iv PREFACE. 
only. The second edition of this work was published in 1894 and 
included 317 species. The Birds of Manitoba, by E. T. Seton, was 
published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1891, and, as its name 
implies, covered little more than that province. Mr. C. E. Dionne, 
of Quebec, published a catalogue of the birds of that province, with 
notes on their geographical distribution, in 1889, and in 1896 Mr. 
Ernest D. Wintle published in Montreal a valuable little work 
entitled Birds of Montreal. Mr. John Fannin, the curator of the 
Provincial Museum in Victoria, British Columbia, published a 
Catalogue of the Birds of British Columbia, the second edition of 
which was issued in 1898. In this catalogue he included his own 
extensive knowledge and that of all other observers in the province. 
Since then a new edition of this Catalogue has been published by 
Mr. Kermode the present curator of the museum. While others were 
engaged in gathering and publishing the valuable information con- 
tained in the above mentioned works and others of less importance, 
the writer although attending to other subjects which claimed most 
of his time had constantly before him the necessity of the present 
work and has been collecting notes and observations for it during 
all his journeys since 1879, while his assistant, Mr. J. M. Macoun, 
has carried on similar work since 1885. The summers of 1879 and 
1880 were spent by the writer on the prairies west of Manitoba, the 
season of 1881 in northern Manitoba, the summers of 1882 and 1883 
along the lower St. Lawrence, that of 1884 around Lake Nipigon, 
of 1885 in the Rocky and Selkirk. mountains on the line of the 
Canadian Pacific railway, of 1887 on Vancouver Island and of 1888 
on Prince Edward Island. Mr. J. M. Macoun spent the early spring 
and summer of 1885 at Lake Mistassini and in 1888 travelled from 
Lesser Slave Lake east by way of the Athabaska and Churchill 
rivers to Lake Winnipeg. The notes for the years mentioned above 
appear under our own names. Practically all observations made 
by either of us since that time are credited to Mr. William Spread- 
borough, who since 1889 has accompanied either one or other of us 
to the field nearly every year and as all the collecting was done by 
him some confusion and repetition has been obviated by the inclusion 
of our own observations with his and by the omission of our names 
for the years he was with us. In some years, notably in 1896, 
1898, 1904, 1906 and 1907, Mr. Spreadborough worked quite inde- 
pendently of either of us. It detracts nothing from the importance 
of other notes published for the first time in this Catalogue to say 
that its chief value is to be found in the matter credited to Mr. 
