Reviews and Notices of Books. 459 



Of these shells, two are not allowed to be good species ; Limnaea catas- 

 copium being considered a variety of L. palustris, and Planorbis 

 corpulentus of P. trirolvis, but in each case they form well marked 

 varieties. My authority for their occurrence west of the Rocky 

 Mountains is Dr. Binney, in his catalogue of the fluviatile gasteropoda 

 of North America, published for the Smithsonian Institution,"Washington. 



REVIEWS AND NOTICES OF BOOKS. 



Voyage d' Andre Michaux en Canada, depids le lac Champlain 

 jiisqiCa la Baie d'Hudson. — By 0. Brunei, Professor of 

 Botany at the Laval University. From the printing establish- 

 ment of VAheille, Quebec ; 8vo., 27 pages. 



This is a notice of the voyages to North America of Andre 

 Michaux, a native of France, made during the years 1Y85 to 1786 ; 

 with a sketch of his life. The object of his travels was to make 

 botanical researches and mark the locality of trees and plants pe- 

 culiar to the country. He has rendered great service to science 

 and deserves the especial consideration of Canadians, for he may 

 be looked upon as the founder of Botany in Canada. The only 

 work having any pretention to a history of Canadian plants 

 whicli appeared before that of Andre Michaux was Cornuti's, pub- 

 lished in 1635, under the title, Plantarum Canadensium Historia, 

 which is far from being a complete flora, and it is besides de- 

 fective in classification. Charlevoix gives a translation of this 

 work into French, adding a number of plants which had sub- 

 sequently been discovered. Kalm, the celebrated disciple of Lin- 

 naeus and Professor of Natural History at Abo, had also visited 

 America in 1*749-51, at the request and charge of the King of 

 Sweden ; he extended his visit even to Canada, but the fruits his 

 labours went to enrich the Species Plantarum of his great master, 

 where to this day they are to be seen, being identified as his dis- 

 coveries by the mark of the initial letter K. This would show that 

 Canadian Botany may claim a respectable origin, as by this it is al- 

 most contemporaneous with the introduction of the science in modern 

 times, — botany owing its rational momenclature and classification 

 to Linnaeus. Michel Sarrazin, an inhabitant of Quebec and Phy- 

 sician to the King under the French dominion, and also a corres- 

 ponding member of the Academy of Sciences, may be mentioned 

 here as the first Canadian botanist, who became renowned for his 

 discovery of the curious plant which bears his name — Sarracenia 



