LAWSON ON LEMAN!A„ 35 



of science, showed us an extremely interesting specimen of a bird 

 that is apparently fast following the Dodo, and may soon become 

 extinct, if not so already. In Callwia we hare probably an example 

 of a species on the verge of extinction as an American species, while 

 maintaining a vigorous and abundant growth in Europe. If so, 

 may not Europe be indebted to America for Calluna, and not 

 America to Europe? But I must not open up so important a 

 question as the origin and history of our species, while so little is 

 known of the botany of the Maritime Provinces of British America. 

 In a letter from Professor Asa Gray, of Harvard, October 4, 

 1864, to whom I had sent a specimen of the Calluna from St. 

 Ann's, he remarks: "I am much interested in the smallness of the 

 amount of the plant in your station, — just as in that in this State, 

 — confirming my view that it is now a mere remnant of what was 

 once more diffused." 



Art. IV. Note on Lemania variegata of Agaedh. By 

 George Lawson, L.L.D., Ph. D., Professor of Chemistry and 

 Natural History in the Queen's University of Canada. 



[Read December 5, 1864.] 



The correction of errors in science is a very slow process. In 

 the fii'st part of the second volume of Bishop Agardh's " Species 

 Algarum," published in 18S8, an alga said to have been found 

 '* in fluviis America boj-ealis," was described under the name of Le- 

 mania variegata. Agardh's original description of the plant 

 appears, however, to have been published in the Stockholm Trans- 

 actions in 1814, to which I have no means of access at the present 

 time. The specimen upon which the species was foimded had been 

 given to Agardh by Olaf Swartz, his first master in Algology, who 

 obtained it from the collector, the Rev. Dr. Muhlenberg, of Lan- 

 caster, in Pennsylvania. Not having been met with by subsequent 

 observers, Lemania variegata has been looked upon as a long-lost 

 plant. 



In a parcel of specimens of cryptogamic plants sent to me in 

 August 1862, by Mr. John Macoun, of Belleville^ Canada West, a 



*Eead before the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, 9th April, 1863. 



