AUDUBON'S LABRADOR TRIP 



tremendous gales of the coast and to icebergs. 

 "Plants blooming by millions, and at every 

 step you tread on such as would be looked 

 upon with pleasure in more temperate climes. 

 I wish I were a better botanist that I might 

 describe them as I do the birds." Again: 

 "The captain brought me what he called an 

 Esquimau codfish, which perhaps has never 

 been described, and we have spirited him," 

 His keenness of observation is well shown by 

 the following: "This bird [a spruce partridge] 

 was so very gray that she might almost have 

 been pronounced a different species from those 

 at Dennysville, Me., last autumn; but this 

 difference is occasioned by its being born so 

 much farther north; the difference is no greater 

 than in Tetrao umbellus [ruffed grouse] in 

 Maine, and the same bird in western Pennsyl- 

 vania." Both of these observations have since 

 been confirmed and two separate races of each 

 bird have been recognized by ornithologists. 



The country about this harbor was thor- 

 oughly searched for bird life. On July i8 he 

 says: "From the top of a high rock I had fine 

 view of the most extensive and the dreariest 

 wilderness I have ever beheld. It chilled the 



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