Nova Scotia, and on the Magdalen a 
1876.) Former Range of New England Mammals. 715 
| reached the New England coast, though its range southward 
extended much farther than has been generally heretofore rec- 
ognized, as is unquestionably proven by the following extract 
- from the account of Jacques Cartier’s voyage to Newfoundland 
in 1534. In his account of the “ Island of Birds,” situated off 
the coast of Newfoundland, it is stated, “ And albeit the sayd 
island be fourteen leagues from the maine land, notwithstanding 
beares come swimming thither to eat of the sayd birds, and our 
men found one there as great as any COW, and as white as any 
swan, who in their presence leapt into the sea ; and upon Whit- 
sunmunday (following our voyage toward the land) we met 
her by the way, swimming toward land as swiftly as we could 
saile. So soone as we saw her we pursued her with our boats, 
and by main strength tooke her, whose flesh was as good to be 
eaten as the flesh of a calf of two yeares old.”! Though formerly 
occurring in considerable numbers along the coast of Labrador, 
it was probably never common as far south as Newfoundland. 
According to Dr. Packard? the polar bear was occasionally ob- 
tained off the coast of Labrador as late as 1864, whither it had 
apparently drifted on floating ice brought down from the north 
_ by the polar current. 
The walrus, though its remains are found in a fossil state as 
far south as South Carolina, probably did. not quite reach the 
New England coast at the time it was first explored by Euro- 
Peans, though found in large numbers during the middle of the 
sixteenth century as far south as Sable Island, off Cape Breton, 
nd other islands 1m the Gulf 
of St. Lawrence. The common harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) 18 
still more or less common at suitable localities along the New 
England coast, but its numbers are far less than formerly. Some 
of the larger seals are also still found along the coast of Maine, 
but their present southern limits and former range I have been 
as yet unable satisfactorily to determine. 
1 Hakluyt, Voyages, iii. 250, 251 
i i x. 370. 
2 Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, 
