PREFACE 



The series of report^ of which this is Volume XII and the first complete 

 volume to be issued, will give the narrative and scientific results of the Canadian 

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

 Vilhjalmur Stefansson, was originally planned to remain in the field from 1913 

 to 1916 and many earlier publications refer to it as the Canadian Arctic Expe- 

 dition, 1913-16. Although many members of the scientific staff were ofl&cers 

 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 imme- 

 diate supervision of Mr. V. Stefansson. The work of the Southern Party was 

 confined more particularly 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 Govern- 

 ment 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 

 committee 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; 

 Professor A. B. Macallum, F.R.S., 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, D.Sc, Dominion Entom- 

 ologist 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 different sections, and Dr. R. M. Anderson was appointed general 

 editor of the reports. 



The Committee has been at work for nearly five 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 onJanuary 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, Ph.D., of the Biological Board 

 of Canada; Edward Sapir, Ph.D., Chief of 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 



