148 SEA FOWL IN NOVA SCOTIA — GILPIN. 



Micrnacs dwelling in, on the rough shore of the Bay of Fundy. 

 They shot from long ducking guns, with buccaneer stocks, (the 

 front of stock very convex,) flint locks, and every man meas- 

 uring his charge in his palm, from a long curved powder horn ; 

 and yet they were good shots ; and on the evening of a soft April 

 day the fog clinging around Brenton's reef, it was a pleasant 

 sight to see them slowly following homeward, with their big 

 spaniels and lusty Newfoundlands, two or three horse loads full 

 of game, each horse piled high with a feathery pyramid of black 

 and grey, gleaming with scarlet bits of leg or bill. It was rare 

 then to see four wheeled wagons ; a manlier generation used 

 horseback, sometimes the old two wheeled chaise. These men 

 knew the Labrador duck, now nearly extinct, and taught me to 

 identify the Huron scoter, for which I vainly sought in Buona- 

 parte's catalogue, N. Y. Lyceum, and which in after years was 

 first scientifically described by Herbert in American wild sports, 

 allowed by Baird, but denied by Coues. Whether this sport is 

 still carried on by breech-loaders and patent shell, I know not, 

 but must return to our own part of the stream, and the modifica- 

 tion time and civilization has wrought in it, not referring 

 again to the ancient voyagers. The opinion of those most inter- 

 ested in it steadily maintain its rapid decrease, or at all events 

 its alteration of route. Wilson speaks of birds now almost ex- 

 tinct as found in the markets. M. Audobon, speaking of the 

 sea ducks in the Bay of Fundy, says " that by the 10th August 

 they (eiders and scoters) are so naked of feathers and destitute 

 of quills as to be unable to fly, and are clubbed by the Indians, 

 sometimes to the number of two hundred and fifty in one foray 

 being unpaired birds remaining from the previous winter." With 

 a fair knowledge of the southern coasts of the Bay of Fundy, 

 and of the Indians about them, I can say these are the stones of 

 former days, and that no such hunts are made now. Even in 

 Labrador their numbers are declining. In the official reports of 

 the Dominion of Canada for 1879, it is stated that the Mingan 

 Indians, during the summer of that year, were reduced to com- 

 parative starvation from the absence of feathered game on the 

 sea coasts. We may take the fate of a kindred species, the great 



