200 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. vii. 



Of feathered game we could always procure while on the plains 

 as much as we required. From Red River to Rocky Mountain 

 House, prairie chickens abound ; ducks of various kinds swarm 

 upon nearly all the lakes and pools, and geese are frequently 

 seen, especially on the saline lakes. The geese are however not 

 easily approached, and without a good dog to bring them out of 

 the water, neither geese nor ducks when shot can be secured, ex- 

 cept by wading through the broad belt of mud and high reeds by 

 which nearly all the lakes are more or less encompassed. Cranes, 

 bitterns, plovers, sand-pipers, snipe and other w^aders, as well as 

 pigeons, black-birds, larks and a number of other small birds are 

 plentiful on the prairies or in the swamps, or along the river val- 

 leys, and crows and several kinds of hawks are also very common. 

 On our passage down the river in September and October, large 

 flocks of wavy's, grey, and black and white geese, and of the large 

 blue cranes, were frequently seen flying southward, generally at a 

 great height ; a few wild swans and pelicans were also seen pass- 

 ing in the same direction. Between Fort Pitt and to near the 

 Elbow of the North Branch, a good many magpies were seen 

 along the river, but none were obse.ved elsewhere. I am told 

 that these birds are very common on parts of the Qu'Appelle 

 River and of the South Saskatchewan, but I believe they are not 

 met with eastward of Red River. West of Cumberland or Pine 

 Island Lake, where the Saskatchewan spreads out into a vast 

 swampy delta, numbers of large white owls were observed sit- 

 ting perfectly motionless, perched either on boulders or snags, or 

 on some of the many small patches of bare sand just appearing 

 above the level of the surrounding waste of water and swamp 

 whicli w^as here seen stretching on all sides, as -far as the eye 

 could reach. 



There are very few fishes of any description in the Saskatche- 

 Tvan above its confluence with the South Branch, but from Fort 

 a la Corne downwards to Lake Winnipeg, sturgeon, white-fish 

 and other excellent varieties are abundant. So far as i could as- 

 certain there are no fishes at all in any of the numberless lakes 

 and pools on the prairies between Red River and Carlton. West 

 and north-west of Carlton and Edmonton, however, and in most 

 of the lakes, many of them of large size, along the water-shed 

 between the MacKenzie and the Saskatchewan, white-fish are 

 said to abound. Jack Fish Lake and Lake St. Ann are two of 

 these lakes in which they are annually caught in large numbers. 



