THE TECHNOLOGIST. [Sept. 1, 18C5. 
58 NATURAL CAPABILITIES OF 
peculiarities that attracts the stranger's attention. Some twenty or five- 
and-twenty varieties make up the catalogue of the animal kingdom ; 
and the individuals of each species are far from numerous in proportion 
to the enormous area they inhabit. Small, furred quadrupeds predomi- 
nate, many of them being of the most valuable kinds, such as the 
marten and the silver-fox. Besides these, there are brown and grizzly 
bears, the elk, the black-tailed deer and reindeer, mountain sheep and 
goats, panthers, and some few other varieties. Birds arc not much more 
numerous. Of these, which probably number one hundred varieties in 
all, water-fowl and birds of prey are by far the most abundant, though 
several descriptions of grouse frequent both the woods and plains. But, 
from the lack of food suitable for their support, birds of song are almost 
wholly wanting — a circumstance which, coupled with the scarcity of gay 
flora, materially heightens the natural gloom of the forests. Reptiles are 
still more rare. A few rattlesnakes are met with in the arid portions of 
the central belt, and several kinds of harmless snakes in the forest, and 
bull-frogs abound in the swamps ; but the whole colony is utterly desti- 
tute of worms. 
Travellers in British Columbia in the summer months will, however, 
all bear testimony to the abundance of insect life with which the air 
then teems. Foremost in numbers and powers of annoyance are the 
mosquitoes, which, on the subsidence of the rivers after the early 
summer floods, rise like a vast army from the earth, and invade almost 
every district in the colony. In the months of July and August these 
insects can only be described as forming a dense, humming, living cloud, 
which covers the country to a height of twenty feet above the ground. In 
the swamp-lands and along the margins of the water-courses, so multi- 
tudinous and venomous are they that horses and cattle have been known 
to die from the torment of their stings, and the loss of blood. Although 
in open country, the sun's heat and glare drive them by day to seek the 
nearest shelter, in the shade of the jungle they swarm both by night 
and day. Men and animals, alike, are thus powerfully harassed ; and 
as the most fertile lands are generally also the most infested, the mos- 
quito evil proves upon examination to be far more serious than at first 
sight appears. There are, moreover, other insect-pests, such as horse- 
flies, sand-flies, and a small, black, bloodsucking fly peculiar to high 
altitudes. House-flies are very plentiful, together with many brilliant 
varieties of butterflies, dragon-flies, and beetles. 
The territories of British Columbia, extending over a wide range of 
latitudes, and rising from the sea-level on the west to an altitude of 
10,000 feet on the east, possess a correspondingly wide range of climate. 
They will be found, however, to present a marked contrast in their 
general thermal conditions to places in corresponding latitudes on the 
eastern side of the Continent. This may be attributed, in the first place, 
to the absence of important Arctic currents on the Pacific Coast, and 
the general influence of the prevailing westerly winds — elements which 
