214 BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF CANADA. 



present residents in the country which, we may confidently hope, will be 

 made available to the society's purposes. Professor Williamson's long 

 residence in Kingston has enabled him to make an extensive series of 

 observations on our local flora, which are of the greatest interest, and other 

 professors of Queen's College have followed his example. Some of our 

 graduates and students have also, of late years, made collections of greater 

 or less extent, during their vacation residence in different parts of the 

 country. The neighbourhood of Kingston and the adjoining islands have 

 been investigated by Mr. Andrew T. Drummond, B.A., who obtained a 

 prize for his valuable collection, in the Natural History Class, two years ago. 

 Dr. Dupuis has collected the plants of the rear of Frontenac and Ernesto wn, 

 while JSTewboro', Perth, the Ottawa country, have each their collectors. 

 Dr. Giles has, I believe, been devoting special attention to Lichens. Mr. 

 Schultz has had an opportunity, during the past season, of botanising the 

 Red River Settlement, and I have received notices of collections, formed by 

 our students in other distant localities, that may prove of great interest. 

 Circumstances such as these give us reason to hope that our efforts to raise 

 up a Botanical Society will be attended with success, and that its labours 

 will be beneficial in leading to a more extended knowledge of the indige- 

 nous productions of Canada. The objects sought by the establishment of a 

 Botanical Society in this country are of great importance, both in a scientific 

 and economical point of view. The field is broad, and the soil is rich. 

 The extent to which we can cultivate it will depend entirely upon the 

 number of the labourers, and the zeal and industry which they display. 

 Let us, therefore, be not disappointed with our first results. Let us lay a 

 foundation, and persevere in the work, and workers will gather around us 

 as they have done before in the Botanical Societies of other countries. To 

 organisations of this kind, more than to any other means, are we indebted for 

 the advanced state of botanical science at this day ; and in a country such 

 as this, it is especially needful to have a wide-spread organisation in order 

 to elicit satisfactory results. In an attempt to organise a society such as 

 this, we may confidently appeal to many classes of the community. The 

 theologian and moralist see in the vegetable kingdom a display of the power, 

 and wisdom, and goodness of our Creator, and beautiful types of spiritual 

 teaching ; the medical man recognises in it the source of his most potent 

 drags ; the sanitary reformer knows that the simpler forms of vegetation are 

 often the cause, and more frequently the index, of widely-spread diseases ; 

 the lawyer finds, in the microscopical structure of vegetable products, a 

 ready means of detecting frauds, adulterations, and poisonings ; the com- 

 mercial man recognises the value of a science having such bearings, and 

 directly devoted to the extension of the sphere of industry ; the spinner 

 and paper-maker must here obtain their knowledge of the mechanical con- 

 dition of vegetable fibres ; the farmer, the gardener, the orchardist, the 

 vine-grower, the brewer, the dyer, the tanner, and the lumberman, must 

 all apply to botany for an explanation of matters that daily come before 

 them in their various avocations. As an utilitarian institution, then, our 



