Reviews and Notices of Boohs. 397 



followed. "We recognise in it the hand of a real, earnest worker 

 in zoological science. The book is invaluable to the student and 

 amateur. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



(TO THE EDITORS OF THE CANADIAN NATURALIST.) 



Is the Onion Indigenous in the North West of Canada ? 



It would tend much to increase the practical value of your 

 journal if your subscribers were from time to time to communi- 

 cate such facts relating to any department of the natural history 

 of the Province, as may come within their observation ; and, 

 therefore, I transcribe the following extract from a letter lately 

 received from Mr. W. J. Morris, of Perth, C. W. He says : — 

 " A friend sent me from Lake Temiscameng, a small package of 

 wild onions, from a place called by the voyageurs "Lejardindu 

 Diable." It is on the side of a steep hill. The onions, though 

 small, are precisely the same as the cultivated kind. They grow 

 in a damp, black sand, covered with a thick bed of moss. I sup- 

 pose they must have been at first sown by the early French 

 Jesuits ; or, are they indigenous ? I have planted them in my 

 garden." I incline to the belief that the first supposition is the 

 correct one, viz : that the onion is indigenous in the North West- 

 ern Territories ; and this view is corroborated by the ensuing 

 extract from McKenzie's "Journal of a Voyage through the 

 North West." In vol. 2, page 224, of this interesting narrative, 

 he says : — 



" On the banks of the river (i. e. the McKenzie Eiver) there 

 was great plenty of wild onions, which, when mixed up with our 

 pemmican, .was a great improvement of it; though they pro- 

 duced a physical effect on our appetites, which was rather incon- 

 venient to the state of our provisions." 



Though this seems conclusive, yet perhaps some of your read- 

 ers may be able to settle the point with positiveness. 



V\ hile on this subject, I may also note that I recently found a 

 red currant, identical in appearance and flavour with the garden 

 fruit, but a little smaller, growing wild in the woods on the shores 

 of the Lower St. Lawrence, at Kacouna. The leaf was of a lighter 

 green, and more sharply defined, than that of the cultivated plant. 

 It would be worth propagating from. There is also in the same 

 locality a very large, rough, unpleasantly-flavoured red currant, 



