Modern Beginnings of Subarctic Ornithology, Smithsonian Institution, 1856-68

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The Modern Beginnings of Subarctic Ornithology, 1991, edited and introduced by Debra Lindsay, hardcover with dust jacket, published by the Manitoba Record Society, 226 pages.

Northern correspondence with the Smithsonian Institution, 1856-68

From the dust jacket -----

The nineteenth century was a great Age of Science. While there were a number of great theoretical breakthroughs by renowned scientists, much of the advance of scientific knowledge - parlicularly in the life sciences - occurred as a result of the careful accumulation of data and the elaboration of complex schemes of classification of information. The subarctic region of British North America was a prime target for such collection, and the scientific institutions of a number of countries competed with each other for specimens.

One of those scientific bodies collecting in northern North America was the Smithsonian Institution, established in Washington, D.C. in 1846. The Smithsonian would become a world renowned museum and research facility employing scores of scientists and technicians, but before the 1870s its efforts depended heavily upon volunteer collaborators and assistants. Its handful of resident scientists solicited specimens and data from their colleagues, from military personnel, and from private individuals. One group of collectors resided in northern North America, and their correspondence with the Smithsonian in the mid-nineteenth century forms the basis of this volume.

During this period, fur traders of the Hudson's Bay Company joined with Inuit and Athapaskan peoples to respond to the overtures of Smithsonian scientists. They were particularly attracted by the appeals of Robert Kennicolt, a young field naturalist sent north by the Institution. While the Smithsonian cast its net widely, the northerners were uniquely located to collect both resident and migratory birds, to observe mating rituals and patterns, and to identify breeding grounds and avian distribution. They did so with alacrity. They also collected thousands of the eggs so eagerly sought by American oologists, and sent hundreds of other specimens south. The numerous indigenous artifacts, vocabularies, and ethnographies found in their collections contributed substantively to the nascent social sciences of anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics.

The correspondence of the northern collectors with the Smithsonian Institution reprinted here opens a neglected window into nineteenth-century science. The letters not only provide a continuous and full account or an early effort to compile scientific data on northern North America, useful to all interested in the history or Canadian naturalists, they also contain information for those concerned with labour, social, and native history in the subarctic regions in the nineteenth century.

The contents include -----

Introduction

The Historical Context: Science in Rupert's Land Before 1859

The Letters

The Correspondents

Selected Letters from Rupert's Land to the Smithsonian Institution, 1856-1868

Appendix

This book is in a very good condition with edge wear to the cover of the book and to the upper and lower edges of the dust jacket, and with no writing or other marks in the book.

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