CHAPTER XV. 



THE ZOOLOGY OF THE LABRADOR COAST. 



While the zoology of the interior and western por- 

 tions of the Labrador peninsula is undoubtedly like that 

 of the Hudson's Bay district and the cooler portions of 

 Canada, as well as northern Maine and New Hampshire, 

 it presents quite different features on the treeless por- 

 tions of the coast, and on the outer islands. There, the 

 fauna, as a whole, is closely allied to that of southern 

 Greenland, and is remarkably free from the " boreal " 

 forms ranging throughout British America. Indeed 

 the insects and mollusks are in many cases identical with 

 those of Greenland, as are the climatic,* topographic, 

 and general geological features of the coast. Did the 

 mountains of Labrador rise above the snow line, where 

 now they just reach its lower limits, and were the rain 

 fall slightly greater, glaciers would undoubtedly exist, 

 running down the fiords into the sea, as they do north of 

 Hudson's Strait, and we should perhaps have a nearly 

 perfect correspondence between the Atlantic slope of 

 northern Labrador and that portion of Greenland lying 

 between the 6oth and 70th parallels of latitude. 



On the outer islands, lining the coast for nearly forty 

 or fifty miles deep, in the vicinity of Hopedale, the birds, 



*The mean annual temperature of Hopedale in lat. 55° 35' "is certainly not 

 higher than 26° Fahr." Ball's Notes of a Naturalist in South America, p. 273. 



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