PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. fi9 



The French. — One of the first French explorers who left a 

 record of his observations was Samuel de Champlain, who made 

 a voyage to the West Indies and Mexico, 1599-1602, and began 

 his travels in New France in 1603. He was the founder of Quebec, 

 where he died in 1635, and his geographical explorations and 

 maps are of great value. His observations upon the animals and 

 plants are disappointing. He describes the gar-pike and the 

 king-crab, already described and figured by Harriott many years 

 before, and refers in unmistakable terms to the shearwater, the 

 caribou, the wild turkey, and the scarlet tanager. His lists of 

 animals which occur now and again in the course of his narrative 

 are too vague to be of value.* 



Much higher in the esteem of naturalists was Gabriel Sagard 

 Theodat, a Franciscan friar, whose " Grand Voyage Du Pays 

 Des Hurons," printed in 1632, was the most scholarly work upon 

 America which had yet appeared, and whose History of Canada 

 and of the journeys made by the Franciscans for the conversion 

 of the infidels also contains most valuable records. 



The first work on the plants of North America was that of 

 Cornuti — " Canadensium Plantarum, aliarumque nondum edita- 

 rum Historia " — printed in Paris in 1635, which described thirty- 

 seven species, thirty-six of these being illustrated by elaborate 

 engravings upon copper. The botanical part of this treatise is 

 usually ascribed to Vespasian Robin, and Tuckerman supposes 

 that the local notes, as well as the specimens described, were 

 probably the result of the labors of the worthy Franciscan mis- 

 sionary, Sagard. f 



A few years later, Pierre Francois Xavier de Charlevoix, 

 [b. 1682, d. 1761], a Jesuit priest, having by royal command 

 travelled through the northern part of North America, published 

 his " Histoire et Description Generale de la Nouvelle France," 



♦Publications of Prince Society, Boston, 1878. Haklujt Society, vol. 

 xxiv, 1850. 



f Archceologia Americana, iv, p. ng. 



