PREFACE 



The series of reports of which this is Volume III and the second com) tide 

 volume to be issued, will give the narrative and scientific results of tin- ( 'anadian 

 Arctic Expedition, 1913-18. The expedition, under the command of .Mr. Yilhjal- 

 mur Stefansson, was originally planned to remain in the field from 1913 to 1 '.!;, 

 and earlier publications refer to it as the Canadian Arctic Expedition, 191 :>-!>. 

 Although many members of the scientific staff were officers of the Geological 

 Survey of the Department of Mines, the general direction of the expedition 

 for administrative purposes was placed in the hands of the Department of the 

 Naval Service. 



As the expedition was planned to work in two comparatively distinct fields 

 at some distance from each other, it was divided into two parties. The Northern 

 Party, whose field was primarily the Beaufort sea and the Arctic archipelago, 

 remained in the field from 1913 to 1918 under the immediate supervision of 

 Mr. V. Stefansson. The work of the Southern Party was confined more par- 

 ticularly to the Arctic mainland and the adjacent islands, under the direction 

 of Dr. R. M. Anderson, and returned in the autumn of 1916. General accounts 

 of the work of the two main parties and subsidiary parties, rosters of the scientific 

 staffs and a portion of their contributions to the results of the expedition have 

 been given in summary reports to the Government and in popular narrative 

 and will be summed up in the forthcoming Volume I of this series. 



In order to have the scientific results of the expedition properly worked 

 up, the specimens distributed to specialists, and the reports adequately published, 

 an Arctic Biological Committee was appointed jointly by the Department of 

 the Naval Service and the Department of Mines in January, 1917. This com- 

 mittee consisted of Chairman, Professor E. E. Prince, F.R.S.C., D.Sc., Dominion 

 Commissioner of Fisheries; Secretary, James M. Macoun, C.M.G., F.L.S., 

 Botanist and Chief of the Biological Division of the Geological Survey; Pro- 

 fessor A. B. Macallum, F.R.S.C., M.D., D.Sc., Ph.D., LL.D., Chairman of the 

 Commission for Scientific and Industrial Research (later professor of bio-chemistry 

 at McGill University) ; C. Gordon Hewitt, F.R.S.C., D.Sc., Dominion Entomologist 

 and Consulting Zoologist of the Department of Agriculture; and R. M. Anderson, 

 Ph.D., Zoologist of the Geological Survey, representing the expedition and the 

 Victoria Memorial Museum, the final depository of the specimens collected by 

 the expedition. Various members of the committee took up the editing of differ- 

 ent sections, and Dr. R. M. Anderson was appointed general editor of the reports. 



The Committee has been at work for nearly six years and reports have 

 been prepared or are in preparation by seventy-three specialists. Dr. Hewitt 

 had fortunately practically completed his work on Volume III (Insects) before 

 his untimely death on February 29, 1920, but Mr. Macoun had not finished 

 his work on the botanical volumes at the time of his death on January 6, 1920. 

 The scope of the committee was later enlarged to include the geographical, 

 topographical, and anthropological work of the expedition and three new 

 members were added in 1920, namely A. G. Huntsman, F.R.S.C., Ph.D., of the 

 Biological Board of Canada; Edward Sapir, F.R.S.C., Ph.D., Chief <f the 

 Division of Anthropology, Victoria Memorial Museum; and M.O. Malte, Ph.D., 

 Dominion Agrostologist and Honorary Curator (later Chief Botanist) of the 

 National Herbarium. 



For convenience in publication and distribution it was arranged that the 

 Department of the Naval Service should issue Volumes I (Narrative of the 

 Expedition), VI, VII, VIII, IX, and X (Marine Biology and Hydrography), 

 and XII (The Life of the Copper Eskimos), while the Department of Mines 



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