CHAPTER XIII 



1882-1884 



Removal to Ottawa — Collecting in Western Ontario and 

 on Gaspe Peninsula — Begins Work at the Geological 

 and Natural History Survey, Ottawa — Difficulties of 

 the Position — Becomes one of the Charter Members of 

 the Royal Society of Canada — Visits Nova Scotia and 

 the Island of Anticosti, where Extensive Collections 

 of Natural History Specimens were made — Incidents 

 during the summer — begins to write the catalogue of 

 Canadian Plants — Examination of the Country along 

 the Nipigon River and Lake Nipigon, and from Nipigon 

 east along the c.p.r., then being constructed — re- 

 VIEWS Life — Collections Made for the Museum. 



MY transfer to Ottawa was to take place in the autumn of 

 1882, and I now made terms with the Government to 

 take over my herbarium, which, at this time, had in- 

 creased wonderfully, as had all the collections I had been making 

 for the last three years while on Government work. I had some 

 difficulty about the terms but it was agreed that the Govern- 

 ment would take over the herbarium, but only the flowering 

 plants. The mosses and other material were not to be paid for, 

 and I retained these, as, for many years, I had been selling sets 

 of them. This winter, in my hours of leisure, I had begun to 

 shoot small birds and get a knowledge of ornithology. A 

 young man named Woods cured the skins after I had shot the 

 birds and he eventually became the Natural History editor of the 

 Toronto Globe and died one of the leading writers on a paper in 

 Calgary. 



Early in the spring, my son, James, and I started out for a 

 trip to Western Ontario and were in London, St. Thomas and on 

 Pelee Point. The reason of my going was that Sir William Hooker 

 wrote me in 1861 that they had less information in England about 



