Should you have any particular destination in view, do with them as you think fit.
I enclose to your address an amended list of the mammals, birds, and eggs collected in this district up to the present date. This, however, excludes more than 300 specimens from various posts, which I have not yet had time to arrange; and among which some additional species will doubtless be found. At present, the list contains about 50 species of mammals and 190 of birds. A considerable portion of the names has been corrected by Professor Baird, and the remainder I am responsible for; and I do not think there are many errors, as I am now becoming tolerably au fait at identifications. If you think the list would be of interest, as showing the progress of Zoölogical investigation in the Arctic regions, might I ask you to forward it, after perusal, to some scientific journal. You will find, on reading, that the Colymbus Adamsii is of frequent occurrence on Great Slave Lake; and I have received about a dozen specimens from the Big-Island. Two specimens of the Somateria V. nigra have also been procured on the same sheet of water, which is the richest field for rare birds of any place in the district. My own Fort Simpson collection you will recognise by a (║) placed after the species obtained here; and from the number thus marked you can form an idea of my labours. The number of specimens collected by myself is about 1000. I procured one nest of the Nyctale Richardsonii containing three eggs, but I expect four will prove to be the complete number. The bird had built in a woodpecker's deserted hole. Two nests of the Surnia ulula were procured for me, one at Lapierre's House and one at Salt River. They were built some height up pine trees, and contained each four eggs. One set is for the British Museum, for which Institution I am forming a general collection. I am surprised that a specimen of the Sialia arctica has not come in yet.
You will see that the advance in Oölogy is considerable. Could a full series of the eggs of all birds be obtained, I think that they would lead to the most easy and natural classification for the Aves. The conformation and position of the nests is so much influenced by the natural features of the locality in which they nest, that, though of secondary value, they could not be much depended upon. From overlooking this fact, the great ornithologist, Audubon, has in some instances doubted the correctness of other writers' identification of eggs, because the construction of the nests did not absolutely agree with those which fell under his own observation.
A post has been established this year among the Eskimos. It is built on the Anderson or Inconnue River, a stream rising at some distance eastward of Fort Good Hope and falling into Liverpool Bay. I am not very sanguine of the success of the speculation, in a commercial point of view.
I hope to obtain leave of absence next year. I have now been fifteen years in this district, and think I deserve a holiday. The
