92 Field and Forest Rambles. 



berer's axe, while their ancient enemy, the Indian, is also 

 steadily yielding and melting away in an unequal contest 

 with the white man, so that in a few centuries both the na- 

 tives and larger quadrupeds will have vanished, leaving few 

 traces behind them. We need not wonder, therefore, that the 

 larger extinct quadrupeds — to wit, such animals as the Irish 

 ^lk, mammoth, dodo, and great auk — became exterminated, 

 more especially if man was contemporary with them. 



Formation of Barrens. — The Pitcher Plant. — The 

 moss swamps, or " caribou barrens," are met with throughout 

 the region, either in the open or in the forest. They appear 

 to have been originally formed from melted snow accumulating 

 in hollows, where in process of time mosses and other aquatic 

 plants gained the ascendency, transmuting the surface into a 

 soft bog, which gradually dried up until the decomposing weeds 

 formed a soil where the coniferous trees took root ; first in 

 small numbers here and there, their dwarfed dimensions and 

 outward surfaces densely covered with trailing moss and 

 lichen, showing a struggle for existence. In the less reclaimed 

 parts we find thickets of alder, willows, etc., while the 

 Labrador tea plant (L. paluslris) and other shrubs flourish 

 on the bog generally, where the hare and musk-rat make 

 their tracks, the latter towards some reed-covered pond not 

 yet fully overrun by aquatic plants. Thus it would seem that 

 many of the smaller lakes are steadily disappearing ; the 

 rate however at which this is going on cannot, as a matter of 

 course, be accurately computed in a comparatively speaking 

 newly settled country; but I have been assured, on the autho- 

 rity of residents, that many barrens now exist where lakes stood 

 not fifty years ago. Some barrens may have both effluent 

 and affluent streams, but many are mere hollows fed by 

 the melting snow on their sides. The barren is moreover a 

 favourite feeding ground of the reindeer, where it ploughs up 

 the snow with its snout and feet in quest of moss and lichen, 



