ANDEBSON — JOHN MACOUN, 1832-1920 
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Macoun’s writings on natural history subjects, covering all parts of 
the Dominion from the Atlantic maritime provinces to the Yukon. 
Many of these are buried in the Report of Progress, Annual Reports 
and Summary Reports of the Survey from 1875 to 1915. The reports 
of earlier times particularly, when field trips were largely reconnaissance 
of virgin fields and before government publications were as specialized 
as at present, were often enlivened by much varied information of 
general interest by keen observers like Macoun. His most important 
technical papers were the Catalogue of Canadian Plants, Part I, Poly- 
petalae, 1883; Part II, Gamopetalae, 1884; Part III, Apetalae, 1886; 
Part IV, Endogens, 1888; Part V, Acrogens, 1890; Part VI, Musci, 
1892; Part VII, Lichenes and Hepaticae, 1902. 
Professor Macoun resided in Ottawa until 1912, when failing health 
caused him to move to the milder climate of British Columbia. Here 
he continued actively at work, specializing on the mosses and fungi of 
British Columbia, and up to the last months of his hfe contributed 
articles on local botany to the press. For about forty years he was 
assisted by his son, Mr. James Melville Macoun, C.M.G., F.L.S., also 
a noted naturalist and recently botanist and chief of the Biological 
Division, Geological Survey of Canada, and the work of the Macouns 
founded the National Herbarium of Canada and built it up to over 
100,000 specimens. 
The late Professor Macoun, while best known as a botanist, was one 
of the old school of naturahsts who took the whole field of natural 
science for his province. Writing of him as a field worker, one of his old 
scientific friends said in 1917, ^‘He did not do much work with the micro- 
scope, but few men have the power to do what he could with the eye. 
His power and facility to set a present percept against a remembered 
image and perceive the likenesses and differences was marvellous. 
And he can exercise the power yet.’^ In addition to his botanical 
work as naturalist of the Geological Survey from 1882, he gathered a 
collection of several thousand birds and about 2,000 mammals, before 
giving up active museum work. He was an associate member of the 
American Ornithologists’ Union from 1883 for many years. As an 
ornithologist he contributed many notes to the old Ottawa Naturalist^ 
and his best known work was the Catalogue of Canadian Birds, Part 
I, Water Birds, Galhnaceous Birds and Pigeons, 1900; Part II, Birds 
of Prey, Woodpeckers, Flycatchers, Crows, Jays and Blackbirds, 1903; 
and Part III, Sparrows, Swallows, Vireos, Warblers, Wrens, Titmice 
and Thrushes, 1904. As this contained most of the published refer- 
