IV PREFACE. 



only. The second edition of this work was published in 1894 and 

 included 317 species. The Birds of Manitoba, by E. T. Seton, was 

 published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1891, and, as its name 

 implies, covered little more than that province. Mr. C. E. Dionne, 

 of Quebec, published a catalogue of the birds of that province, with 

 notes on their geographical distribution, m^iSSg, and in 1896 Mr. 

 Ernest D. Wintle published in Montreal a valuable little work 

 entitled Birds of Montreal. Mr. John Fannin, the curator of the 

 Provincial Museum in Victoria, British Columbia, published a 

 Catalogue of the Birds of British Columbia, the second edition of 

 which was issued in 1898. In this catalogue he included his own 

 extensive knowledge and that of all other observers in the province. 

 Since then a new edition of this Catalogue has been published by 

 Mr. Kermode the present curator of the museum. While others were 

 engaged in gathering and publishing the valuable information con- 

 tained in the above mentioned works and others of less importance, 

 the writer although attending to other subjects which claimed most 

 of his time had constantly before him the necessity of the present 

 work and has been collecting notes and observations for it during 

 all his journeys since 1879, while his assistant, Mr. J. M. Macoun, 

 has carried on similar work since 1885. The summers of 1879 and 

 1880 were spent by the writer on the prairies west of Manitoba, the 

 season of 1881 in northern Manitoba, the summers of 1882 and 1883 

 along the lower St. Lawrence, that of 1884 around Lake Nipigon, 

 of 1885 in the Rocky and Selkirk mountains on the line of the 

 Canadian Pacific railway, of 1887 on Vancouver Island and of 1888 

 on Prince Edward Island. Mr. J. M. Macoun spent the early spring 

 and summer of 1885 at Lake Mistassini and in 1888 travelled from 

 Lesser Slave Lake east by way of the Athabaska and Churchill 

 rivers to Lake Winnipeg. The notes for the years mentioned above 

 appear under our own names. Practically all observations made 

 by either of us since that time are credited to Mr. William Spread- 

 borough, who since 1889 has accompanied either one or other of us 

 to the field nearly every year and as all the collecting was done by 

 him some confusion and repetition has been obviated by the inclusion 

 of our own observations with his and by the omission of our names 

 for the years he was with us. In some years, notably in 1896, 

 1898, 1904, 1906 and 1907, Mr. Spreadborough worked quite inde- 

 pendently of either of us. It detracts nothing from the importance 

 of other notes published for the first time in this Catalogue to say 

 that its chief value is to be found in the matter credited to Mr. 



