36 Field and Forest Rambles. 



merits, also fragments of hand-made pottery, and remains of 

 upwards of twenty quadrupeds and birds, all belonging to 

 recent species. But the most interesting of his finds were 

 perfect limb bones of the great auk, now extinct, which he 

 moreover believes did probably linger on in the Bay of 

 Fundy after the advent of the first settlers ; and Mr. Wilson 

 has lately shown that the bird was not rare in certain parts 

 of Newfoundland within the remembrance of the present 

 generation.* 



A good idea of the contents of the kitchen middens met 

 with on the islands and shores of the far-famed Bay of Fundy 

 may be gathered from the following instance. I examined 

 one of several mounds on the coast of an inlet named Passa- 

 maquoddy Bay.t The above lay, along with other mounds 

 of a similar shape, on a flat facing the sea, and had the greater 

 portion destroyed by the wash of the waves at high tide, dis- 

 closing a perpendicular section composed almost entirely of 

 clam shells interspersed with mussels, whilks, and the common 

 planorbis. The former (especially the 'mussel Mya aren- 

 arid) were extremely abundant, and for the most part in frag- 

 ments ; however I procured several very large ones, averaging 

 A\ by 3 inches in breadth, which the fishermen of the neigh- 

 bourhood told me were very much larger than any recent 

 specimens they had seen. The other animal remains belonged 



* See Wyman's "American Naturalist," 1868; and "Newfoundland 

 and its Missionaries," by the Rev. W. Wilson, Cambridge. Mass., 1866. 



f There has been a controversy regarding the etymology of this word. 

 It appears, from Dawson's " Acadian Geology," (p. 2), that the learned 

 author, with the natural desire to maintain a becoming derivation of the 

 name under which he has associated the geological features of Nova 

 Scotia and New Brunswick, disputes the conclusions of the Commissions 

 on the Settlement of the North-eastern Boundary, who assert that 

 Acadia is derived from the native name of the fish "pollock" whereas 

 according to Mr. Rhand it means " place of residence." Whatever may 

 be the real etymology of the word, I must state, as regards the Passama- 

 quoddy Bay, — whether as they assert it is derived from Pos (great), aqua 

 (water), aquoddie (pollock), or not,— that this fish is common in the bay, 

 and its remains are plentiful in the shell heaps. 



