258 APPOINTED ASSISTANT DIRECTOR 



to put them in and, from this forward, I allowed nothing to go 

 into the museum without my permission. 



When I went to Vancouver Island in 1887, I went to make 

 observations, especially on the birds, and, in the next two years, 

 I perfected my scheme and decided to find out the lines of bird 

 migration in Canada, west of Ontario. Nothing was known 

 at this time of the habits of birds west of Lake Superior. In the 

 spring of 1890, I sent William S., early in March, to Revelstoke, 

 B.C., and he collected there the next two months. I went in 

 April and made botanical collections while my son, James M., 

 came in May and, shortly after, we went down the Columbia to 

 Deer Park and stopped there a couple of weeks making collections 

 on the Arrow Lakes. We then went by canoe down the Colum- 

 bia to Pass Creek, close to Robson, where we camped and made 

 large collections there. This being the year that the Canadian 

 Pacific Railway was building the road from Robson to Nelson, 

 there was a tote-road built between the two places and I engaged 

 pack animals to carry our stuff across to Nelson. The boys went 

 with the pack horses and I walked across to collect plants. The 

 day was very hot, over 100° in the shade, and, when I came near 

 Nelson, I was very warm and, as I was plodding along the road, 

 a man on my left called out: "Look out there! Don't you see the 

 steer?" I looked up in surprise and, behold, a mad steer was 

 plunging on my right while the men, who had been chasing it, 

 were hiding behind a fence on the other side of the road. I need 

 not say that I was startled and, without any comments, I com- 

 menced to run and escaped and got so warm with this exertion 

 that, when I reached the camp, I was unable to stand. It was 

 soon seen that I had got sunstroke and, as I collapsed at the foot 

 of a tree, my son ran down to the Kootenay river, which flowed 

 past, and got a kettle full of water and poured it on my head as 

 I sat by the tree, and the second kettle of water brought me back 

 to consciousness and I was able to sit up during the afternoon and 

 sat on the barge at the edge of the Kootenay and hung my feet 

 over the side, where they could be in the water, and remained 

 there the whole of the afternoon. 



In the morning, we were about to start for Kootenay Lake 



