﻿200 PLANTS. July, 



curious and beautiful Calypso horealis lurks, along 

 with some very fine, large, one-flowered, ladies' 

 slippers (Cypripedia). There is, in fact, notwith- 

 standing the near neighbourhood of the arctic circle, 

 no want of flowering plants to engage the attention 

 of a student of nature ; and many of the feathered 

 inhabitants of the district recall to the traveller or 

 resident fur-trader pictures of southern domestic 

 abodes. The cheerful and familiar Sylvia wstiva is 

 one of the earliest arrivals in spring, coming in 

 company with the well-known American robin 

 {Turdus migratorius) and the purple and rusty 

 grakles. A little later, the varied thrush makes 

 its appearance from the shores of the Pacific. The 

 white-bellied swallow {Hirimdo hicolor) breeds, at 

 Fort Norman, in holes of rotten trees ; and the 

 Sialia arctica, a representative of the blue bird so 

 common in the United States, enlivens the banks 

 of the Mackenzie, coming, however, not from the 

 Atlantic coasts, but from the opposite side of the 

 Rocky Mountain range. On the Mackenzie, there 

 is an intermingling of the floras of both coasts, 

 as well as of the migratory feathered tribes, the 

 Rocky Mountain range not proving a barrier to 

 either. 



One of the birds which we traced up to its 

 breeding-places on Bear Lake River, but not to 

 the sea-coast, is the pretty little Bonapartean gull 

 (Xema Bonapartii), This species arrives very early 



