CHAP. V.] THE GULF-STREAM. B57 
trees were leafless, although the large crimson buds swelled fast 
on the maples during our stay; but the pines and the hemlocks 
were in great beauty, just beginning to send out their new 
leaves. Early in the forenoon we were along-side of the coal- 
ing wharf. Halifax is not a pretty town. It reminds one 
greatly of Greenock or a second-rate English sea-port, with its 
dull streets of square houses blackened with coal-ssmoke. The 
houses are almost all built of wood, and there is no attempt to 
lighten the effect by introducing color. In the centre of the 
town there are some rather better streets, with good shops and 
one or two fair public buildings. The Post-oftice is one of 
these, and in one of its spare rooms the local museum has tem- 
porary accommodation. The collection is a very miscellaneous 
one, but it contains many good things, among them some beau- 
tifully stuffed birds, the work of Mr. Downs, an old gentleman 
who has devoted his life, partly as an amateur and partly as a 
matter of business, to the preparation of objects of natural his- 
tory; and, simply by becoming intimately acquainted with them 
in the field, has acquired a dexterity in reproducing their char- 
acteristic attitudes, particularly in repose, which I have never 
seen surpassed. The collection of specimens illustrating the 
geology of Nova Scotia, which is under the special superintend- 
ence of Dr. Honeyman, the Government geologist, is also very 
good, and highly instructive to a British naturalist. 
At Halifax I had the pleasure of meeting an old Edinburgh 
friend, Professor Lawson, and he and I had some excursions— 
as pleasant as the cold, damp weather would allow—round the 
town and into the border of the ‘forest primeval,’ which 
stretches away to the westward toward the Bay of Fundy, 
the Basin of Minas, and the “beautiful village of Grand-Pré.” 
Spring was just breaking, and the spring plants, most of them 
unfamiliar to Scottish eyes, were beginning to shoot up and 
show their flower-buds. It was strange to see the Saracenia, so 
prized, and so difficult to rear in our conservatories at home, ex- 
