Botany in the Island of Montreal. 87 



original nucleus of the splendid collection of plants in the 

 Redpath Museum of McGill University, will always be 

 quoted as showing the main body of the plant-life of this 

 district, here at the present time, as well as eighty years 

 ago. Dr. Holmes was one of the founders of the Natural 

 History Society of Montreal, and in his lifetime Botany 

 secured a fair share of the attention of the members of 

 the society. Froui the year 1823 onwards, until the 

 inauguration of the Geological Survey under Sir William 

 Logan, and the advent of Sir William Dawson as Principal 

 of McGill College, there seems to have been little original 

 work done in the way of collecting and classifying the 

 Hora of the Montreal district. The scope of the G-eological 

 Survey at first did not embrace reports on the botany of 

 the country ; but the geologists all found that there was 

 a constant relation between the strata they examined and 

 the flora to be found growing on them, as well as between 

 the flora and fauna ; and so the group of naturalists whom 

 Sir William Logan gathered around him, inspired and 

 encouraged by Sir William Dawson, began also to make 

 notes of the plant-life they encountered in their geological 

 excursions. Some army officers and old Hudson Bay 

 employees who had been botanical collectors in their 

 respective fields of operations, also came to reside in 

 Montreal and reinforced the number of persons interested 

 in this branch of science. In these several ways our city 

 was exceptionally favoured beyond any centre in the 

 British Provinces, as regards the prosecution of a know- 

 ledge of botany, up to about thirty years ago. It was well 

 on in the fifties that the late Dr. George Lawson came to 

 Canada to be a Professor of Botany, first in Queen's 

 College, Kingston, and afterwards in Dalhousie College, 

 Halifax ; and his advent gave a prodigious impulse to the 

 study of the flora of the country. A host of young 

 naturalists grew up around him, among others, Professor 

 Macoun, the now famous head of the Botanical Depart- 



