THE 



PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE. 



I. A Statistical Account of Upper Canada. By 

 J. B. Galt, Esq.*- 



Of a country so little known as America, it is almost im- 

 possible to receive a description of any part without being 

 sensible of an increase of knowledge. Our small stock of 

 facts relative to its aboriginal inhabitants, and the frame of 

 its permanent features, is still insufficient for correct theo- 

 retical purposes. We are still unable to conceive how it 

 could have happened that a continent, so extensive, equal ia 

 the variety of its productions and climates to the old world,, 

 should have been found, in the sixteenth century of th2 

 Christian sera, more savage and illiterate than those king- 

 doms of Asia and Africa which many ages before had re- 

 lapsed into barbarism : and still less are we qualified to form 

 a just hypothesis of those convulsions and events of nature 

 which have given to the American scenery its peculiar mag- 

 nificence. The French traveller Volney endeavours to prove 

 that the southern interior of North America has only re- 

 cently become dry, and that in time the lakes of Canada, 

 must also be exhausted, and lay-open the bosom of the coun- 

 try f. But as the object of this paper is chiefly to give an 

 arranged view of a few statistical recollections which were 

 lately obtained from Mr. Gilkison, of Amherstburgh, in 

 Upper Canada, it is perhaps superfluous to introduce re- 

 flections which more properly belong to the general ques- 

 tions of natural philosophy. 



Climate. — The climate of Upper Canada is more steady 



* Communicated by Mr. Gait. 

 f Volney's Travels in America, 

 Vol. 29. No. 113. Oct. 1807. A 2 than 



