PREFACE- 



ance with Canadian vegetation is tolerably complete ; still it is to be wished that 

 the southern boundary, adjoining the State of Maine and the great Lakes Huron 

 and Superior, were accurately searched, and it can hardly be doubted that this - 

 line of country would yield many plants not hitherto discovered in British North 

 America, though known to exist in the United States imder similar situations . 

 of latitude and of elevation above the level of the sea. Perhaps no part of the 

 continental New World that owns the British sway, has been more strictly 



4 



investigated thdn the great valleys of the Red River, Lake Winipeg, and the 



r 



Saskatchawan, along with the vast country extending thence northward to the 

 shores of the Arctic Sea j and this is mainly owing to Dr Richardson*s two 

 journeys through those regions, and to the long stay made by Mr Drummond 

 on the Saskatchawan, whose course he followed up to the Rocky Mountains. 

 The southern vegetation here is peculiarly interesting, for it has many plants in 

 common with the Mississipi and Missouri. Between the territory above alluded 

 to, that is, throughout the whole range of tlie Rocky Mountains, from the 

 boundary of the United States in about lat. 48°, to their northern limit; including, 

 as It does, mountains of from 15,000 to 16,000 feet high, and thence westward 

 to near the shores of the Pacific Ocean, almost the whole is a terra incognita 



+ 



to the naturalist : for, with the exception of the usual route of the Hudson's 

 Bay Traders, from the sources of the Saskatchawan to those of the Columbia, 

 by way of " The Committee's Punch Bowl," and thence to the sea, scarcely any 

 part of it has been investigated ; and a more interesting field for the Botanist 

 certainly does not exist in any portion of our North American provinces, as is 

 proved by the researches already made there by Drummond and Douglas,* and 

 by the later ones of Mr Nuttall ; the latter gentleman, indeed, pushed his 

 discoveries iri a more southern range of that chain, within the limits of the 

 United States. 



* See the Journal of Mr Douglas, published in Hooker's Companion to the Botanical 

 Magazine, vol 2, and that of Mr Drummond, in the same author's Botanical Miscellanif, vol. 1, 



p, 178. 



