117 



perpetuated. Seeds of this year's seedlings will also be sown, and 

 these, perhaps, may give white offspring. As in some animals, a second 

 cross may be necessary to produce change from a long established 

 form. — J. F. 



Mackenzie River Notes. — During the summer just past Miss 

 Elizabeth Taylor, daughter of the United States Consul at Winnipeg, 

 (who has been well known to Canadians since more than twenty years 

 ago as " Saskatchewan Taylor/' owing to his persistent and wise advo- 

 cacy of that region as the great wheat field of the future), made a trip 

 by the Hudson Bay Company's steamer from Athabasca Landing on 

 the Athabasca River, ninety miles north of Edmonton to Peel River in 

 the delta of the Mackenzie River and far north of the Arctic Circle. 

 The total length of the trip was about 1,500 miles and in a generally 

 northward direction. 



Although the trip was not make primarily in the irnterests of 

 Botany 5 but rather to sketch and i)hotograph the wondrous scenes on 

 the mighty Mackenzie, yet, like her father's daughter Miss Taylor could 

 not let such an opportunity pass of adding her quota to our knowledge 

 of the northern land which her flither has done so much to bring before 

 the world. The botanical results of her trip were submitted to the writer 

 for identification and a complete set consisting of 170 species of remark- 

 ably well preserved specimens was presented to the Museum of the 

 Geological Survey Department. 



An examination of the specimens proved conclusively that the 

 warm currents of air that are known to occur in the Peace River 

 country pass down the Mackenzie and account for the occurrence of a 

 flora north of the Arctic Circle that seems in no way diffjrent from that 

 which is to be found 1,000 miles to the South. Northern exposures 

 give true arctic species; but these evidently are not the prominent flora 

 of the Mackenzie delta as they are almost wholly absent from the 

 collection. Another feature of interest in this collection is the gather- 

 ing of specimens in exactly the same localities where Sir John Richard- 

 son obtained them 70 years ago and the sight of them side by side with 

 his record of their occurence shows how little we have added to the 

 botanical knowledge of the far north in recent years. 



