CONSERVATION IN LABRADOR 



Mr. D. N. Saint-Cyr ^ visited the Canadian 

 Labrador coast in 1882 and 1885. He says: 

 "It is unfortunately too true that certain set- 

 tlers on the coast, but more especially stran- 

 gers, from Nova Scotia, from the State of 

 Maine, and the Island of Newfoundland, pil- 

 lage the sea-birds' eggs, which they carry off to 

 sell in their own country. These years past as 

 many as thirty schooners have been counted, 

 engaged in obtaining loads of wild birds' eggs 

 in the islands of the gulf, and, to make mat- 

 ters worse, when these pillagers observe that 

 the eggs are hatching, they break them, in 

 order that the old birds may lay more. Then 

 all these fresh eggs are taken away, and it is 

 thus that thousands upon thousands are de- 

 stroyed every year." 



The visits of the Halifax eggers for com- 

 mercial purposes have long since ceased, but 

 the robbery of eggs and the destruction of 

 nesting birds still continue. The conditions 

 as I found them on my four trips to the Lab- 

 rador Peninsula, which have included a sur- 

 vey of eleven hundred miles of the coast from 

 the Bay of Seven Islands to Nain, are most 

 1 Sessional Papers, No. 37. (Quebec, 1886.) 

 287 



