THE annual report for 1936-37 of the National Museum of Canada marks good progress, particularly in the resumption of field investigations. During the summer of 1936, field parties were engaged in biological work on the Pacific coast, ornithological investigations in Manitoba, a special biological survey of Thelon Game Sanctuary, botanical surveys in Ontario and the Arctic, archæological excavations in Ontario and the Arctic, anthropological studies of French-Canadian art and handicrafts, and the effect of the contact of the white man upon Indian culture. As a result, much material has been added to the collections and scientific information of value has been obtained. To the naturalist, one of the most interesting investigations is that mentioned in Dr. R. M. Anderson's report on the work of the Biological Division. A survey is being made of the region about Horseshoe Lake, which was burned over about a hundred years ago and now shows the conditions that follow natural reforestation in British Columbia. Now these blocks of second-growth timber are acting as reservoirs of wild life, islands of refuge in the midst of a country which had been burned so that all small wild life was destroyed. For long stretches the burnt area showed no trace of a mammal, and the destruction of mossy ground, cover and rotten logs removed such as weasels, shrews, snakes, frogs and slugs. From the protection of the natural refuges the fauna is beginning to recolonize the burnt-out regions.