P R K F AC B. 



In compiling this catalogue the authors have endeavoured to 

 bring together facts on the range and nesting habits of all birds 

 known to reside in, migrate to or visit, the northern part of the 

 continent. In addition to the Dominion of Canada they have 

 therefore included Newfoundland, Greenland and Alaska. The 

 nomenclature and the numbers given in the latest edition and supple- 

 ments of the Check-list published by the American Ornithologists' 

 Union have been made the basis of arrangement of the catalogue. 

 The order followed in the notes on each bird is, as a general rule, from 

 east to west. Greenland is generally cited first and British Columbia 

 and Alaska last. As the catalogue is intended to be a popular and 

 practical one, the English names of the birds are placed first, but the 

 species are arranged in their scientific order and in accordance with 

 the latest nomenclature. While recognizing the differences upon which 

 many of the technical names have been based, the writer holds that 

 some of them, depending as they do upon local and almost upon 

 individual variations from a common type, possess from any practical 

 or educational standpoint but a minor value. To an investigator of 

 changes resulting from environment such differences are of great 

 interest, but to any one anxious only to obtain the facts in regard to 

 the distribution of our birds as readily determinable, they are unimpor- 

 tant. Until the publication of the first edition of this Catalogue, no 

 attempt had been made to produce a work dealing with the ornith- 

 ology of the region now embraced in the Dominion of Canada since 

 the publication of the Fauna Boreali Americana by Swainson and 

 Richardson, in 1831. In the work referred to the authors include 

 separate notices of all birds that had been recorded north of Lat. 

 48°. Two hundred and forty species are described and twenty-seven 

 additional West Coast species are added, making a total of two 

 hundred and sixty-seven species known at that date. 



The first attempt to catalogue the birds of Canada as a whole 

 was made in 1887, when Mr. Montague Chamberlain, of St. 

 John, New Brunswick, published A Catalogue of Canadian Birds 

 with Notes on the distribiition of the Species. Previous to this, 

 Mr. Thomas Mcllwraith, of Hamilton, Ontario, published his Birds 

 of Ontario, which included the birds known to occur in that province 



