NOTES ON AND LIST OF BIRDS AND EGGS COLLECTED IN ARCTIC AMERICA, 1861-1866. BY R. MacFarlane, F. R. G. S., Chief Factor Hudson Bay Company.* When recently requested bj' President Charles jST. Bell, of Winnipeg, to write a paper on Arctic breeding birds, for publication by the His-torical and Scientific Society of Manitoba, I thought of including therein a similar reference to the collections made in ornithology and oology by the northern officers of the company subsequent to the year 1859, when Mr. Robert Kennicott, an able, amiable, and prematurely cut-off American naturalist, and representative of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, first appeared on the Mackenzie River. During his three years' sojourn in that quarter he managed to infuse into one and all with whom he had any intercourse more or less of his own ardent, zealous, and indefatigable spirit as a collector; but for want of space, time, and the requisite material I have had to abandon that idea, and must there-fore confine myself to giving a resume of what I was i^ersonally ena-bled to accomplish. I trust, however, that some day an abler hand will take the matter up, in its entirety, and publish a full account of the magnificent contributions to the natural history of the Dominion of Canada obtained by the exertions of Hudson Bay officers throughout the vast territories covered by the fur trade and commercial operations of their old company. Among those of their number who hapi^ened to be then, or about that time, stationed in the Mackenzie River district, and who thus rendered very essential service, may be mentioned Messrs. B. R. Ross, James Lockhart, Laurence Clarke, Wm. L. Hardisty, James McDougall, John Reid, C. P. Gaudet, Strachan Jones, J. S. Camsell, Murdo McLeod, James Sibbiston, A. McKenzie, Andrew Flett, W. J. McLean, William Brass and W. C. King. In this connection I would further add that, while the friendly and rather extensive correspondence carried on for years with many of the foregoing by the late eminent and much lamented Prof. Spencer F. Baird,of the Smithsonian, evinced his own deep love for science, it did much to intensify their interest in, and desire to meet more fully perhaps than was otherwise possible, the views and objects of that obliging and well-conducted Institution. * Formerly clerk in charge of Fort Audersou, Audersou River, Mackenzie River district, northwest territory of Canada. Procccrtinas Na'ioral 'Jlnseani, Vol. XIV-No. 865. 413
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