6 Museum. Notes

There are various other matters that might be mentioned, but one must suffice.
Lord’s experience with the mosquitoes of Sumas has already been quoted. He adds:
“I brought home specimens, of course; and I am by no means sure I feel any great
pleasure in finding my foe to be of a new species, but it is, and named Culex pinguis,
because it was fatter and rounder than any of its known brethren.” In this connec-
tion, Mr. Eric Hearle, of the Dominion Entomological Branch, who worked for several
years on the mosquito problems of the Fraser Valley, writes me as follows: “Culex
pimguis, it turns out, is really Culiseta Impatiens Walker, which was described some
18 years before the publication of Lord’s paper. Jmpatiens is one of the largest of
mosquitoes, and one of the most harmless. The two species of major importance in
the Fraser are very small, and in spite of their numbers eluded all the early collectors.”

I do not think that Lord actually described and named this mosquito. In fact,
with the exception of two mammals, the Osoyoos musk-rat (Fiber osoyoosensis) and
a small whistler (Lagomys minimus), all his collections appear to have been turned
over to specialists. In the appendix to the “Naturalist,’ where the full list of his
collections is given, it is named Culex. pinguis. Walk. So if Lord caught the wrong
culprit, Walker failed to recognize his own species. Such is the disturbing effect of
mosquitoes !

Lord had a number of species named in his honour, but they are mostly inverte-
brates, little known except to specialists, and whether they are still valid I do not
know. A supposedly new species of charr, caught in a stream running into the Fraser,
near Hope, was named Fario Lordit by Gunther, but the name does not appear in
Halkett’s “Check List of Canadian Fishes,” 1913. It would, no doubt, be interesting
to a person with access of a good library, and the occasional guidance of specialists,
to see how many of the new species described from Lord’s collections are still recog-
nized. However, since their determination was made by others, it matters little to his
reputation whether or not they have fallen by the wayside.

It is hardly necessary to add that Lord does not rank with that small band of great
naturalists, of whom Darwin, Wallace and Bates were contemporary examples—how
many do? His place is rather with the collector and populariser than with the scientific
investigator. It seems certain, however, that he was a man of engaging personality,
with a wide knowledge of living things, who did valuable work in his own field. Partly
from its own merits, and partly through accident, the “Naturalist in B. C.” will prob-

ably always retain its interest to students of either the history, or the natural history,
of Ba SG

Mr. D. H. Elliott has kindly brough to my notice, in addition to a
number of Lord’s fugitive pieces, the following obituary note, in the
“Leisure Hour” for 1874, by the Rev. W. B. Crickmer, which has a
double interest. Mr. Crickmer, having come out from England with
Col. Moody, built the first Protestant Church on the mainland at Fort
Langley (Derby), and preached the first sermon there on May 13th,
1859.

J.W.E.

It was with much emotion that my eye fell upon the admirable portrait of the above
noble man and high-class naturalist, in the November number of the “Leisure Hour.”
Mr. Frank Buckland’s sparkling and hearty sketch of his life and character is not
overdrawn, I have reason to affirm from what I knew and heard of Mr. Lord when
myself out in British Columbia in 1858. He was naturalist to the British half of the
Boundary Commission. In those early days we all of us lived a genuine Robinson