STATE GEOLOGIST. 7 



cinal qualities, accompanied with remarks respecting the size of the 

 trees, and the abundance and geographical limits of the native 

 species. 



The most valuable of all the publications concerning the botany 

 of Minnesota, and the only attempt, before the present, to give a 

 complete list, so far as known, of our flora, was "a Catalogue of the 

 Plants of Minnesota, by I. A. Lapham, LL. D., of Milwaukee, 

 Wis.", which he prepared in 1865. Eight years later, soon after 

 the initiation of the present survey of the state, he generously sent 

 this manuscript to professor Winchell, as state geologist. It was 

 published in the report of the State Horticultural Society for 1875. 

 In the preface, Dr. Lapham states that he had consulted the lists 

 of plants already enumerated from Douglass to Parry; but that his 

 catalogue, nevertheless, rests chiefly upon his "own observations 

 and collections made during several excursions into the State; one 

 of which, in the spring of 1857, was extended to the waters of the 

 Red River of the North." Dr. Lapham refers to his additional 

 sources of information, as follows: — "In 1858 Mr. Robert Kennicott 

 made collections of plants and animals in the Red River country 

 which are preserved by the Northwestern University at Evanston, 

 Illinois. Mr, Charles A. Hubbard collected expressly for me a large 

 number of plants, including mosses and lichens, while on a tour 

 from Lake Superior to Lake Winnipeg and Pembina, as well as 

 while on his return by way of St. Paul. In 1861 Mr. T. J. Hale, 

 while prosecuting geological investigations along the Mississippi 

 river in connection with the Wisconsin State survey, made some 

 collections of plants in Minnesota, a list of which he has kindly 

 furnished to me. Several species are introduced upon his authority." 

 The flowering plants and vascular cryptogams in this catalogue 

 comprise 896 species, besides which it also enumerates 55 species of 

 mosses, liverworts and lichens found in Minnesota. It is without 

 notes, in respect to the part of the state where plants of limited 

 range occur, and does not indicate whether the species are common 

 or rare. 



Mr. George M. Dawson's report to the British North American 

 Boundary Commission, on the Geology and Resources of the region 

 in the vicinity of the Forty-ninth Parallel^ from the Lake of 

 the Woods to the Rocky Mountains^ published in 1875, contains in 

 pages 351 to 379, a list of plants collected in this survey during 

 the summers of 1873 and 1874, with notes of their localities and 

 dates of collection, stating whether they were found in flower or in. 

 other stages of growth. This enumerates 636 pheenogams and 



