1S8 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



pj^j. Perhaps I might suggest a few conspicuous places that 



Suggested as might with very great advantage be made bird reserves. 

 Sanctuaries jjj ^^le gulf of St. Lawrence, we have the Perce rock 



and Bonaventure island. With regard to the latter, I believe some 

 steps are already under way towards making it a preserve. There are 

 also the Bird rocks of Magdalen islands. Perce rock and Bird rocks 

 are the only North American nesting grounds of the gannet or solan 

 goose, a large, white bird the size of a goose. It feeds on fish of no 

 economic importance and, even if it took a percentage of valuable fish, 

 we could not afiford to have it destroyed. These islands are the summer 

 homes of many other species and are desirable bird sanctuaries from 

 many points of view. 



In other portions of the gulf of St. Lawrence we meet a rather 

 peculiar condition of affairs. We are accustomed in Canada to look 

 upon ourselves as a people who get our living either from the soil or 

 from manufactures, and we are perhaps inclined to overlook the fact 

 that some parts of our Dominion are still wild and depend upon wild 

 life. The inhabitants of the north shore of the St. Lawrence, fisher- 

 men, half-breeds and Indians, are largely dependent on birds for meat. 

 Unless something is done in the way of protection among the islands 

 scattered along our shores, there is danger that the absence of birds may 

 render the whole area uninhabitable, so that the fishing population 

 would have to migrate in there in the spring and come out again in 

 the autumn. 



Then there is the consideration of the reservation of marshy areas. 

 They lend themselves to reservation purposes readily because we do not 

 value them highly for anything else. Point Pelee, for instance, con- 

 tains a large marsh capable of forming an overflow point for game such 

 as ducks, and it is also the most northern breeding ground of several 

 North American species that have reached their limit of latitude. There 

 are more of some varieties of birds found on point Pelee than in all 

 the rest of Ontario put together. 



Large Birds Attract Hunters 



The apparently irresistible impulse of every sportsman to kill every- 

 thing that is big always saddens me. Torrey puts the case in a nutshell 

 when he says : " Czars and rare birds pay the price." He should have 

 said "large birds," because most people do not know the rare birds, 

 but the man with a gun is always anxious to shoot something large. 

 For years I have been urging the Ontario Government to give the 

 large birds special protection but have had the reformer's usual exper- 



