08 M'Kecvor's Voyage to Hudson s Bay. 



to the vegetable tribes against the increasing- coldness of the 

 weather. There are even many plants,* particularly lichens 

 and inospes, which thrive only in the coldest climates, and 

 continue to live when the thermometer is many degrees below 

 of Fahrenheit. Besides the protective covering which the 

 snow affords, they are also enabled to resist this extreme, by 

 means of the powerf which they possess, in common with all 

 organized beings, of preserving a certain temperature inde- 

 pendent of external circumstances. 



During the several excursions which I made into the woods 

 while on shore, I have gathered a considerable quantity of 

 gooseberries, currants, and strawberries. Cranberries are also 

 to be found in great abundance. The gooseberries were very 

 large, and of a remarkably fine flavour; they are all red, at 

 least I never saw any others ; the bushes are in every respect 

 similar to those of this country, but that they are much lower, 

 seldom exceeding two feet high. The currants were very 

 fine; both red and black appeared very abundant ; the latter, 

 however, are said to be the most plentiful. American straw- 

 berries are called by the Indians ooteagh ininik, from their 

 resemblance to a heart; their flavour is delicious, much supe- 

 rior, I think, to that produced by cultivation. The cranberry 

 found here appears to belong to the species vaccinium ina- 

 crocnrpon. The following are its characters : corolla pink, 

 deeply four-cleft : leaves elliptic, oblong, entire, slightly re- 

 volute, obtuse, smooth : stems ascending : flowers lateral, fila- 

 ments purple, downy : anthers yellow, converging, without 

 spurs : the germen is smooth : the berry is pear-shaped, crim- 

 son, and of a peculiar flavour. We packed a large quantity 

 of them in small casks, and used them on the passage; they 

 made remarkably nice pies. Sir Joseph Banks' advises us, in 

 order to have this species of cranberry, to cultivate it in an 

 artificial bog, with plenty of water. He assures us, that a 

 few square yards of ground occupied in this way, will yield 

 as many cranberries as any family can use. 



I shall here give an account of the other plants which I 



* Thus (the lichen langiferinus) coral moss vegetates beneath the snow in 

 Siberia, where the degree of heat is always about 40, that is, in the medium 

 between the freezing point and the common heat of the earth. This vege- 

 table is for many months of the winter the sole food of tlie rein-deer, who 

 digs furrows in the snow, and scrapes it up; and as the milk and flesh of thig 

 animal are almost the only sustenance which can be procured by the natives 

 during the long winters of those high latitudes, this moss may be said to sup- 

 port millions of mankind. See DARWIN'S Zoonomia. 



f Hence the common observation that snow is for a long time dissolved 

 on hedges before it disappears from the neighbouring path-way. 



