and covered with moss. As soon as the timber is cut off a muskeg the moss dies, the frost comes out of the ground, and gardens can be cultivated. The trees throw out their leaves in Mackenzie basin about the middle of May, before the ice goes out of the river. The year Mr. Bredin was there the ice went out of the Mackenzie at Fort Wrigley on May 23, and the trees were all out in leaf before that time. On Mackenzie river the trees leaf out almost in a few hours. The quickness with which the leaves appear on the trees in the spring is simply marvellous. Mr. Bredin was never up Liard valley, but heard a great deal about it at Fort Simpson, and he had seen the journals of the Hudson’s Bay Company that were kept at Fort Liard, two hundred miles up Liard river. From these sources he gathered that they raised all the cereals there, such as wheat, oats and barley, as well as all the vegetables of the commoner varieties. Mr. Bredin informed the committee that the spring he was at Fort Wrigley the months of March and April were the finest he ever saw. He was there just one spring, and it was as pleasant weather as he ever saw in his native province of Ontario, for those two months, while the winters were no worse than he had seen them in Manitoba. Mackenzie river closed on November 19 that year and there was a little snow then—and it lasted until March. Practically all the snow went off the latter part of March. Mr. Edward A. Preble of the United States Biological Survey (See p. 22), speaking of his trip down the Mackenzie in 1904, states that the country about Fort Providence is level and is mainly grown up to poplars (_Populus tremuloides_). Back from the river are many muskegs, with their characteristic tamarack and spruce forests. The Roman Catholic mission established is now one of the largest in the north. The Hudson’s Bay Company’s post was established there in 1868, and the post at Big island was abandoned. Both establishments cultivate large fields of potatoes and the various root crops. Mr. Preble reports that on June 17, below Fort Norman, a small quantity of snow fell. On June 21, at Fort Good Hope, the leaves on most of the trees were about half grown. On the same date the sun was visible at midnight from a low hill near the post, and many birds were in full song at that hour. For the next three weeks, north of this point, the sun was continually above the horizon. Vegetation now advanced rather faster than Mr. Preble’s rate of travel northward, but was not at its height when he reached the delta of the Mackenzie on June 30. UNITED STATES OFFICIAL REPORT.