REPORT OF THE SOCIETY 21 



It was at Portneuf, at the end of 1862, that he published his great work 

 "Une Flore Canadienne," the first work of this nature published in Canada. The 

 same year saw the publication of the "Verger Canadien," also the first of its kind 

 which had appeared in Canada, and which reached in 1885 its fifth edition. This 

 was not the only way in which he busied himself there, for he worked hard to form 

 in his parish a company of militia, and he also established an extensive nursery. 

 In 1868 he commenced the publication of a journal which he called the Naturaliste 

 Canadien, which he edited for twenty years, a period which it has been given to 

 me to increase by an additional twenty-four years. In 1869 he left his ministry 

 and settled first in Quebec, then at Cap Rouge, when he passed the last twenty 

 years of his life. 



The last twenty years of Provancher's life were filled with a variety of activi- 

 ties. I have only time to mention a few of them — his regular contributions to 

 La Minerve, an important Montreal journal, up to 1870; his travels in Petit 

 Antilles, Europe and the Orient; his two Canadian pilgrimages to Jerusalem, 

 when he organized and personally directed one of them; his religious writings; 

 his volume on "Les Mollusques de la Province de Quebec;" his "Cours Elemen- 

 taire d'Histoire du Canada pour les Ecoles," and the foundation in 1888 of "La 

 Semaine Religieuse de Quebec," which he turned over to other people at the end 

 of four months, and which will soon complete its thirtieth year. 



But it was in the midst of all this, and during the last twenty years, that Abbe 

 Provancher undertook his great work on entomology. A description of all the 

 different species of insects in a country was a task which no one had hitherto 

 dared to undertake, but he undertook it for the province of Quebec. This was 

 "La Petite Faune Entomologique du Canada" in which he describes all the 

 species of Coleoptera, Hemiptera, Orthoptera, Neuroptera and Hymenoptera of 

 Quebec, including three or four hundred species hitherto unknown. This work 

 comprises four volumes, and about two thousand pages in all. Two other 

 volumes on Diptera and Butterflies were to have completed this great work, but he 

 was unable to procure funds for their publication. However, as he has elsewhere 

 dealt in detail with plants, animals, birds, fishes and reptiles it may be said that he 

 has left us a natural history of the province which is almost complete. 



The above brief sketch will suffice to show to what a point Abbe Provancher 

 carried his pioneer work in Canada, and I think few men have ever shown greater 

 initiative. He died after a short illness on March 23rd, 1892, in his seventy- 

 second year, and was buried in the parish church of Cap Rouge. 



It may be of interest to add that the two papers which he founded, La Se- 

 maine Religieuse de Quebec and Le Naturaliste Canadien, are still in existence 

 twenty-five years after his death. His scientific library is today part of the 



