BioriaN. COLLECTORS 69 
. multiformis Bu. 
riciniatus n. sp. 
A, macrophyllus L. 
A. commixtus (Nees) Kuntze. 
A. mirabilis T. & G. 
First Known COLLECTORS oF BIOTIAN ASTERS 
I. SAGARD. Father Gabriel Sagard, a French missionary to 
the Hurons, a Recollet or reformed Franciscan monk, who went 
from Paris to Canada in 1624 and spent two years in the country 
of the Hurons, publishing his Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons 
and his Huron vocabulary, in 1632, and enlarging these in 1636 
to the “ Histoire du Canada et Voyages que les Freres Mineurs 
recollets y ont taits pour la conversion des Infideles," in four 
books, of which the third treats of natural history. Tuckerman, 
in Archaeologia Americana, 4: 119, remarked that he thought 
Sagard to have been the first collector of a number of Sarrasin's 
plants; z. e. of species which Sarrasin, nearly a century later, de- 
scribed or sent to France. Certainly, Sagard, from the region 
where he traveled and the acute observation he displayed, must 
have become familiar with Aster macrophyllus in Canada, and he 
is perhaps the earliest writer of natural history who saw the plant. 
In fact, his descriptions * of flowers seen by him in the Huron 
country includes one which suggests a violet Aster macrophyllus ; 
for he says it is “of a violet color, of the form of a star, and size 
of a small narcissus " ; all of which might be said more appropri- 
ately of one of the Macrophylli than of almost any other plant in 
his region. He also remarks that its leaf is “ very like our Mug- 
uet," a name then f and now used in France for our lily-of-the-val- 
ley, Convallaria ; making it probable that the leaves of Sagard’s 
Huron plant were those of CZiuftouia, abundant there, and extremely 
suggestive of Convallaria. With leaves of C/intonia he may per- 
haps have confused the flowers of an Aster. Possibly his refer- 
ence was based on a memory of autumn, with broad leaves of 
Clintonia and of Aster macrophyllus covering the ground, and with 
* In my copy of Chevalier's reprint of Sagard's Grand Voyage (Paris, 1865), on 
page 234; in the original of 1632, page 332. 
+ Muguet = Convallaria, fide Lobel, in 1576. 
