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staThnve never hesitated to penetrate into the most forbidding areas, 

 fertile in resources to find or invent means by which unexpected 

 difficulties may be overcome. In canoe, in cart, by boat, or on the 

 trail they have gone forward year after year, "by dint of thought and 

 hammering" they have collected great stores of information and have 

 by their collections and researches made easily accessible to any who 

 may choose to examine, the geology, the mineral resoutces, and the 

 natural history of the northern half of this continent from ocean to 

 oce.in, and have dii-playtd all this information in the most attractive 

 and instructive form in the rooms of the Museum in this city. 



liut the geological aspect of the work of the Survey department, is 

 at the present day only one of many. Here, stowed away in cases and 

 high presses can be found one of the largest and finest collections of 

 plants, illustrative of the botany of all parts of our Dominion possible 

 to be obtained. Much of the work of this branch of the department 

 is invisible to the ordinary visitor to the Museum, since, unlike rock 

 specimens or masses of ore, dried plants are perishable things and 

 cannot endure exposure to the light and open air. They must be 

 carefully laid away and precautions taken to guard against the r.ivages 

 of insects and other enemies of the botanist's handiwoik. \\t here 

 in the cases of the ^Museum are stored more than 100,000 specimens 

 illustrating the distribution of our flora fro n the foggy shores of 

 Anticosti to the green valleys of the Island of Vancouver. The flora 

 of the Peace River district, of the great |>Liins, .nnd of the R.)tky 

 Mountam steeps on the west, of the shores and islands of the Atlantic 

 on the east, as well as of the country about the great inland 1 kcs and 

 ct distant Labrador, are here rendered availab'e for study to any one 

 interested in the botany of our country, and who may wish, for purposes 

 of comparison or for any other cause, to examine the plant growth of 

 any district whatever. The enormous value of such a collection can 

 scarcely be overestimated, and its practical utility in determining the 

 fitness of certain areas for the growth of wheit or other ccieals, as 

 determined by the flora ot the district is an admitted fact, not now called 

 in question by anyone at all familiar with this branch of science. To 

 the botanists of the Survey, then, great credit and praise are due for 

 the magnificent collections made and for the careful way in which this 



