supply of foxes a year ago, though nothing to the muskrats which
swarmed down south last fall. But failure of food further north may
have had more to do with those irruptions than any outburst of unusual
fecundity. Caribou apparently remain much as they have been lately. But
the hunger of wolves and the greed of men are two enemies that nothing
but conservation can keep in check. Of course, genuinely "necessary
food" is not at all in question. I know an old hunter, living at
Pokkashoo in summer and St. Augustine in winter, who brought in sixteen
caribou last season. But he gave fifteen away to really necessitous
families and kept only one for himself.

The whale factories at Lark Harbour and Hawke Bay, on the west coast of
Newfoundland, were both closed for want of whales. The only one in the
Gulf that was working last year was at Seven Islands, on the North
Shore, 300 miles below Quebec. I happened to be almost in at the death
of the biggest finback ever taken. But, speaking generally, the season
was not really prosperous. The station of Seven Islands is worked by
Norwegians, who are the most exterminatingly efficient whalers in the
world. They worked their own whaleries to exhaustion and raised so much
feeling against them among the fishermen that the Norwegian government
forbad every factory along the shore. They then invented floating
factories, which may still be used in Canadian waters with deadly effect
unless we put whaling under conservation. The feeling among the
fishermen here is the same as elsewhere, strongly in favour of the
whales and strongly against the exterminating kind of whaler, because
whales are believed to drive the bait fish close inshore, which is very
"handy" for the fishermen.

The spring sealing of 1912 was a failure on the Canadian Labrador, as
the main "harp" herd was missed by just one day. The whole industry is