150 SEA FOWL IN NOVA SCOTIA — GILPIN. 



these semi-migrations that touched the shores of Nova Scotia, 

 endeavored to show the different families of sea and fresh water 

 fowl which compose it, their various routes, and the causes that 

 produce this variety. Some passing over the land, aerial, scarce- 

 ly noticed save by the fowler or naturalist, others taking the 

 inland water courses, and those which visit us being almost 

 involuntary stragglers from this great western flow. Others 

 again making the sea their pathway, and whose numbers make 

 them common in our market and observed by all. I have only 

 stated what came personally to my notice or from a few friends, 

 thinking that the narrowness of the range might be made up by 

 the more exactness of the matter, and that perhaps others on 

 other parts of the route may, or perhaps are now doing the 

 same, and thus a complete account of the entire migration 

 from personal facts be obtained. Whoever studies it is now 

 aware he is studying a feathery stream that no longer overflows 

 its banks, but is ever growing narrower and narrower, species 

 dropping out, individuals diminishing, its route altering, perhaps 

 lengthening. It is beyond doubt that that amazing feathery 

 stream that darkened the air, blackened the coasts it alighted 

 upon, that had streamed on for ages, indifferent to the arrows of 

 the thinly scattered red man, made its breeding quarters far to 

 the southward of their present home. It is certain the snow and 

 the Canadian goose once visited Nova Scotia, and the extinct 

 auk spent his June in Connecticut. These, perhaps, are the 

 most arctic species now, and we have a right to infer that the 

 less arctic ones followed their habits. The very presence of 

 man, with his boats and ships, has done much towards this ; but 

 the alteration of their food from the ocean, caused also by his 

 presence, his works, his wharves and docks, his pollutions, have 

 driven away their food fish, and made them seek it in northern 

 climes. 



By whatever means, however, this feathery stream has been 

 diminished, altered or shortened, it leaves us some speculations 

 of the past and for the future. Are those arctic forms now 

 breeding at Hudson's Bay the same as once bred in sunny Con- 

 necticut ; have they changed in three hundred years, or are we 



