176 A summer's cruise to northern LABRADOR. 



in the bays and fjords ; thus independent of wind and 

 ice, one could run outside and do in good weather deep- 

 sea dredging, scrape the bottoms of the shallower bays 

 and reaches, measure the raised beaches, geologize, botan- 

 ize, and entomologize, and reach the better breeding- 

 haunts of the water-fowl, and do something toward col- 

 lecting the nests and eggs of land-birds. A well- 

 equipped party in a steamer could, in four months spent 

 on this coast, add vastly to what, on the whole, is perhaps 

 the least-known portion of northern America. With 

 the ample knowledge of polar life and nature we now 

 possess as a basis of comparison, here is a most interest- 

 ing field of exploration for our rising naturalists ; it 

 would at all events be an excellent training-school in 

 physical geology and biology. 



This day was entirely devoted to insect-hunting, and 

 I found myself in a new world so far as the insect fauna 

 was concerned, many truly polar species abounding. 

 The spiders were thoroughly arctic, dark, dull -colored 

 creatures, occasionally venturing out from their retreats 

 under the growth of curlew berry, or under stones ; sim- 

 ilar forms afterwards occurred to me in just such places 

 on the summit of Mt. Washington, on Gray's and 

 Pike's Peaks, showing that the Alpine summits of our 

 mountains are but outliers, aerial islands, so to speak, 

 detached zoogeographically from the frozen regions of 

 the north. 



On a steep, southerly exposure of the harbor, where a 

 long glacis sloped toward an angular precipice, which 

 overhung patches of vegetation, between the worn and 

 polished naked rocks of the shore, we started up a few 

 butterflies and moths. To my genuine surprise and de- 



