Vegetable Pi^odmtions of tliBj MudsoiVe Bay Countries. 
Mouse, which is only sixty-six miles to the southward of Cum- 
berland House, but where the sandy soil speedily feels the in- 
fluence of the sun’s rays, and where the presence of an icy lake, 
such as Pine Island Lake, does not moderate the spring heats, 
barley and wheat were sown in April, and by the middle of 
May the fields were green with the young blade. 
These extensive plains are, however, at present subject to a 
great scourge, — a periodical visit of locusts or grasshoppers, at 
intervals of tw^enty years. 
At Cumberland House there were 7 days in September 1819? 
S in April 1820, 16 in May, the whole of June and July, and 
27 days in August, which exceeded 5l°.8 of mean temperature, 
making in all 114, the sum of whose mean temperature is 7584> 
which give a general mean of 66°.53, as in Table V, 
The largest pine-trees and balsam-poplars {Pinus alba and 
Populus balsamifera) were between eight and nine feet in cir- 
cumference. The Saskatchawan River, or Lat, 54°, and perhaps 
the isothennal line of 32°, is the most northerly limit, in the longi- 
tude of Cumberland House of the sugar-maple {Negundo fraxi^ 
mfolmin), elm, and ash (species unknown), hazel (fiorylus Ame^ 
ricana'), and Arbor-vitae tree {Thuya occidentalis),. At Carlton 
House the maple goes to about fifty miles north of the river, so 
as nearly to reach the latitude of Cumberland House. Oak and 
beech (species unknown) terminate about 4° to the southward in 
Lat. 50°, within the limits of the Red River Colony. The mean 
annual temperature of that colony cannot be much wide of -f 38^ 
Fahrenheit, but the mean temperature of the three summer 
months may perhaps rise to 72°, a degree of heat sufficient for 
ripening the vine, if the shortness of its duration and the severity 
of the winter do not preclude the cultivation of that plant. The 
natural families of Polemoniacetje and Lmece seem also to have 
their northern limit at Lat. 54° in these longitudes, a solitary 
species of each being found on the banks of the Saskatchawan. 
The CistefE^ Geraniace^je^ Rhamne^e^ UmbeUrferiE^ Araliee, Apo^ 
cme(E^ Valerianece., Hydrophylle^, ChenopodeeBy Santaleae., Urtu 
cea^ Aroidea, and Asparagene, send some straggling species a 
few degrees farther north, on a rude estimate not passing be- 
yond the isothermal line of -f 27°. 
It will be seen by an inspection of Table I., that, in the year 
