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Quadrapeds of North America
Introduction
The Montreal Natural History Society (MNHS) was founded in Montreal in 1827. At its founding the MNHS was the first important natural history society in Canada. The founding Council was interested in furthering the study of natural history in Canada and in the Montreal area which was then one of Canada’s largest and fastest growing cities. By 1830 the MNHS had 25 honorary members, 93 ordinary members and 70 corresponding members, 48 in Canada, and 32 in America and Europe. By the late 1820s the Society had formed the largest natural history museum in Canada. It also called for essays on original Canadian natural history research for which they offered a Silver Medal. The first essay topic they chose was the Quadrupeds of Canada.
Charles Fothergill’s paper which he entitled Essay Descriptive of the Quadrupeds of British North America was awarded the Society’s first Silver Medal in 1830. The original hand-written copy of Quadrupeds was never published. Eventually the MNHS copy of the manuscript was donated to the Blacker-Wood Library of Ornithology at McGill University. A microfilm copy was made for the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library (TFRBL)at the University of Toronto. The Fisher Library holds virtually all the original unpublished Charles Fothergill materials in its Manuscript Collection #140. Charles Fothergill’s own copy of Quadrupeds has never been found.
The Montreal Natural History Society did not publish any papers written and submitted in the early years of its existence. As a result Fothergill’s Quadrupeds remained unknown to naturalists during the 1840s and 1850s, the foundation years for Canadian and American natural history institutions.
Quadrupeds forms only a part of the mammal writings of Charles Fothergill. Fothergill emigrated to Canada from England in 1816, and settled in southern Ontario in 1817. He set down in his many unpublished manuscripts extensive notes on the birds, mammals, herps and plants of his adopted country. Unfortunately, on his death in 1840, his manuscripts and artwork on natural history were divided among family members and lost from public view. They were unknown to the key young Toronto-born naturalist and ornithologist, William Allan, and to the newly-arrived English immigrant naturalists and ornithologists who founded Toronto’s natural history museums in the late 1840s and early 1850s.
Most of Fothergill’s Quadrupeds relates to wild animals. Perhaps a fifth of the manuscript contains passages on domestic animals including horses, sheep, oxen, goats and dogs which likely hold little interest to contemporary Canadian naturalists. When reading Fothergill’s species accounts readers will see considerable speculation about the validity of the species and lack of knowledge of their ranges. This is a product of the knowledge of mammals at that time and the fact that Fothergill did not travel outside of southern Ontario. To complete his work he relied extensively on his contacts with many prominent men known to him in Upper and Lower Canada. He also relied on personal discussions with contemporary explorers, hunters and fur traders. Some of his sources supplied him with information which was inaccurate or erroneous. One must see Quadrupeds as a time-piece, what one educated naturalist, working in the relative isolation of Toronto, knew about the mammals of Canada.
I have transcribed Quadrupeds in its entirety, verbatim, with no editorial changes except to occasionally provide slightly better sentence structure, and introduce occasional paragraphs to improve the flow of the text. There are some instances where I have not been able to decipher Fothergill’s words or may have misunderstood his meaning. In a few places readers will find where I have indicated the words are unclear or missing. In these cases I am of course entirely responsible for any errors in the transcription. Readers will notice numbers at the beginning of sections of text. These refer to the original page numbers which in the Fothergill manuscript appear at the bottom of the page. Page numbers have been added for those who may want to examine the hand-written version.
In a second paper I have combined Fothergill’s writings on wild animals in Quadrupeds with all of his many interesting mammal writings from his Clendenan (TFRBL 140:25) and MacGillivray TFRBL 140:20) manuscripts. This work forms a separate volume entitled Mammals of Canada 1840 found elsewhere under Fothergill on this website. These amalgamated Fothergill mammal writings are compiled under each species and placed in modern taxonomic order in the same manner. A third paper, a companion volume, prepared in the same manner as the preceding, combing all of Fothergill’s ornithological writings entited Birds of Upper Canada 1840 will also be found under Fothergill on this website.
Fothergill’s mammal writings are an important component of early Canadian natural history next in importance to John Richardson’s Fauna Boreali Americana, Volume One: Zoology (1829) and a scientific article by Anthony Gapper Observations on the Quadrupeds found in the district of Upper Canada extending between York and Lake Simcoe, with the view of illustrating their geographical distribution, as well as describing some Species hitherto unnoticed. in the Zoological Journal of London. (1830)
Fothergill did not provide a proper Table of Contents or Index for Quadrupeds. To provide better access to this volume I have created both. The Table of Contents, which shows the families of mammals in order of presentation, is immediately here under. I also include a detailed Index, based on the Table, to provide easier access to individual species accounts. This will be found at the end.
Jeff Harrison
Montreal
2020