﻿88 CRANES. June, 



Albert, our Eskimo interpreter, told me that it 

 does not visit Hudson's Bay. 



I was also indebted to Mr. Rae's gun for spe- 

 cimens of the brown crane {Grus canadensis). 

 Mr. Audubon, who is so competent an authority 

 on all questions relating to American birds, and 

 whose recent death all lovers of natural history 

 deplore, was of opinion, in common with many 

 other ornithologists, that the brown crane is merely 

 the young of the large white crane (Grus ameri- 

 cana); but, though I concede that the young of the 

 latter are grey^ I think that the hroivn species is 

 distinct; first, because it is generally of larger 

 dimensions than the white bird, and secondly, be- 

 cause it breeds on the lower parts of the Mackenzie 

 and near the Arctic coasts, where the Grus ameri- 

 cana is unknown. As far as I could ascertain, 

 the latter bird does not go much further north 

 than Great Slave Lake. At Fort aux Liards^ on 

 the River of the Mountains, large flocks of cranes 

 pass continually to the westward, from the 17th 

 to the 20th of September ; the grey and white birds 

 being in different bands, and the former of smaller 

 size, like young birds. Very rarely during the 

 summer a flock of white cranes passes over Fort 

 Simpson in latitude 62° N. The brown cranes, on 

 the other hand, which frequent the banks of the 



