1868.] DRTJMMOND — COMPARATIVE FLORAS. 429 



and brilliant life, its matchless nervous activity, it3 extreme 

 muscularity, its voluntary power to augment animal heat. Such 

 contrivances, subtle and unexampled, reconciles the paradox of a 

 being, microscopic in corporeal dimensions and remarkable for 

 the minuteness of the bulk of its blood, sustaining a frame, 

 graceful in its littleness, yet capable of prodigious mechanical 

 results." 



SOME STATISTICAL FEATURES OF THE FLORA 

 OF ONTARIO AND QUEBEC, 



AND A COMPARISON WITH THOSE OF THE UNITED STATES FLORA. 

 By A. T. Drummond. 



The recent issues by Prof. Gray of a fifth edition of his 

 Manual of Botany of the Northern United States and by Mr. 

 Horace Mann of a Catalogue of the Phsenogamous Plants of the 

 United States east of the Mississippi, have suggested the thought 

 that with the materials for a flora of Ontario and Quebec, which 

 have been for some years accumulating, the prominent statistical 

 characteristics of our local vegetation might now be indicated 

 with reasonable certainty, and a fair comparison instituted be- 

 tween them and those of the flora of the United States. That 

 any statistics given will, in coming years, be altered in consequence 

 of additions made to our flora, is certain. There is reason to 

 believe that a considerable number of phgenogamous and filicoid 

 plants not at present known to occur within our geographical 

 limits, will yet be detected there. Whilst, however, these statis- 

 tics are not invested with absolute certainty, they can, I think, 

 be regarded as fair general conclusions. 



The works of Michaux, Pursh, Hooker, Torrey and Gray, etc., 

 afford much information regarding the flora of this part of the 

 continent, but since their publication our knowledge of it has 

 been greatly extended. Foreign as well as provincial scientific 

 journals have within the past few years contained valuable papers 

 on the subject of Canadian botany. The institution of a society, 

 whose special aim was the promotion of botanical research in our 

 midst, infused for a time much interest in the study, and resulted 

 in the accumulation of considerable material for a provincial 

 flora. Some of the papers and catalogues were published in the 

 society's ' Annals/ but many are still in manuscript. To these 



