NOTES ON MAMMALS COLLECTED AND OBSERVED IN 

 THE NORTHERN MACKENZIE RIVER DISTRICT, NORTH- 

 WEST TERRITORIES OF CANADA, WITH REMARKS ON 

 EXPLORERS AND EXPLORATIONS OF THE FAR NORTH. 



By R. MacFarlane. 



Chief F<tctor, ITii'Jwn'fi Jiiiy Compfmy. 



Among the reasons which h'd nie to prepare this list and rohitive 

 notes, together with the paper on the birds and eggs collected by me 

 and under my direction in Arctic America, recently published by 

 the Historical and Scientitic Society of Manito))a, and l)y the 11. S. 

 National Museum at Washington," the following may be mentioned: 

 First, I desired thus to set an example to the fur-trade officers of the 

 Hudson's Bay Company, which some of them coidd well follow, to 

 furnish similar experiences of their own. Secondly, I further desired 

 to incite the ambition of others, especiall}" the 3 ounger men of the 

 service, stationed at posts on the (xulf of St. Lawrence, on the sea- 

 coasts of Labrador, Hudson Bay, and the North Pacific, amid the 

 fertile prairies and great forests, and on the banks of numerous rivers 

 and lakes of the vast interior of Old and New Canada, to resume and 

 continue making important additions to the company's officers' well 

 known interesting conti'ibutions to the natural history of their foi-nicr 

 chartered, licensed, and still occupied trade territories. Tliirdly, I 

 wished that the Smithsonian Institution might appoint an agent for 

 the purpose of personally reviving the grand work begun by Robert 

 Kennicott in 1859, and afterwards followed b}' others, under the aus- 

 pic-es of the lamented Spencer Fullerton Baird. Lastly, but not least, 

 I trust that both papers may eventually aid in arousing the naturalists 

 of Canada to exert themselves more fully than ever, not only in the 

 way of ascertaining the existence of new species and the geographical 

 <listril)ution of others, but also in ol)taining specimens to fill up the 

 many gaps in the catalogues of well-known animals which aie still 

 unrepresented in their national nuiseums. 



«Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., XIV, 1892, pp. 413-44(J. 



Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. XXVIII— No. 1405. 



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