294 THEOUGH THE MACKENZIE BASIN 



twenty-five miles from the post. The nest was a shallow 

 cavity thereon, with a scanty lining of decayed leaves, and 

 at a distance of several yards from the shore. The parents 

 of both were seen and fired at. Another nest containing a 

 freshly-laid egg, similarly situated and 'built a few feet from 

 the beach on a larger sheet of water, was brought to him 

 by an Indian hunter, who saw the mother — a great black- 

 biUed loon. Mr. Angus Mcintosh, the Hudson's Bay Com- 

 pany's trader at the north end of Lake Babine, B.C., in the 

 end of May, 1889, set a snare which secured a female bird 

 on her nest of two eggs, placed on a small rocky islet on a 

 neighbouring lake. Three eggs were also obtained near 

 Cumberland House, lower Saskatchewan Kiver, in the spring 

 of 1890, and several birds were shot at Moose Lake Post, 

 and sent to me by Mrs. William C. King, of the same Com- 

 pany, Cumberland District. A male example, shot at Eond 

 du Lac, Great Slave Lake, was secured by the late Mr. 

 James Elett, of Fort Resolution, in June, 1885, and it was 

 duly forwarded to Dr. Eobert Bell, of the Dominion Geolog- 

 ical Survey at Ottawa. Fort Anderson also furnished the 

 Smithsonian Institution at Washington with the eggs of 

 nine nests of this species some forty years ago. They were 

 then noted as being abundant on the shores of Franklin Bay. 



Mr. Macoun states that " nearly every small lake through- 

 out the country, except in the prairie region, is tenanted in 

 summer by a pair or more of these birds, and the larger lakes 

 by many pairs. All the members of the Geological Survey 

 of Canada staff who have found loons' nests agree with 

 MacFarlane that they lay only two eggs and that no nest is 

 built, ibut a small depression made in the gravel close to the 

 waters of the lake. In the Laurentian country the eggs are 

 always placed on greenish gravel, and are hard to see. In 

 two cases only have nests been found on rock, and these were 

 close to the water." 



The Ottawa Museum collection contains but two males 

 and two sets of eggs of two each of this species ! 



