CONTINUATION OF BOTANICAL STUDIES 41 



an extensive herbarium. This year I visited Professor Dewey in 

 Rochester, New York, and had a very pleasant and instructive 

 visit. He was nearly eighty years of age and wanted his mantle 

 to fall on someone and told me that I was, with the exception of 

 Dr. Asa Gray, better fitted to take up his work after his death 

 than anyone else he knew. I told him that my knowledge was 

 self-acquired and I was deficient in many branches of education 

 and that I could not think of such a thing. Loaded with speci- 

 mens and blessings I took my leave. My standing in botany was 

 now getting well established and the next year (Sir) Mackenzie 

 Bowell who was publishing a Directory of the County of Hastings, 

 asked me if I would write a sketch of the Botany and Geology of 

 the County. This I did to his satisfaction and my own, and by 

 it added to my rising standing as a teacher and scholar. I now 

 planned a series of excursions that added greatly to my botanical 

 knowledge and unconsciously prepared myself for the future. My 

 purpose was to make a botanical trip every year in my summer 

 vacation. 



This year (1865) I made an excursion up the Hastings Road 

 into sparsely settled country and brought back many species I 

 had not hitherto found. I had learned that soils produced certain 

 plants and I now found that rocks, lakes and ponds and river 

 bottoms had distinct floras, and there was no chance about where 

 things grew. I could now tell what I might expect in any local- 

 ity so I always aimed to go where conditions varied. My school 

 prospered and gave me no trouble. The year 1866 was an off 

 year in many ways. The Fenian Raid took place in June and I 

 was in camp at Prescott for some time. The same summer gold 

 was discovered near Madoc and people went mad over gold hunt- 

 ing, and even the children in the school would bring me rock speci- 

 mens showing traces of mica and others, iron pyrites. These I 

 classified as fool's gold. In the late summer Dr. Robert Bell, of 

 the Geological Survey which was then located in Montreal was 

 sent up to examine Richardson's mine and report on it. He did 

 so and like a wise man gave a neutral report which pleased no- 

 body. The excitement increased and men came from all over 

 Canada and the States. Richardson's mine sold for $40,000.00 



