considers that the name was applied in the New World to the song sparrow (Me/ospiza melodia) and cites evidence that in French Canada and Acadia the bird is called so.26 Thus La Ronde's (1721) reference may be to this bird.

Ortolan — The French name for a species of European bunting (Ember/2a hortu/ana) that was considered a special delicacy in cuisine; it seems to have been applied to several species in the New World.27 On the island, Franquet’s (1751) orto/an is likely to be the snow bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis) since he says that it was abundant in winter. Roma (1750) seems to differentiate between two types of orto/an: the orto/an qui passe (i.e. the ’migrating orto/an’) which appeared in the spring, and the ortolan blanc [white orto/an] which he lists for the summer. Neither of these would seem to be the snow bunting.

Etourneau — The French name for the European Starling, a species which was not reported on the island until the 19305”. As neither Ganong nor Massignon was aware of the use of this name in early records it is uncertain to which species La Ronde (1721) is referring.29

Corbigeau — A French name apparently used for a number of different species in the New World. Roma's (1750) listing of it between perdrix and toun‘ere/le implies that it may have been a game- bird, and if so it may refer to the curlew, for which corbigeau is a name that has been used in France”. However, in French Canada it is a

26 Ganong 1909, p. 237. Massignon (1962) (p. 260), however, found only one of her Acadian-French witnesses who was familiar with the name, and this was a person from the Madawaska region of New Brunswick, a region more influenced by Canadian French than other Acadian regions.

’7 Bélisle 1979; see also Ganong (1909) (p. 228) and Massignon (1962) (p. 260), who both record alto/an as a name used in Acadian and Canadian French for the horned lark (Eremophila alpestn's).

2" Godfrey 1954, p. 197.

29 Since the grackle, cowbird, rusty blackbird and red-winged blackbird all seem to have made their first appearance on the island in either the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries (Godfrey 1954, pp. 204-05), it seems unlikely that La Ronde could be referring to any ofthese.

3° Massignon 1962, pp. 268-69. This is further supported by Samuel Holland’s (1765) description of the ‘corbejeaux’ on the island as “a kind of woodcock which fly together in large flocks” (PARO 2324/8A, p. 95). It is evident that Holland had got the name for the bird from the Acadians then living on the island.

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vernacular name for the European starling.31 In the eighteenth century, before the introduction of the starling to North America, it may thus have been applied to other similar species though I have no evidence.32

ECOLOGICAL ANALYSIS: MAMMALS The records — Thirty—five records of thirteen different mammals have been found in the French period documents (Table 2-1). Eleven of these thirteen can be identified beyond any doubt to the species level (see Table 2-1 and above). The two about which there may be a question are the mulot (a vole), probably the red-backed vole, and the sour/s (a mouse), probably the deer mouse.

Bearing in mind that none of the recorders was a scientist aiming to make a complete zoological list of all of the island’s mammal species, we note that just over half of the twenty-five mammal species likely to have occurred on lle Saint-Jean in the early eighteenth century have entered the written records of the period.33 The thirteen omissions are all small mammals, i.e. four species of shrew, three species of mice and voles, two bats, plus the weasel (or ermine), chipmunk and red squirrel. It is not so much that none of these small species were not likely to have been observed or not known to occur, but rather that they were not considered important enough to bother recording, let alone to attempt to differentiate between their various species — for virtually none of them fell into the category of a ’useful’ animal (for either fur or food) — with the exception of the ermine for its fur. In fact the only small mammals that did get recorded were the particular vole species that caused

3‘ Bélisle 1979 — though Massignon (1962) makes no mention of it in Acadian French.

32 See footnote 29 for bird species which it could not have been.

33 My figure of 25 native species is based on Cameron (1958), who carried out the only published scientific study of the island's mammalian fauna: he listed 32 species for the island. Subtracting the five of his species that were introduced in historic times leaves 27 native species. However, among these 27 he included four for which there is no firm evidence: the moose, fisher, beaver and mole — subtracting these leaves 23. And he was not aware that the caribou and the wolf had occurred on the island: adding these gives 25 native mammal species likely to have been present on Prince Edward Island at the time of European settlement. A more recent list drawn up by the Atlantic Canada Conservation Data Centre adds two other species of uncertain status (a bat and a shrew) (ACCDC 2000).