: ;PREFAGE 



The series' of reports of which this is Volume XIII and the fourth complete 



volume to be issued, wiU give the narrative and scientific results of the Cana- 



-dian Arctic Expedition; IQlSi-lS. The expedition, under the command of Mr. 



Vilhjalmur StefansBon;was originally planned to remain in the field from 1913 



to 1916, and earlier publications refer to it as the Canadian Arctic Expedition, 



.1913-16. 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 Depart- 



■ment 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 fi'om 1913 to 1918 under the immediate supervision of 

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

 cularly 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 scien- 

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

 have been briefly given in various 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 pub- • 

 lished, an Arctic Biological Committee was appointed jointly by the Depart- 

 ment of the Naval Service and the Department of Mines in January, 1917. 

 This committee consisted of Chairman, ProfessorJE. 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.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, Domi- 

 nion Entomologist and Consulting Zoologist of the Department of Agriculture; 

 and R. M. Anderson, Ph.D., Zoologist of the Geological Survey (later Chief, 

 Division of Biology, Victoria Memorial Museum), 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 over seven years and reports have 

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

 had virtually finished his work on Volume III (Insects) before his untimely 

 death on February 29, 1920, but Mr. Macoun had not completed 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 geological, topographical, 

 and anthropological work of the expedition and three new members were added 

 in 1920, naimely A. G. Huntsman, F.R.S.C, Ph.D., of the Biological Board of 

 Canada; Edward Sapir, F.R.S.C, Ph.D., Chief of the Division of Anthropo- 

 logy, Victoria Memorial Museum; and M. O. Malte, Ph.D., Dominion Agros- 

 tologist and Honorary Curator (later Chief Botanist) of the National Herba- 

 rium. 



