﻿4 Canadian Record of. Science. 



uninhabited interior of the island is covered in great 

 part by sombre forests of fir and spruce, interrupted at 

 intervals by moors or boggy places, sterile rocky hills, 

 or desolate " burns," and studded with lakes and ponds 

 too numerous to find place upon maps. Indeed it has 

 been stated that more than half the surface of Newfound- 

 land is under fresh water. Although, through the activity 

 of the Geolofj^ical Survey, the topography of the interior 

 is known in some detail, many parts have never been 

 visited for scientific purposes; and it is said that the 

 island has not been traversed at its widest part since an 

 intrepid Scotchman named William Cormack crossed 

 from Trinity Bay to St. George's Bay, in 1822, with a 

 Micmac Indian. Cormack was a shrewd observer, and 

 something of a botanist, and although exposed in his 

 perilous journey to great and almost fatal hardships he 

 managed to make a small collection of plants, which he 

 sent to his friend Professor Jameson, of Edinburgh. A 

 list of these plants, which has hitherto furnished almost 

 the only information as to the interior flora of the island, 

 was published by Cormack in an account of his journey.^ 

 The others who have collected plants upon this island 

 have, so far as can be learned, confined their attention to 

 the vicinity of the coast, having been unable to penetrate 

 far inland. It is said that John Fraser collected in New- 

 foundland in the years 1780 to 1784, but no list of his 

 plants from the island appears to have been published, 

 nor are his specimens cited in systematic works. In 1816 

 and 1819 Newfoundland was visited by La Pylaie, but 

 his attention was largely devoted to the cryptogams, 

 especially the algie. Such of his phitnogamic specimens 

 as are preserved in .the Gray Herbarium are not only 



1 This interesting pajier, issued douljtless in small edition, is very scarce. Realizing 

 its historic value. Dr. M. Harvey, of St. John's, liad it reprinted in 1873 from Connack'.s 

 original inanuscriiit. Unfortunately, the reprint is also scarce, and in it there are 

 many typographical errors— due, doubtless, to the crabbed and obscure handwriting 

 from which it was set. 



