28 THE REPORT OF THE No. 36 



PROVANCHER, THE CANADIAN LINN^US— HIS LIFE AND WORKS 

 George Maheux, Provincial Entomologist, Quebec 



During the last five years, Canadian naturalists and scientists have heard 

 more about Provancher than during the previous quarter of century; scientific 

 societies, reviews of all kinds and even the daily papers, have in succession paid 

 warm tribute of admiration to the high value of the late Abbe Provancher 

 as a priest, citizen and naturalist. 



One day, in August 1918, a large group of friends, admirers and disciples 

 gathered in the Provincial Museum at Quebec. The object of the meeting 

 was the celebration of the 25th anniversay of the death of Provancher, and the 

 unveiling of a tablet presented by the Quebec Society for the Protection of 

 Plants and bearing the following inscription: 



A LA MEMOIRE DE 



PROVANCHER 



NATURALISTE ET ENTOMOLOGISTE 



1820-1892. 



A few months before, in the church of Cap Rouge, where the remains of 

 Provancher have been piously kept, Canon Huard erected another memorial 

 with the financial aid of the Ontario Entomological Society and numerous other 

 institutions. Nevertheless, all the publicity accorded to the name of Provancher 

 fails to give anything like a complete idea of his career; the entomologist re- 

 gards him as an entomologist, the botanist as a botanist, while the man was 

 really the Linnseus of Canada ; that is to say a true naturalist in the broadest sense 

 of the word, having been interested in and written competently on the various 

 kingdoms of Nature. The complete list of his works reveals a great similitude 

 with Linne's Systema Naturae, at least, as to the subjects treated and the divi- 

 sion into classes, orders, genera and species. The resemblance is much more 

 striking when we come to compare the means of study followed by both natural- 

 ists, though separated by more than a century of marked progress in the field 

 of natural sciences. Like Linnaeus, Provancher might have said at the end of 

 his life: "Ea quae fecimus sunt pars minima eorum quae ignoramus," but we 

 know that his life was well filled, and that his work added substantially to the 

 sum of human knowledge. 



Born at Becancourt, province of Quebec, on March 10th, 1820, Provancher 

 received his education in the newly erected college at Nicolet. There, under 

 the shade of lofty pines, he picked up some flowers which determined his passion 

 for the things of Nature. There, on the dusted shelves of the library he dis- 

 covered, by chance, an old text-book of botany that helped him greatly in his 

 new studies. These studies were quite private, for until about 1835 the teaching 

 of natural sciences was still in the womb of the future. 



At the end of his classical course, in 1840, Provancher decided to become 

 a priest, and he refrained for a while from his scientific ambitions. He occupied 

 various positions in many parishes between 1844-1847. In 1847 he devoted 

 himself to the service of some hundreds of Irish immigrants, stricken down with 

 an epidemic of typhus. His heroism upon this occasion gives an idea of his 

 unselfish character. Though nervous and rather irascible, he concealed under 

 a coarse appearance the heart of a true friend, always frank and generous. 



The active scientific life of Provancher began in 1848 with some essays 



