Eighteenth-Century Naturalists of Hudson Bay (McGill-Queen's Native and Northern) [Hardcover]

Stuart Houston (Author), Tim Ball (Author), Mary Houston (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0773522859 | ISBN-13: 978-0773522855 | Publication Date: October 23, 2003

Where Peter Newman's best-selling trilogy captured the essence of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) as a business empire, "Eighteenth-Century Naturalists of Hudson Bay" presents the scientific achievements of the company's early employees, drawing largely on materials in the HBC Winnipeg archives. C. Stuart Houston, Tim Ball, and Mary Houston make amends for two centuries of neglect of these collector-observers, showing that fur traders in isolated trading posts on Hudson Bay were involved in some of the earliest stirrings of science on the continent and that the fur traders and Native people worked together in a remarkable symbiosis, beneficial to both parties. The authors show that meteorologic data and weather information recorded at the HBC trading posts over two centuries provide the largest and longest consecutive series available anywhere in North America, one that can help us understand the mechanisms and amount of climate change. They demonstrate that Hudson Bay is the second largest site of new bird species named by Linnaeus and reproduce some of George Edwards' colour paintings of these new species. Six informative appendices reveal how the invaluable HBC archives were transferred from London, England, to Winnipeg, correct previous misinterpretations of the collaboration and relative contributions of Thomas Hutchins and Andrew Graham, use two centuries of HBC fur returns to demonstrate the ten-year hare and lynx cycles, tell how the swan trade almost extirpated the Trumpeter Swan, explain how the Canada Goose got its name before there was a Canada, and offer an extensive list of eighteenth-century Cree names for birds, mammals, and fish.Informative tables list the eighteenth-century surgeons at York Factory and give names and dates for the annual supply ships.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This wonderful book is a labour of love - it calls attention to a forgotten chapter in Canadian history by reviewing the accomplishments of a handful of men associated with the Hudson Bay Company, and it does that superbly. It is a work of great scholarship." J.R. Jehl, Hubbs-Sea World Research Institute

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Mcgill Queens Univ Pr (October 23, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0773522859
• ISBN-13: 978-0773522855
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,730,744 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A real labor of love, December 17, 2004

By 

John Anderson (Bar Harbor, ME USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Eighteenth-Century Naturalists of Hudson Bay (McGill-Queen's Native and Northern) (Hardcover)

This delightful book examines a fascinating group of people and a truly amazing place that most of us have never paid attention to. With this carefully researched, lavishly illustrated (including 8 beautifully rendered colour prints of paintings by early bird artists that almost belong framed on the wall rather than hidden in the book)and heavily footnoted (over 20 PAGES of references!) book, Houston, Ball & Houston have gone a long way to shedding light on a forgotten era upon which many of our contemporary ideas in ecology have been based.

The stage is enormous: thousands of square miles of some of the barrenest land in the Western Hemisphere. The cast is fascinating: a band of explorer/naturalist/businessmen who carve out the great fur empire of the Hudson's Bay Company while at the same time keeping meticulous notes of everything from bird-life to temperatures. The authors move us along through both the biology, geography, and history at a good pace & provide some fun insights in appendices like "How did the Canada Goose get its name before there was a Canada?" and "Cree names for Natural History species". If you are the sort of biologist who is intrigued by details and/or want some real insight into a remarkable chapter in the history of the biology of North America, this book is for you!

5.0 out of 5 stars 18th Century Naturalists Extraordinaire, August 19, 2011

By 

Gerald T. Westbrook "GTW" (Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Eighteenth-Century Naturalists of Hudson Bay (McGill-Queen's Native and Northern) (Hardcover)

Eighteenth Century Naturalists Extraordinaire
I started to think about my various inputs on Hudson Bay when I was reading a book that I received on Fatherfs Day. It was entitled THE NATURAL WORLD, by Thomas D. Mangelson, with forward by Jane Goodall. It included a magnificent chapter on Hudson Bay. It also reminded me about another book that I had bought sometime ago. It took me awhile to find it. I have about a dozen places where I put my books, and early this year I gave away about five plastic bags full of books to our church library. However, I finally found the book I was looking for, and it was a gem. It was entitled: Eighteenth- Century Naturalists of Hudson Bayh, by Stuart Houston, Tim Ball and Mary Houston.

