the lakes.  Big and Little Seal lakes are more than 100 miles from the nearest salt water.  The Ringed seal is locally called “floe rat” and “gum seal.”  It is the smallest and least valuable of all, and fairly common all round.  The Harp seal is “seal,” in the same way as cod is “fish.”  It has various local names, five among the French-Canadians alone, but is specifically known as the Greenland seal.  The young, immediately after birth, have a fine white coat, which makes them valuable.  The herds are followed on a large scale at the end of the winter season, which is also the whelping season, and hundreds of thousands are killed, females and young preponderating.  They are still common along the east and south, but diminishing steadily, especially in the St. Lawrence.  The Bearded, or “Square-flipper,” seal is rare in the St. Lawrence and on the Atlantic, but commoner in Hudsonian waters.  It is a large seal, eight feet long, and bulky in proportion.  The Grey, or Horse-head, seal runs up to about the same size occasionally and is one of the gamest animals that swims.  It is rare on the Atlantic and not common anywhere on the St. Lawrence.  The “Hoods” are the largest of all and the lions of the lot.  They run up to 1,000 pounds and over, and sometimes fourteen feet long.  They are rare on the Atlantic and decreasing along the St. Lawrence, owing to the Newfoundland hunters.  The Walrus, formerly abundant all round, is now rarely seen except in the far north, where he is fast decreasing.

Moose may feel their way in by the southwest to an increasing extent, and might possibly be reinforced by the Alaskan variety.  Red deer might possibly be induced to enter by the same way in fair numbers over a limited area.  The woodland caribou is almost exterminated, but might be resuscitated.  The barren-ground caribou is still plentiful in the north, where most of the herds appear to migrate in an immense ellipse, crossing from west to east, over the barrens, in the fall, to the Atlantic, and then turning south and west through the woods in winter, till they reach their original starting-point near Hudson bay in the spring.  But this is not to be counted on.  The herds divide, change direction, and linger in different places.  Their tame brother, the reindeer, is being introduced as the chief domestic animal of Eastern Labrador, with apparently every prospect of success.  Beaver are fairly common and widely distributed in forested areas.  Other rodents are frequent—­squirrels, musk-rats, mice, voles, lemmings, hares and porcupines.  There are two bats.  Black bears are general; polars, in the north.  Grizzlies have been traded at Fort Chimo in Ungava, but they are probably all killed out.  The lynx is common wherever there are woods.  There are two wolves, arctic and timber, the latter now rare in the south.  The Labrador red fox is very common in the woods, and the “white,” or arctic fox, in the barrens and further south on both coasts.  The “cross,” “silver”