434 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Dec. 



at this splendid work for the first time in the Library of the Bri- 

 tish Museum, I found the illustrations to he perfect imitations of 

 the plant, as it presented itself to my notice hundreds of times, 

 growing wild in the woods and mountains of Canada. The plate 

 in Charlevoix's book gives an idea of the plant, and is correct in 

 many particulars ; hut on comparing it with that of Dillenius, the 

 leaf is not altogether so natural, being too much serrated, and per- 

 haps the root is too insignificant. Any one, however, familiar with 

 the plant would observe that Charlevoix meant it for that, and 

 must have seen it himself. Dillenius speaks of the plant as vul- 

 garly named Chelidonium Oanadense, and says the thick and fleshy 

 roots are not unlike Tormentilla. He has freely entered into its 

 previous history, and shows the errors into which writers — especially 

 Parkinson — previous to his time (1732) had fallen regarding this 

 plant. In 1731, the year before the great treatise of Dillenius 

 was published, appeared Catesby's large work on the Natural 

 History of Carolina. 



The first introduction of this plant into Europe was through 

 the return to France of some of the earlier travellers through Can- 

 ada. It was cultivated in the gardens of Paris, and this enabled 

 Cornuti to describe it, from recent specimens, in 1635. Many 

 persons have believed, from the title of his work, that Cornuti had 

 travelled in Canada ; nevertheless, it is quite certain, that he never 

 was there. The foreign plants he describes may have been from 

 Canada, or other parts of the New World, which he had observed 

 growing in various gardens in Paris. The plants described by 

 Charlevoix, in 1744, which he met with in Canada, in 1721-22, are 

 considered in the first volume of the Transactions of the Literary 

 and Historical Society of Quebec by Mr. William Shepherd, who 

 took the pains to identify them with the nomenclature now in 

 use. This was highly necessary, because some of Charlevoix's des- 

 criptions were imperfect and vague ; this was so, to a slight extent, 

 with the Blood-root, which had been named by Linnaeus some years 

 before Charlevoix published his History of New France. Its Lin- 

 nsean name soon spread in America, for we find Kalm mentioning, 

 in his travels in that part of the world, under date, " April 6th, 

 1749, Sanguinaria Canadensis, which is here called Blood root — 

 because the root is great and red, and when cut looks like the root 

 of red beet — was beginning to flower, growing in a rich mould." 

 This was in New Jersey. 



Botany. — The Sanguinaria belongs to the sexual system Poly- 



