Frederick Hill's appreciation of the scope and value of the collection prompted him to seek my assistance in organizing this material with a view to publication. Though the Adney papers were apparently complete and were found, upon careful examination, to contain an immense amount of valuable information, they were in a highly chaotic state. At the request of The Mariners' Museum, I have assembled the pertinent papers and have compiled from Adney's research notes as complete a description as I could of bark canoes, their history, construction, decoration and use. I had long been interested in the primitive watercraft of the Americas, but I was one of those who had discontinued research on bark canoes upon learning of Adney's work. The little I had accomplished dealt almost entirely with the canoes of Alaska and British Columbia; from these I had turned to dugouts and to the skin boats of the Eskimo. Therefore I have faced with much diffidence the task of assembling and preparing the Adney papers for publication, particularly since it was not always clear what Adney had finally decided about certain matters pertaining to canoes. His notes were seldom arranged in a sequence that would enable the reader to decide which, of a number of solutions or opinions given, were Adney's final ones. Adney's interest in canoes, as canoes, was very great, but his interest in anthropology led him to form many opinions about pre-Columbian migrations of Indian tribes and about the significance of the decorations used in some canoes. His papers contain considerable discussion of these matters, but they are in such state that only an ethnologist could edit and evaluate them. In addition, my own studies lead me to conclude that the mere examination of watercraft alone is insufficient evidence upon which to base opinions as far-reaching as those of Adney. Therefore I have not attempted to present in this work any of Adney's theories regarding the origin or ethnological significance of the canoes discussed. I have followed the same practice with those Adney papers which concern Indian language, some of which relate to individual tribal canoe types and are contained in the canoe material. (Most of his papers on linguistics are now in The Peabody Museum, Salem, Massachusetts.)