CHAPTER XVII 

 1893-1897 



Arranging Material for the Proposed New Museum — 

 Visits the Prairies, 1894, to Collect Specimens — Medi- 

 cine Hat, Crane Lake, Cypress Hills — Examination of 

 Southern Saskatchewan and Alberta, 1895 — Conclu- 

 sions in Regard to Drought — Collecting in Manitoba 

 and Northern Saskatchewan, 1896 — Examination of the 

 Southern Slope of the Rocky Mountains and the 

 Crow's Nest Pass, 1897 — Adventures and Amusing 

 Incidents. 



DURING the winter of 1893-94, my son, James, and I were 

 constantly mounting specimens and arranging the material 

 we had accumulated the past year, as at this time we were 

 becoming certain that we would have a new museum in a short 

 time and, therefore, the more specimens we collected, the more 

 we would have on hand for the future. My scheme of traversing 

 the whole country and collecting specimens of natural history in 

 each section of the country was now taking shape. 



I determined that William S. should go early in the spring to 

 Medicine Hat and make a collection of the birds as they came from 

 the south and I would join him there later and make a collection 

 of the plants. This we did and secured many specimens in the 

 vicinity of Medicine Hat, which I considered the warmest and 

 driest part of the North West. While we were there we heard 

 accounts of rattlesnakes and other large reptiles being found and 

 I asked the teacher if it were possible for one of his boys to get 

 me a live rattlesnake and he said he thought there was no doubt 

 but what they could and he would see what he could do in the 

 matter. Less than an hour after I had spoken to him, two boys 

 came down the street to where I was and one of them had a rattle- 

 snake and the other also had a large snake which was called a 

 bull snake. Each boy had a string round the neck of the snake 