Now unlike my last review on Valley Forge, this book has a Table of contents and an Index. Indeed it has just about every possible aid to the prospective reader one could imagine. Perhaps the most unique and beautiful of these are the eight Color Plates of birds found on, or near, or coupled in some fashion to the Hudson Bay Company (HBC), namely:
(a)a Great Blue Heron,
(b)the Whooping Crane,
(c)a Blue Goose (Blue morph of Snow Goose),
(d)a Willow Ptarmigan in summer plumage,
(f)a Northern Harrier,
(g)the Surf Scoter,
(h)a Red-necked Phalarope,
(j)and the Hudsonian Godwit.

With this as an introduction I will limit my comments to two Chapters and one Appendix.


(1) Chapter 10 - Natural history. In this chapter we see a continuation of the love and respect of the bird species by the uneducated fur traders of the HBC settlement. Facing almost insufferable conditions, these traders collected specimens of nineteen species and nine sub-species.. These are documented in an eight page table in this chapter.

(2) Chapter 11- Climatology. This chapter starts out reporting that gweather is known to have cycled for over 700,000 years. Weather cycles have been one of my favorite subjects on weather. I have developed a list, over the past 20 or so years, of over 75 cycles on weather or related subjects. In my book: How Green Are the Gorons? (iUniverse 01/07/2011), I have six entries in my Index. In particular see NOTE 16.
There are many sections in this chapter worthy of comment, such as:
(a) The Development of World Meteorology;
(b) The Climate of Hudson Bay;
(c) The HBCfs Weather Records, including a map of 30 HBC Posts with wether records of more than 30 years. These posts ranged as far inland as Fort Norman in the North West Territories.

I have chosen the first of these as it continues the examination of key cycles. It includes a figure showing global climate change from 900 AD to 1950, including the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age (1560 to 1830 AD). It also shows a listing of eight shorter periods, as summarized below.

No. Name of Period Time, AD
1 Medieval Warm Period 700 - 1300
2 gSporer Minimumh 1300 - 1500
3 Brief Climatic Warming 1500 - 1560
4 gLittle Ice Ageh (gMaunder Minimumh) 1560 - 1830
5 Brief Warmer Period 1830 - 1870
6 Brief Cooler Period 1870 - 1910
7 Brief Warmer Period 1910 - 1940
8 Brief Cooler Period 1940 - 1980

The Maunder Minimum period has been one of special interest to me. I have written on this subject in my first book: Acid Rains on Liberal Propaganda. (iUniverse /12/9/2004). The following is from Chapter 10 - The Hockey Stick, The Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warming Period:

On March 6, 1716, the Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights, returned to England. Few, if any, had ever seen this phenomenon as it had been absent from these skies for over 70 years, since 1645 AD. gFrightened servants thronged the street convinced that the day of judgment had arrived.h Scientists now know this was the end of the Maunder Minimum, a period where sunspots on the surface of the sun virtually disappeared. Without these sunspots and the magnetic activity and the solar wind that came with them, the Northern Lights disappeared.

(3) Appendix D - HBC's Fur Catchers demonstrate Ten Year Cycles. This appendix continues our emphasis on unique climate cycles. It starts out as follows: Canada has been front and center in the study of one of the most perplexing problems in biology. The process began through the use of HBC data, dating back as far as 1736 and summarized in table form as far back as 1752. It is a captivating story. Figure D.1 highlights a key example: HBC lynx returns 1820 - 1934. This cycle has a mean length of 9.6 years.