404 THKOUGH THE MAOKEl^ZIE BASIIs' 



of coarse wiry grass stems and softly lined witli feathers of 

 Lagopus. The eggs, five in number, have the ground colour 

 light umber drab, faintly blotched v?ith deeper livid slate 

 and with a few straggling black lines, much as in certain 

 Ideridce and in Chondestes. They measured 0.86 of an 

 inch in length by 0.63 in breadth. In 1826 the crops of 

 several birds killed at Eort Franklin, Great Bear Lake, 

 latitude 65° 30' north, in the beginning of May, were filled 

 with the seeds of ArctostapJiylos alpina. 



The Ottawa Museum holds twenty-one specimens aud 

 six sets of eggs, including one of five taken by Captain A. 

 Murray, in 1896, in Repulse Bay, Hudson Bay. 



537. Smithy's LowGSPUE — Calcarius pictus (Swains.). 



A male bird shot near Fort Providence in April, 1894, 

 was forwarded to Dr. Bell. This species has been taken by 

 Mr. Strachan Jones at Fort Yukon, but there is no other 

 record of its having been taken in Alaska. It also breeds 

 abundantly on the slopes of the Caribou Hills, eighty miles 

 south of the Arctic coast, west of the Mackenzie Eiver delta. 

 Here Bishop Stringer found several nests in June, 1897. 

 They were built on the ground in grassy hummocks, and 

 contained from four to six eggs in each, which somewhat 

 resemble eggs of the Lapland longspur, except that they 

 have a paler groixnd colour. Ten nests before Mr. Raine 

 were all made of dry grass and well lined with feathers. 

 We, however, found this louajpur very abundant in the 

 country to the eastward of Fort Anderson, in the Barren 

 Grounds, and in the lower Anderson valley. These several 

 localities yielded an aggregate of one hundred and fifty 

 nests. They were all on the ground, and usually in open 

 spaces or plains, but some were also placed in the vicinity 

 of trees. The average number of eggs was four, occasionally 

 three and as many as five. The nests were constructed 

 of fine dry grasses, carefully arranged and lined with down, 

 feathers or finer material similar to those of the outer por- 



