154 BI1!I> STUDIIiS WITH A CAMEKA 



possibility of a past connection and the probability 

 that in some futnro geological age the waves will 

 have completed tlioir work of destruction, when both 

 islands will have disappeared. 



The history of those 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 gi'eat and 

 infinit(.> nundier of those that we called Margaulx, 

 that are wliite and bigger than any geese, which 

 were severe<I in our part. In the other were only 

 Godetz, but townrd ilie shore there were of those 

 Godetz and great Ai)]Hiriatz, like to those of that 

 island that we abovt^ have mentioned. AVo went 

 down to the lowest pM.rt of the least island, where 

 we killed above a thousand of those Godetz and 

 Apponatz. We ])Tit into our boats as many as we 

 pleased, for in less than one lujur we might have 

 filled thirty such bouts of them. We named them 

 the islands of the Margaulx." 



Concerning this ((notation Mr. F. A. Lucas re- 

 ma,i'ks (The Auk, v, 1SS8, page IV'H): "While this 

 description, as well as the sentences which imme- 

 diately ])rei-e(h"i it, coidains some statements that 

 fipjiareiitly are at va.ria,iice with existing facts, ihero 

 is ne\'ertlieless good reason to believe that ("a.rtier 



