BEGINS CATALOGUE OF CANADIAN PLANTS 217 



When we arrived there, we found that my reputation had reached 

 there before me and they were prepared to have me do the same 

 there as I had done on the line. There was no help for it, so I 

 swore in two more constables and, that night, they took all the 

 whisky around the village and took the owners prisoners and I 

 saw them in the cage the next morning. By this time, I was 

 getting frightened, but worse was to come. I was told that they 

 expected a Stipendiary Magistrate and a constable from Port 

 Arthur on the next boat and the people thought that I was the 

 magistrate. An hour or two after this, a boat was seen in the 

 distance heading from the western part of the lake and we all 

 decided that it held the magistrate. By good luck, however, the 

 magistrate was not on board and the whisky that was on board 

 was not allowed to be landed. Willie and I wisely took passage 

 for Sault Ste. Marie and I kept to the boat until we reached 

 Collingwood and then made my way to Mr. Mowat's office in 

 Toronto and told him what I had done. He said: "Mr. Macoun, 

 I have heard about what you did and, in view of the good that 

 was effected, I will say nothing about it, but I wish you to under- 

 stand that you must never do the like again." 



Going back, for a little, to the days when I first taught school, 

 I was standing one afternoon in the school when I saw my future 

 wife drive by in her father's carriage. She was, at that time, only 

 a young girl of sixteen. This woke me up and, from that time 

 forward, I really began to learn, my mind having focused on her 

 and, on my studies, as an accessory to the acquisition of her as a 

 wife. Between four and five years after this, after many discussions, 

 we were married, and, immediately after, now having a home, I 

 could commence to form a collection, which I had desired for 

 some years. 



When I first taught school, I began to describe the plants 

 that were collected and name them. Why did I describe the 

 plants? It was because I had no books with the descriptions in. 

 Twenty years after that, I did the same with birds on the prairies. 

 I wrote out their descriptions and then hunted them up in books 

 afterwards. In 1860, I taught school at Castleton and collected 

 a great number of species and must have dried some of my speci- 



