30 
Specimens disposed of: 
75 mounted birds, old collection, duplicates, presented by the National Museum 
of Canada, to the Museum of Fort Anne, one of the historic sites, under the 
Canadian National Parks Branch, at Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, June 9, 
1927. 
1 skin of Arctic loon, Gavia arctica pacifica, to Royal Ontario Museum of Zoology, 
Ontario, to complete their exhibition series. 
5 downy young of shore birds, red-backed sandpiper, stilt sandpiper, white- 
rumped sandpiper, Baird sandpiper, and Wilson phalarope, to Arthur C. 
Bent, Taunton, Mass., in exchange for desiderata of the same kind. 
Donation: 
150 framed pictures and 11 large diagrams, constituting the Italian Government 
educational exhibit at the World’s International Poultry Congress, held 
at Ottawa, August 1927. The pictures are mostly photographs of originals 
and water colour copies of fowls made by Ulysses Aldiovardi Bonaniensis 
(1592-1605), to which are added Middle Ages examples of fowls in art. 
The diagrams are mostly illustrating genetic descent by Professor Alessandro 
Ghigi, Department of Zoology, University of Bologna. 
As a result of field work by members of the staff, considerable additions 
have been made to the reserve study collections of mammals, birds, reptiles, 
and batrachians, and many specimens suitable for future mounting have 
been acquired. A few particularly desirable specimens have been pur- 
chased. Many valuable specimens have been obtained by gift or transfer 
from other departments, notably from the Canadian National Parks 
Branch, and the Northwest Territories Branch, of the Department of the 
Interior, and from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. 
The Canadian National Parks Branch, through the Commissioner of 
Parks, Mr. J. B. Harkin, has kindly sent in many specimens of large game, 
predatory, and fur-bearing mammals that have died from natural causes, 
or have been killed by park wardens, as well as confiscated for illegal 
trapping in the various national parks, Waterton Lakes, Yoho, and Jasper. 
The Northwest Territories and Yukon Branch has sent in several skulls 
of timber wolves and Arctic wolves from the northern districts, principally 
from the Wood Buffalo park. The Commissioner of the Royal Canadian 
Mounted Police, Colonel Cortlandt Starnes, has showed continued interest 
in the work of the Museum and has encouraged the police detachments in 
the north to send in material to the Museum, obtained on their long patrols 
in remote districts. The most notable accession secured during the year 
was a series of three skins and skulls of the small white Peary Arctic caribou, 
taken by Staff-sergeant (now Inspector) A. H. Joy, on Axel Heiberg island 
in the spring of 1927. The same detachment also sent in two complete 
skins and skulls of the white-faced musk-oxen taken on western side of 
Ellesmere island. We are also greatly indebted to Dr. Morten P. Porsild, 
director of the Danish Arctic station, at Godhavn, Greenland, for the gift 
of three fine heads of the Greenland caribou, brought down by the Canadian 
Arctic Expedition of 1927. Both of these species of caribou mentioned 
have long been desiderata in our mammal collections. 
Considerable progress has been made in identifying and arranging the 
systematic collections, particularly in botany, mammalogy, and herpet- 
ology, and a large amount of data has been assembled along these lines for 
use in reports and memoirs now in preparation, or necessary as a foundation 
for future publications. The determination of the large amounts of new 
material coming in from new districts has involved considerable study on 
