Forest birds.

Soi/ impro vem en t.

lambs are also occasionally attacked by the foxes. But I could never obtain positive evidence that one human being had ever been really killed by the bears upon the Island. I met with several, both Indians and others, who had killed one or more of both bears and wild cats, and a Highland-man at the head of St. Peter’s Bay told me, he had killed 38 bears in 29 years, by shooting them, and by setting traps of wood which the Indians have learned them to construct. He told me he sometimes made them shoot themselves. I saw the Indians dissecting a very large bear at their camp at Murray Harbour, about the first of June last, on which occasion they had caught two of them in wooden traps, and which they esteem excellent eating. I was told that neither bulls nor horses were ever known to be destroyed by them, but several bulls have been known to destroy them in defence of the cows. I believe they are decreasing in numbers greatly, but there is not near the damage done by them now, that is reported to have been done formerly. In one settlement, where l was told they had broke open the byre door, and eaten a beast at the stake, they are now never seen nor heard of. the bears are now getting much shyer, and are seldom seen or heard of doing any damage among the cattle now any where. [pp. 153-55]

wild pigeons [visit the Island] in the summer. They have a great many partridges in the woods They are large and in the proper season fat, and very fine eating. There are several sorts of plovers and snipes, and some of the species of eagle, different kinds of hawks and owls, and a kind of carrion crow. There is a bird called the wood pecker They have what they call the robin, but it resembles the robin

here in nothing but the red breast . But they have what they call the blue bird, the snow bird, 3 black bird, and the beautiful humming bird is sometimes found in the gardens. [pp. 156-57]

But they have a// need to be taught this lesson, that their success in agriculture must spring from the dunghi/l. Instead of going a fishing, fowling, or making timber, if they were to repair to the shores to collect the kelp and sea weed—to the mussel banks for what is called mussel mud, or to the woods to gather fern to rot down to dung, and to the sides of their marshes to throw up compost, in all these ways they might provide good manure for their land. Their clear land should be divided into small inclosures, with hedges or stripes of beech planted around them. [pp. 157-58]

Goals [from Nova Scotia] will be needed whenever the timber gets scarce for fire— wood; [p. 159]

the Island has a dry pleasant soil for cultivation and when once cleared of the timber, almost the whole of it [is] sufficiently level for the purpose of agriculture [p. 160]

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