Dr. Hooker on American Botany. 281 



Brief and scanty as is this catalogue, we anticipate, from 

 the mostly unpubh'shed collections that have been formed, 

 and from the various expeditions that are now sent out, or 

 that are about to be so, that, in a very few years Great Bri- 

 tain will be in a condition to fill up the void which exists in 

 her Flora of her portion of North America. 



The herbaria at present existing, as connected with the 

 plants of those countries, over and above those to which we 

 have already alluded, are perhaps not very extensive. Sir 

 Joseph Banks made collections on the Labrador coast, and 

 we believe that the missionaries of that territory have sent 

 home many plants to the Museum of their Society. Lady 

 Hamilton possesses numerous well dried plants of Newfound- 

 land, and we have ourselves opened a correspondence with 

 some gentlemen of that island, from whom much may be ex- 

 pected. In Canada, besides what has been effected by Mr. 

 Pursh, we know of several individuals who are industriously 

 engaged in furthering the Flora of that country, and of Hud- 

 son's Bay. In the first rank of these, we are proud to be 

 able to mention the Right Honourable the Countess of Dal- 

 housie, the lady of his Excellency the Governor, whose rank 

 and influence, no less than her superior acquirements and great 

 love of science, entitle us to hope for much from her in the 

 promotion of our wishes. On the sea-coast of Hudson's Bay, 

 collections made as far north as Chesterfield Inlet, during 

 Duncan's voyage of discovery, exist, we believe, in the Bank- 

 sian Herbarium. Mr. Graham, in Foster's time, sent plants 

 as well as animals home from Churchill. Tilden's plants, in 

 the Sherardian Herbarium, are from Moosefactory, near the 

 bottom of Hudson's Bay. In the interior, to the eastward of 

 the rocky mountains, no one has botanized but Dr. Richard- 

 son, during Franklin's journey. With the fate of a large por- 

 tion of that collection, and with the affecting and afflicting 

 cause of it, the public are well acquainted. On the north- 

 west coast, Mr. Menzies* has been the principal investigator; 

 but a Mr. Nelson, who perhaps accompanied some of the 

 voyagers, who succeeded Captain Cook in the survey of that 

 coast, has communicated many specimens, which are in the 

 Banksian or Lambertian Herbarium. Pallas' Herbarium, in 



* Many of these plants have been ably described by our valued friend 

 Sir J. E. Smith, President of the Liansean Society, in the botanical part 

 of Rees's Cyclopasdid. 



Vol. IX No. 2. 36 



