9 
Administrative work, the preparation of memoranda on various subjects 
for the Director of the Museum, and the handling of a considerable mass 
of correspondence on subjects connected with the division’s activities, 
occupied most of his time during the winter. He supervised the plan of a 
report on the totem-poles of Skeena river, which is being prepared by 
Mr. Barbeau, and another on the materia medica of some British Columbia 
tribes undertaken by Mr. Smith. Professor Leonard Bloomfield, of Ohio 
University, has been forwarding various sections of a voluminous manu- 
script on the Cree Indians, the result of his field work for the division in 
1925, and these sections have been edited as they came in. An even more 
voluminous manuscript prepared by Professor T. F. Mcllwraith on the 
Indians of Bella Coola, whom he investigated through two field seasons, is 
receiving similar treatment. In such time as he could steal from these 
duties Mr, Jenness made considerable progress in the compilation of a 
Comparative Vocabulary of the western Eskimo dialects, a work for which 
he has been gathering material from the earliest days of his connexion 
with the department. 
Mr. Barbeau spent most of the winter months on an extensive mono- 
graph on the totem-poles of Skeena river. Lectures and their preparation 
consumed an appreciable amount of his time, particularly the five lectures 
which he delivered before the University of British Columbia; for this 
reason many invitations to lecture were declined. While absent on lecture 
trips he inspected the Indian collections in the McGill University and 
McCord Museums in Montreal, and in the City Museum of Vancouver. 
Much time at the office was devoted to routine work and correspondence, 
which of late years has increased considerably, and may be grouped, for 
the past fiscal year, under the following headings: consultation concerning 
the Indians or French-Can adian folk-lore, through written or verbal 
inquiries; the examination of two large manuscripts on Indian lore, sub- 
mitted by the Ryerson Press for an opinion as to their value; correspond- 
ence in connexion with the furnishing and decoration of the French-Cana- 
dian suite in the rebuilt wing of the Chateau Frontenac, Quebec, at the 
request of the Canadian Pacific railway; correspondence in connexion with 
the organization of the Folk-Song and Handicrafts Festival, held at the 
Chateau Frontenac in May, 1927, partly under the auspices of the National 
Museum; the preparation of an article on the Kihn Indian paintings, five 
of which were recently presented to the Museum by the Messrs. Southam ; 
and, in the spring of 1926, the transcription of manuscript notes (over 
sixty typewritten pages) on the architecture of some old Quebec churches, 
to assist the work planned for last summer by Professor Ramsay Traquair 
of McGill University. 
Mr. Smith, before leaving for the field, prepared a paper on “Kitchen 
Middens of the Pacific Coast of Canada” which was presented at the Pan- 
Pacific Congress in Tokio in the autumn. During the winter months he 
assembled and incorporated in his files a large body of information con- 
cerning archaeological sites in various parts of Canada. He also compiled 
a preliminary directory of Indian Handicrafts at the request of the Depart- 
ment of Indian Affairs, revised his paper on the shell-heaps of Merigomish 
harbour, N.S., wrote an article on “Saving the Totem-Poles” for the 
Canadian National railways, and prepared a paper on the materia medica 
of the Bella Coola and neighbouring tribes of British Columbia. 
