246 Canadian Record of Science. 



must presume their natural food was not discovered by 

 them in the fresh waters which they visited so foolishly, 

 and they do not appear to have sufficient instinct to 

 return to salt water, as numbers of them were caught 

 alive on the ice when the water began to freeze over for 

 the winter. They appeared to be very tame, keeping near 

 the shores of the rivers and lakes. Some of them went 

 up the St. Francis Eiver as far as Sherbrooke, and the 

 Richelieu to Lake Champlain, also up the Ottawa to the 

 City of Ottawa ; but the bulk of them appeared to have 

 followed up the north shore of the St. Lawrence to Lake 

 Ontario, as far as Toronto and Hamilton. Many of them 

 were shot on the lake near Toronto. It seems strange 

 that these birds should remain inland during the winter, 

 to be frozen and starved to death, when we consider that 

 it would have been an easy matter for them to return by 

 the rivers to the sea to their natural waters ; but they 

 appear to have totally lost themselves on our inland 

 waters, and the only reason I can assign for their unusual 

 lack of natural instinct is, that they were all young birds, 

 for the bills of those that were shot were not as long as 

 those of adult birds. The fact of these birds apparently 

 being all young birds would suggest an interesting habit 

 in the life history of this species, and one which, I believe, 

 has not been noticed heretofore, namely, the adult birds 

 separating themselves from their fledged young, or, on the 

 other hand, the latter flocking together in the fall of the 

 year without the former's company. Another cause for 

 the remarkable inland flight of these young Murres during 

 the past two years in succession, might have been two 

 unusually prolific breeding seasons, during which the young 

 birds, seeking for food, followed the high tides up to 

 Three Kivers, where, having followed the course of the St. 

 Lawrence so far up it is possible, they were actuated 

 thereby to continue further inland up to the Great Lakes, 

 when, if they had sufficient instinct to return down the 



