THE 



CANADIAN 



MTUEALIST AND &EOLOGIST. 



Vol. VI. FEBRUARY, 1861. No. 1. 



ARTICLE L—On the Coraus florida of the United States. By 

 George S. Blackie, A. M., M. D., and Professor of Botany 

 and Natural History, University of Nashville, Tennessee, 

 U.S., Honorary Member of the Botanical Society of Canada, 



{Read before the Botanical Society by Professor Williamson, LL.D.j 



Kingston, llth January, 1861.] 



Common throughout all our forests, conspicuous in spring time 

 by its festoons of large white blossoms, and equally so during the 

 fall months from its clusters of scarlet berries, a handsome little 

 tree usually about 15 to 30 feet high, is the Cornus florida L. 

 of the United States. I have brought this plant to your notice 

 for no particular reason, but that it this morning attracted my 

 attention, as I walked in the neighbourhood of my home, and 

 I conceive that much service may be done to the existing state of 

 the botanical knowledge of our country, should each member of 

 the society take up, meeting after meeting, some individual 

 plant, no matter how common, and state all that he knows of 

 that plant, whether such information be gleaned from his own studies 

 or from those of others. On my first visit to the United States, 

 one of the first objects which attracted my attention on travell- 

 ing down the Mississippi, from the snows of Canada to the balmy 

 spring of Louisiana, was this plant, and its extreme beauty, con- 



Ca». Nat. 1 Vol. VI. 



