416 Mr. R. Brown's St/nopsis of the 



hear; and particularly I received much assistance from my 

 friend Mr. James Hepburn, a gentleman who has spent many 

 years in collecting the birds of the North Pacific, and whose 

 knowledge is only equalled by his liberality in imparting it to 

 his less fortunate brother naturalist. His princely (for no other 

 term will designate it) collection is now in San Francisco, and 

 I trust that he will by-aud-by favour us with an extended 

 account of North-Pacific ornithology ; but in the meantime this 

 synopsis, which owes all that is most original in it to his notes, 

 may stand as a contribution to zoogeography, which can alone 

 proceed on a sure basis by the collection of local faunas. 



It would, however, be out of place, in the present state of our 

 knowledge of the avifauna of the island, to attempt anything 

 like an analysis of the geographical distribution of the elements 

 which compose it, for in a few years this would requii'e to be 

 done over again ; and as this list is manifestly imperfect (though 

 complete according to our present acquaintance), no good pur- 

 pose could be served thereby. Many of the birds are common 

 to the whole American continent, and some are even European ; 

 most of them are already known as more southern members of 

 the Pacific-coast fauna, while several, as noted in the list, are 

 now recorded for the first time from the west of the Rocky 

 Mountains. The interior of the island is very bare of bird-life, 

 the gloomy pine-forests permitting few or no plants (on the 

 seeds of which many of the insessorial species feed) to grow under 

 their shade. However, an occasional bird is seen by the shores 

 of the beautiful lakes and rivers which we came across in our 

 exploration ; while Grouse might be heard drumming in nearly 

 every portion of the country, and the tapping of the Woodpecker 

 is often for days the only sound (save the cry of the Heron and 

 the noise of the Geese and Ducks which resort for breeding- 

 purposes to the solitary inland waters) to break the stillness of 

 these lonely and sombre forests. In the winter most of these 

 lakes are frozen over, and continue so until early in the summer. 

 During this period the water-birds resort in countless numbers 

 to the quiet inlets and bays on the coast, but particularly to the 

 marshy lands at the mouths of many of the rivers, such as the 

 Somass, the Sooke, Nempish, or the Cowichan. It is on the 



