154 BIRD STUDIES WITH A CAMERA 
possibility of a past connection and the probability 
that in some future geological age the waves will 
have completed their 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 
