47 6 The Smithsonian Institution 



spent four years in the North and made most extensive 

 travels. 



" During the whole exploration he was the guest of the 

 Hudson's Bay Company, the officers of which not only fur- 

 nished him with free transportation for the materials he 

 collected, but also extended to him in the most liberal manner 

 the hospitalities of their several posts, and facilitated in every 

 way in their power the objects of his perilous enterprise. 



"The principal object of the exploration was to collect 

 materials for investigating the Zoology of the region visited. 

 Mr. Kennicott, however, also collected specimens of plants 

 and minerals, and gave considerable attention to the eth- 

 nology of the country, in observing the peculiarities of the 

 various Indian tribes, and forming vocabularies of the lan- 

 guages. He carried with him a number of thermometers, and 

 succeeded in enlisting a number of persons as meteorological 

 observers, as well as in exciting an interest in natural history 

 and in physical phenomena which cannot fail to be produc- 

 tive of important information respecting a region of the globe 

 but little known." x 



The interest aroused by these investigations has never 

 completely died out, and the Institution received year by 

 year for a long period the fruits of explorations carried on 

 by officers of the Hudson Bay Company in many parts of the 

 British territory. 



Following immediately upon Kennicott's explorations, an 

 expedition was sent out under private auspices to Alaska and 

 Siberia for the purpose of establishing an overland tele- 

 graphic route between America and Europe. The enterprise 

 failed as a financial venture on account of the success of the 

 Atlantic cable, but large benefits accrued to science from the 

 labors of the naturalists who accompanied the expedition. 2 



1 " Smithsonian Report," 1862, page 40. 

 2 For an extended account of this expedition, see Science, 1896, Volume in, pages 37 and 87. 



