24 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [ Vou. IN 0 
PATENT MEE TING: 
Fifteenth Meeting, 27th February, 1892, the President in the chair. 
Donations and Exchanges since last meeting, 53. 
H. H. Langton, B.A., and Alexander Primrose, M.B., were elected 
members. 
A communication was read from the secretary of the Lincoln’s Far- 
mers’ Institute, enclosing a copy of a resolution adopted by that body at 
its meeting in Niagara on the 23rd instant, respecting diseases of fruit 
trees. After referring to a resolution adopted by the Canadian Institute 
on the subject of the inefficiency of the present law regarding the diseases 
of fruit trees, and stating that the general principle of such resolution 
appears to be in accord with the views of the meeting, it was resolved that 
a committee of three fruit-growers of the County of Lincoln be appointed 
to co-operate with a committee of the Canadian Institute for the purpose 
of drafting such amendments as will make the working of the present law 
more effective, and in urging the Legislature to take action in this matter 
at its present session. The committe is composed of James Sheppard, 
of Queenston ; Lucas Woolverton, of Grimsby, and Roland W. Gregory, 
of St. Catharines. 
Capt. Ernest Cruikshank read a paper on “ Early Traders and Trade 
Routes in Ontario and the West.” The paper began by a reference to 
the fact that from 1763 to 1816 the trade not only of Western Canada 
but of the entire American North-West, including the present States of 
Illinois, lowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, was conducted by British mer- 
chants from Montreal. The French trading posts were enumerated, and 
the extent of their commerce with the Indians was briefly sketched as it 
existed about the year 1754, just previous to the outbreak of the war 
which terminated in the conquest of Canada by the English. The old 
canoe routes from Montreal to the upper lakes, from Lake Erie to the 
Ohio and the Wabash, from Lake Michigan to the Illinois and Missis- 
sippi, and from Lake Superior to the’Canadian North-West were next 
described, as well as the distribution and numbers of the Indian tribes 
living in the vicinity of those rivers, and the condition of French settle- 
ments in the West at the date of the conquest. The beginning of British 
commerce was traced. Alexander Henry was selected as a type of these 
early traders. A summary was given of his travels from 1761 to 1776, 
and of an unsuccessful attempt to work the copper mines of Lake 
Superior in 1770 and 1771. Notice was taken of the explorations of 
Carver, Rogers, and others in the direction of the Mississippi, and of the 
success of the Frobishers and their associates in penetrating from Lake 
