234 THE RECENT BIRD TRACKS 
golden, yet queer little eyes, chameleon-like, independent 
of each other, intently gaze two ways at once. Then as 
to that dorsal fin, in oddity and beauty it has no com- 
peer among its ichthyic rivals, so tastily fringed with a 
neat border of delicate yellow, precisely like the yellow 
tipping of the tail of the Cedar-bird (Ampelis cedrorum). 
In truth, this dorsal fin is cruelly libelled in every engrav- 
ing we have ever seen. In nature it is an exquisite fan, 
in form, size, and ornament, worthy the hand of Queen 
Mab. Thus our Sea-horse, though anomalous in form 
and habit, has beauty united with its strange features, and 
grace with its eccentricity. In fine, as we look at his 
equine appearance, and think of his monkey faculty, and 
his opossum traits, and that queer blending of innocent 
oddity with patriarchal dignity, we have to accept the old 
fisherman’s proverb,—“ There is nothing on the Land that 
is not in the Sea.” 
THE RECENT BIRD TRACKS OF THE BASIN 
OF MINAS. 
BY C. FRED. HARTT, A.M. 
(Concluded from p. 176.) 
Sir CHARLES LYELL, who visited Nova Scotia in 1842; 
first called attention to the recent bird tracks of the 
Basin of Minas, and Dr. J. W. Dawson, the distinguished 
Nova Scotian geologist has treated of them in his interest- 
ing little volume, “Acadian Geology.” l 
The mud flats of the Minas Basin are made up to a very 
large extent, some entirely, of these thin layers of mud, 
deposited by the successive tides. The deposition of the 
_ layers does not of course go on equally everywhere, but 
