15i BIRD STUDIES WITH A CAMERA 



pot^sibility of a past connection and ttie probability 

 t!iat in some future geological age the waves will 

 have completed tbeir work of destruction, when both 

 islands will have disappeared. 



The history of these bird-inhabited islands is 

 interesting, and gives us some information of the 

 changes which man has wrought in their bird life. 

 It begins with the account given by Jacques Cartier 

 of his voyage to Canada in 1534. Of the Bird Rocks 

 he wrote : " We came to three islands, two of which 

 are as steep and upright as any wall, so that it was 

 not possible to climb them, and between them is a lit- 

 tle rock. These islands were as full of birds as any 

 meadow is of grass, which there do make their nests, 

 and in the greatest of them there was a great and 

 infinite number of those that we called Margaulx, 

 that are white and bigger than any geese, which 

 were severed in one part. In the other were only 

 Godetz, but toward the shore there were of those 

 Godetz and great Apponatz, like to those of that 

 island that we above have mentioned. We went 

 down to the lowest part of the least island, where 

 we killed above a thousand of those Godetz and 

 Apponatz. We put into our boats as many as we 

 pleased, for in less than one hour we might have 

 filled thirty such boats of them. We named them 

 the islands of the Margaulx." 



Concerning this quotation Mr. F. A. Lucas re- 

 marks (The Auk, v, 1888, page 129): "While this 

 description, as well as the sentences which imme- 

 diately precede it, contains some statements that 

 apparently are at variance with existing facts, there 

 is nevertheless good reason to believe that Cartier 



