2 



THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



the French word for Fagopyrum esculent imi, or Buckwheat, to the 

 physician. 



An examination of the Memoirs of the French Royal Academy 

 of Sciences from 1700 to 1720 shows that the Quebec scientist 

 was no ordinary worker. Thus, in Memoir es de VAcademie Roy ale 

 des Scietices, xix. 48 (1704), is a long communication entitled 

 11 Extrait d'une Lettre de M. Sarrasin, Medecin du Roy en Canada, 

 touchant l'anatomie du Castor, lue a l'Academie par M. Pitton 

 Tournefort ; de Quebec le 25 Octobre, 1700"; the above title and 

 succeeding paper are exactly reproduced in English in Martyn and 

 Chambers's History and Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences, 



ii. 181 (1742). A perusal of the paper, even in its apparently 

 abridged form, shows that the author must have been an excep- 

 tionally acute observer and investigator, and have well deserved the 

 encomium passed on him by the French traveller Charlevoix * 

 M On est surpris de trouver dans une colonie un homme d'une 

 merite aussi universel, aussi habile dans la medecine, dans l'ana- 

 tomie, dans la chirurgie, et dans la botanique, que M. Sarrasin, qui 

 a l'esprit fort orne et ne se distingue pas moins dans le conseil 

 superieur, dont il est membre, que par son habilete dans tout ce qui 

 est dans sa profession." In Martyn and Chambers's History and 

 Memoirs, iv. 253, is " The History of the Carcajou, an American 

 Animal. M. Sarrasin, the King's Physician at Canada, and a 

 Correspondent of the Academy, from whom we have seen a very 

 curious and exact history of the Castor or Beaver in the Memoirs 

 of 1704, has also sent such another of the Carcajou, of which we 

 here give an abridgment " ; and then follow two pages of description. 

 In the same volume is a paper " Of the American JRat, or Mus 

 alpinus. M. Sarrasin, physician at Quebec," &c. 



It will be noted that, alike in Charlevoix's account and in the 

 French Academy Memoirs, the name is spelt Sarrasin. But in the 

 original Swedish edition of Kalm's Travels two correct index page- 

 references are given to Sarrasin ; in the English edition both 

 are omitted, although the descriptions to which the page-references 

 would have guided are retained. In the earlier quotation the name 

 is spelt Sarrasin, and reference is made to his death by malignant 

 fever while visiting the sick at the hospital in Quebec. In the 

 second quotation (iii. 165 (1771)) we read, "Dr. Sarrazin has 

 therefore (as I was told by the eldest of the two Jesuits here) got 

 a small quantity of wheat and rye, of the winter corn sort, from 



Sweden." 



From Rees's Encyclopedia we learn that " Sarracenia was so 

 named by Tournefort in honour of his friend Dr. Sarrazin, who 

 collected numerous plants in Canada, specimens of which we have 

 seen in the dried collections of the Museum at Paris. While 

 they lay there for ages unnoticed, the discovery of the same 

 plants has been attributed to more recent travellers, who indeed 

 could know nothing of Dr. Sarrazin's acquisitions. " Provancher's 

 Flore Canadienne, i. 80 (1862), is " Dedie par Tournefort au 



* Voyages, p. 97. 



