1 850 TO 1865 359 



The fact is Lockhart's and your registers really show a more 

 valuable lot of birds and eggs than all we got before. 



I will not now however attempt any discussion of the species 

 you got as Prof. Baird has done that much better than I could, and 

 I am very hardworked these days. 



Don't be in a hurry to leave the North, McFarlane. I assure 

 you there is little comfort in the outside world unless you love work 

 more than I do. My best consolation while working so constantly 

 is the thought that the sooner I get thro the matter in hand, so much 

 the sooner I'll start North again. In fact I hope to tie my garters 

 and belt and start from St. Paul for Fort Churchill on the Bay, a 

 year from next January. 



The present proposition is that I should return within the year, 

 but I suspect that it is more probable that I will strike from Churchill 

 to Fond du Lac on Lake Athabasca and thence down stream to the 

 glorious old Mackenzie where I'll spend a summer and go out on 

 snow shoes the winter of 1866-7. 



It's all very well to talk of the delights of the civilized world, but 

 give me the comfortable North where a man can have some fun, see 

 good days, and smoke his pipe unmolested. D n civilization. Not 

 that I see it so much either, for I live constantly here at the Smith- 

 sonian among a set of naturalists nearly all of whom have spent their 

 lives in the wilderness, and as I'm working constantly on the Arctic 

 collections, my thoughts always go back to their habitats and the 

 various well remembered scenes. 



I have had an enormous amount of work to do on these Arctic 

 collections, and I see no possibility of my getting all done before the 

 winter after next. 



After all are catalogued, labelled and systematically arranged, a 

 report has to be prepared upon the Zoology of British America, which 

 is to be published by this Institution. Of this it is proposed I should 

 do the mammals and birds. The work on the latter will be compara- 

 tively easy, or will be made so ere I come to them. There will be 

 the toughest work on the mammals, and Prof. Baird wishes me to 

 monograph several families (Mustelida, Arvicolidce & Sciurida) of all 

 North America as a preliminary. I'm commenced on Sciuridae, but 

 since the arrival of the northern collections (which didn't get here 

 till two or three months since) the museum work on them has pre- 



