BIRDS OF NORTH-WESTERN CANADA. 45 



importunity and determination to make the most of a handy- 

 guest; so that he was induced to linger through June and July 

 at Dalesbro', devoting only a portion of his time to scientific 

 work. Dalesbro' is surrounded by an endless succession of 

 rolling prairies, redeemed from utter sterility by a plentiful 

 growth of coarse grasses, which attain their greatest profusion 

 on the banks of the sloughs. These sloughs or ponds are 

 generally fringed with a small species of poplar, which would 

 doubtless assume more pretentious dimensions were it not for the 

 frequent recurrence of prairie fires. On the 17th day of August, 

 1891, Mr. Thorpe left Dalesbro' for the Souris River, accompanied 

 by a "hired man," a young Englishman named Holmes, who 

 proved to be an excellent fellow, and made himself extremely 

 useful. 



When the Souris coal-fields were reached, the landscape 

 became picturesque and varied ; coal fires — and subsidences due 

 to such fires — having here transformed the crust of the prairie 

 into a region of large ravines and intervening table-lands. After 

 leaving the Souris coal-fields, the party followed the trail to a 

 police settlement called Wood End, where alkaline sloughs and 

 creeks became numerous, while extensive morasses surrounded 

 lakes of considerable size. Many of Mr. Thorpe's most in- 

 teresting notes were made here, on the shores of a lake which is 

 represented on our chart, but without a name being assigned: 

 for purposes of convenience, I have entitled it the " Nameless 

 Lake " in this paper. 



Mr. Thorpe returned to Dalesbro' on Sept. 27th, and remained 

 there until the beginning of December. He proposes to return 

 to the North-West for collecting purposes early in the spring of 

 1893. Cordial thanks for assistance rendered are due to Mr. 

 Ernest E. Thompson, whose 'Birds of Manitoba' has proved of 

 great assistance, and the arrangement and nomenclature of his 

 book are chiefly adopted in this paper. — H. A. Macpherson.] 



American Eared Grebe, Colymbus nigricollis calif ornic us. — 

 This species was numerous in autumn on the Nameless Lake, 

 and both young and mature specimens were shot. The gizzard 

 of one of these contained two small fishes entire. 



Pied-billed Grebe, Podilymbus podiceps. — The only example 

 met with was killed with a rifle on Long Creek. Though shot 



