As the specimens obtained on Sir John Franklin’s two Expeditions
furnish almost the whole of our authentic information of the Ornithology
of the interior of the Fur-countries, it remains that I should
add to the preceding brief notice of the sources of our knowledge of
the feathered tribes that frequent the coast line of Arctic America
a few remarks on the circumstances under which the collections were
made. The reader will thus be better enabled to form some opinion
on the proportion which the species described in this work bear to
the whole that frequent the Fur-countries.
In the first place, I have to state that, in neither Expedition, did
Ornithology occupy much of our attention. The want of means of
transport for bulky packages in the overland marches, and the difficulty
of preserving from injury recent specimens of birds, on the numerous
carrying places which occur oh the canoe route, induced us to devote
the whole of our spare time during the journey to Botany and Mineralogy.
As the entire summer of each year was spent in travelling,
we did not reach our winter quarters until after almost all the migratory
birds had retired to the southward. Nothing could, therefore,
be done beyond securing examples of the few resident birds, until
the following spring, when the interval of a month or six weeks, which
occurred between the first melting of the snow and the commencement
of the summer journey, was devoted almost exclusively to
collecting birds. Many of the specimens were shot by the other officers,
but they were all prepared by Mr. Drummond or myself.
The collection made on the first Expedition was formed in the several
springs of 1820, 21, and 22, on the Saskatchewan, at Fort Enterprise,
and on Great Slave Lake respectively; and in the autumn of 1822, at
York Factory (lat. 57°), Hudson’s Bay. We arrived at the latter place
on the 14th of July; and betwixt that date and our departure for
England, in the beginning of September, we had an opportunity of
consulting the museums under their charge, and the desire they have constantly manifested of furthering
my researches by every means in their power. I am, likewise, under many obligations for
similar kindnesses to the Governor, Deputy-Governor, and Committee of the Hudson’s Bay Company,
and. to Mr. Smith, their Secretary ; and also to William Yarrell, Esq., and Mr. Leadbeater,
for the liberal access they have given me to their collections.
obtaining a very considerable number of birds, chiefly waders, which
assemble in flocks at the mouth of Hayes River, previous to taking
their departure southwards on the setting in of the frost*. Mr.
Sabine, who wrote the Zoological Appendix to the Narrative of that
Expedition, notices seventy-one species of birds. Want of leisure,
however, caused him to omit several of the waders, and a portion
of the collection never reached him, being lost after its arrival in
England.
On the second Expedition specimens of birds were collected at
Fort Franklin, on Great Bear Lake, in the spring of 1826, between
the 8th of May and 14th of June, being the periods of the first
arrival of the migratory birds and the commencement of our voyage
to the coast; and, in 1827, the months of April and May and one-half
of June were devoted to the same purpose at Carlton and Cumberland
House, on the banks of the Saskatchewan. Having the able assistance
of Mr. Drummond in the latter period, the bulk of the collection was
then formed. Mr. Drummond also shot two or three species on the
declivity of the Rocky mountains that were not seen elsewhere; and
a very few were prepared in the course of our summer journeys.
It is evident, from the short time allotted to the task, that we
could hope to obtain only the more common birds. The Prince of
Musignano enumerates a somewhat greater number of species in his
Synopsis of American Birds, than those contained in Temminck’s
Manual of European Ornithology; and as the country we traversed
north of the Great Lakes exceeds in extent the whole of Europe lying
higher than the forty-eighth degree of latitude, we shall not, perhaps,
err greatly in ascribing to the Fur-countries as great a variety as
Europe presents within the same parallels.
The present work contains two hundred and forty species, and
above twenty-seven in addition are described by Pennant and Vigors
* This was the only autumn collection made on either Expedition, and we regret that we have not
been able to avail ourselves of it, so much as we could have wished, in drawing up the present work.
Exclusive of the specimens above alluded to as having been entirely lost, many were destroyed by
moths in London ; and the only portion of the collection which I can now trace are forty specimens,
which were presented to the Museum of the University of Edinburgh, and are still in good order.