north with the young Dukes of New 

 York tp strengthen their enervated limbs by stalking a moose 

 with the Prince of Quebec, heir of Alfred fourth King of 

 Canada, attended by the Earls of Blomcdon and Cobequid. 

 Thus the moose, whose bones have been found mingled with 

 th« cave bear, and other mythic phantoms of prehistoric times, 

 may be the last survivor of all. 



Taking up in their specific order, each mammal, as I said in 

 the beginning of this paper, I v,'ill proceed with the American 

 otter. 



Lutra Canadensis, (Sabine, Richardson,) the Otter. 



Of the skins examined by me at Halifax, they were all dark 

 liver brown on the back, the under parts lighter. The cheeks, 

 chin, throat and breast were greyish white. The fur was of 

 twp kinds, the outside long, brown and shining, the inside soft 

 and lighter. Sir John Richardson gives the colour equally dark 

 below as upon the back. They measured from four to five and 

 si?: feet, including the tail. They are not very numerous, per- 

 haps six hundred skins may be the annual catch. For so large 

 a mammal, the otter keeps a very close cover, being seldom 

 se.e,n during the summer. In Avinter when the lakes arc frozen 

 he , is compelled to take long journeys through tho iorest in 



