[PENHALLOW] A REVIEW OF CANADIAN BOTANY S 



chiefly through the province of Quebec, but all the material thus accumu- 

 lated was subsequently destroyed b}' tire before it could bo put into suit- 

 able form for publication, so that we have absolutely no record of his 

 work here. 



Pursh was not a voluminous writer. His energies appear rather to 

 have been entirely exhausted in laborious field work to which he devoted 

 so much of his time, in the preparation of his North American Flora and 

 in contending with his physical intirmities. His only other publication 

 was his Hortus Oliviencis, a small work of seventy-two pages published 

 in 1815. 



After a labour of onl}' twenty-one years, Pursh died at Montreal on 

 the 11th July, 1820, "so destitute of means that the expenses of his 

 burial and other outlays were defrayed by his friends." 



" He was interred in the old cemetery on Papineau Eoad." There 

 hi.-, remains lay until 1857, when the facts becoming known to Dr. James 

 Earnston and other members of the Botanical Society of Montreal, an 

 efibrt was made to secure their transfer to a more fitting resting place in 

 Mount Royal Cemetery. This was accomplished only in part, and for 

 twenty years all that remained of Pursh, lay buried in one of the ceme- 

 tery vaults,' a failure in the realisation of the original intention which 

 was caused by the death of Dr. Barnston early in the spring of 1858, 

 although some thirty-five dollars had already been subscribed toward the 

 cost of a suitable monument. 



In 1877 attention was once more drawn to the matter through the 

 instrumentality of those who had been associated with the earlier 

 attempt, and this time more strenuous etforts were made, not only to 

 secure a suitable resting place, but to provide a monument as well.- 



1 In the Daily Witness of June 7th, 1877, an editorial directs attention to this 

 great neglect, while an article in the same issue draws attention to the renewed 

 eli'orts then being made, and gives in full, a sketch of the life of Pursh prepared 

 twenty years previously by Dr. Barnston. 



- An examination of some of the original documents connected with these 

 efforts, kindly placed in my hands by Sir William Dawson, who was president of the 

 Botanical Society at that time, shows that the original subscribers to the monu- 

 ment fund in 1857, included J. W. Dawson (afterwards Sir William Dawson), Dr. 

 Sterrj' Hunt, George Shepherd, James Barnston, John G . Barnston, William Work- 

 man, Jr., and Rev. A. F. Kemp, all of whom contributed in equal amounts of one 

 pound each. The committee entrusted with the responsibility of raising the neces- 

 sary fund<, consisted of Dr. Barnston and Mr. Shepherd. They issued the following 

 circular, which may prove of interest, as showing the actual progress made up to 

 the time of Dr. Barnston's death : 



" Circular of the Botanical Society of Montreal, relative to a monument in mem- 

 ory of Frederic E. Pursh, the celebrated botanist. 



'■ Montreal, Canada East, January, 1857. 

 " In the course of last spring the Botanical Society of Montreal became aware 

 that Baron Pursh, the celebrated botanist, died in this city in 1820 and was interred 

 in the old burying ground on Papineau Road. The society immediately felt its 



