In summing up the result of his explorations, Mr. McConnell stated in his report:—“At all the posts of the Hudson’s Bay Company, along the Mackenzie and its tributaries, with the exception of Fort McPherson, small plots of land are annually cultivated and large quantities of potatoes, turnips, beets and other vegetables are grown for use in the district, while at Fort Liard and Fort Providence, the two most southerly posts in the district, both wheat and barley have been tried with success. There is, however, little reason to hope that Mackenzie river district as a whole, or even the southern part of it, except in limited areas, will ever be able to support a purely agricultural community, or that its products will ever be able to compete in the open markets of the world with the produce of more favoured regions. Its agricultural development will depend on a local market being obtained. When the time comes, as come it must, when the undoubted mineral resources of the region are drawn upon, the food required by the mining population, or the greater part of it at least, can be supplied locally. The amount of arable land is small compared to the total area, and is mostly confined to the vicinity of the larger streams. Away from the rivers, frozen marshes and muskegs and shallow lakes cover the greater part of the surface. The alluvial lands along Slave river, the upper part of Mackenzie river, and the country bordering the Liard for some distance above and below Fort Liard and west of the mountains, are the best parts of the district.” CLIMATE OF MACKENZIE REGION. Mr. McConnell, in his report of his explorations of both 1887 and 1888, makes the following references to the climate along Mackenzie river:—“The warm weather which commenced at Fort Simpson on May 1, continued throughout the month, and under its influence the snow quickly disappeared, and the spring advanced with astonishing rapidity. “In the lower part of the river the ice was broken up at Fort Wrigley on May 18, at Fort Norman on May 19, and at Fort Good Hope on May 21. The ice on the river above Fort Simpson, between the mouth of the Liard and Great Slave lake, did not, however, move until after June 1.” May 31, 1888, Mr. McConnell found _Anemone patens_, the first flower of the season, in full bloom above Fort Wrigley. When Mr. McConnell left Fort Norman June 12, 1888, the trees were still leafless, but the various species of willows and birches had hung out their catkins, and the early flowering anemones and other flowers brightened the valley with colour. June 18, when Mr. McConnell left Fort Good Hope, _anemone patens_ and other early flowering plants were in bloom, but the general forest still remained leafless. THE LIARD DISTRICT.