SEA FOWL IN NOVA SCOTIA — GILPIN. 149 



auk, now universally admitted to be extinct, as a forewarning of 

 the fate of others. If we admit, as indeed every one must, that 

 Joseph Josselyn Gent, when writing of " N. England's varieties," 

 1872, was describing under the name of wobble, the great auk, 

 then used as food and common in New England in June, " an ill- 

 shaped bird having no long feathers on their pinions, which is 

 the reason they cannot fly, not much unlike the penguin," the 

 complete extinction of this bird shows what the presence of man 

 can do. A bird organized for existence in temperate zones is 

 pushed backwards to arctic lands, and those unable to adapt their 

 organization to its new habitat perish. It is singular that the 

 species now supposed to be becoming extinct, the Labrador pied 

 duck, differs from all its co-genera in having a membranous bill 

 and is allied (Coues) to a soft-billed species in New Zealand in 

 this respect. May we not look to this feature among the causes 

 of its inability to maintain that position which other species 

 around it seem able to do. There is a growing tendency in the 

 guillimots, the puffins and razor-bills, to become scarce about the 

 shores of the Province, and they are less easily obtained by col- 

 lectors than formerly. The family of gulls and terns, with the 

 sheldrakes, both mergansers and goosanders, including the hooded 

 breed here ; all the species of sheldrakes, and many of the gulls, 

 and none of them diminishing. Yet in early autumn the numbers 

 of gulls which arrive show that we owe their presence to migration. 

 I had scarcely noted, Tusket, Bay of Fundy, Sept., 1879, a laugh- 

 ing gull (L. atricilla) for the first time, before a letter reached me 

 from my friend Mr. Broadman, St. Stephen's, saying it appeared 

 on the St. Croix with other southern species about the same 

 time. Of very rare species that have reached us may be men- 

 tioned the tropic bird, the frigate pelican and the purple galli- 

 nule, from the south, and the pomerine jagger from the north, 

 and all after very heavy storms ; the jagger after the one pre- 

 dicted by Saxby, Oct., 1869, and the gallinule Feb., 1870, a few 

 days after the hurricane in which it was supposed the " City of 

 Boston " was lost, and which the transport " Orontes " barely 

 survived. 



I have thus in this paper made a study of that portion of 



