(£arlg Botanical EHritcrs. n 



Canada in 1624, and fpent two years in the country of the 

 Hurons ; publifhing his " Grand Voyage du Pays des Hu- 

 rons " in 1632, and enlarging it in 1636 to " Hiftoire du 

 Canada et Voyages que les Freres Mineurs recollets y ont 

 faits pour la Converfion des Infidelles," &c, in four books; 

 of which the third treats of natural hiftory, 1 and is cited 

 by Mefirs. Audubon and Bachmann (Vivip. Quadrupeds 

 of N.A., pajfim) for a good part of our more common 

 and noticeable Mammalia. Something confiderable thus 

 got to be known of marine animals of all forts, and of 

 quadrupeds. But it was much longer before our birds — 

 if we except a very few, as the blue-jay and the turkey — 

 came to the fcientific knowledge of Europeans; and this 

 remark is, as might be expedted, at leaft equally true of 

 our reptiles. 



Quite as accidental, doubtlefs, was the beginning of 

 European acquaintance with our plants. There are, in- 

 deed, traces of the knowledge of a few at a very early 

 period. Dalechamp, Clufius, Lobel, and Alpinus — all 

 authors of the fixteenth century — muft be cited occafion- 

 ally in any complete fynonymy of our Flora. The Indian- 

 corn, the hde-faddle flower {Sarracenia purpurea and 

 S. Jlava), the columbine, the common milk- weed (Af- 

 clepias Comuti), the everlafting (Antennaria margarita- 

 ced), and the Arbor vita, were known to the juft-men- 

 tioned botanifts before 1600. Sarracenia fiava was fent 

 either from Virginia, or poffibly from fome Spanifh monk 



1 Biographie Universelle, in loco. 



