I have six fresh water shells hitherto not known to inhabit Canada, which have been introduced in this way; five are from the Welland Canal, and one is from the Thames river at Chatham, C.W.; they are all well-known Ohio shells. The object of this paper has been a suggestive one, and if by these few remarks I shall have attracted attention to the interesting subject of our land and fresh water shells, my labour will not have been in vain.

List of land and fresh water shells hitherto not known as inhabiting Lower Canada.

Anodonta undulata, Say.

St. Charles River, near Quebec.

Anodonta decora, Lea. Old quarries near the Mile-end, Montreal.
Anodonta plana, Lea. Rideau Canal near Ottawa City.
Unio luteolus? Lam. var.

Quebec and Montreal.

Common in the St. Lawrence both at

Unio compressus, Lea. (U. alasmodontinus? Barnes). Assumption River, M. de Villeneuve: Rideau Canal near Ottawa City, Mr. Billings. Cyclas rhomboidea, Say; and two species as yet undetermined; St. Lawrence, at Quebec.

Pisidium variabile? Prime; and four species not yet determined. Planorbis armigerus, Say. Trenches in fields near Quebec. This shell belongs to the genus Planorbalina of Haldeman. Planorbis deflectus, Say. Streams near Quebec.

Limnæa columella, Say.

Common in the St. Lawrence near Quebec,

at low water, with its variety macrostoma.

Helix rufescens, Muller.

probably introduced.

Common in the Cove fields, Quebec, but

Helix capsella, Gould. Island of Orleans, but very rare.
Helix dentifera, Binney. St. Lambert, Montreal.

Pupa armifera, Say. Abundant in the Cove fields, Quebec.
Island of Orleans.

Pupa contracta, Say.

Shells new to Upper Canada.

From the Welland Canal and its neighbourhood:

Canadian fresh water shells which occur also on the west side of

Of these shells, two are not allowed to be good species; Limnæa catascopium being considered a variety of L. palustris, and Planorbis corpulentus of P. trivolvis, but in each case they form well marked varieties. My authority for their occurrence west of the Rocky Mountains is Dr. Binney, in his catalogue of the fluviatile gasteropoda of North America, published for the Smithsonian Institution, Washington.

REVIEWS AND NOTICES OF BOOKS.

Voyage d'André Michaux en Canada, depuis le lac Champlain jusqu'à la Baie d'Hudson.-By 0. Brunet, Professor of Botany at the Laval University. From the printing establishment of l'Abeille, Quebec; 8vo., 27 pages.

This is a notice of the voyages to North America of André Michaux, a native of France, made during the years 1785 to 1786; with a sketch of his life. The object of his travels was to make botanical researches and mark the locality of trees and plants peculiar to the country. He has rendered great service to science and deserves the especial consideration of Canadians, for he may be looked upon as the founder of Botany in Canada. The only work having any pretention to a history of Canadian plants which appeared before that of André Michaux was Cornuti's, published in 1635, under the title, Plantarum Canadensium Historia, which is far from being a complete flora, and it is besides defective in classification. Charlevoix gives a translation of this work into French, adding a number of plants which had subsequently been discovered. Kalm, the celebrated disciple of Linnæus and Professor of Natural History at Abo, had also visited America in 1749-51, at the request and charge of the King of Sweden; he extended his visit even to Canada, but the fruits his labours went to enrich the Species Plantarum of his great master, where to this day they are to be seen, being identified as his discoveries by the mark of the initial letter K. This would show that Canadian Botany may claim a respectable origin, as by this it is almost contemporaneous with the introduction of the science in modern times,-botany owing its rational momenclature and classification to Linnæus. Michel Sarrazin, an inhabitant of Quebec and Physician to the King under the French dominion, and also a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, may be mentioned here as the first Canadian botanist, who became renowned for his discovery of the curious plant which bears his name—Sarracenia

purpurea. To the above names may be added those of the Marquis de la Gallissonnière; Dr. Gaultier, after whom Kalm called a small plant, very common in our woods, the Gaultheria procumbens, yielding an essential oil used in medicine; P. Boucher, Governor of Three Rivers, and several others.

Michaux was very successful in his searches for the native productions of the vegetable kingdom in Canada, but as the spots where he made his numerous and important discoveries are not always sufficiently described in his works, printed and manuscript, many of the plants have not been met with since, and others are exceedingly rare or still very little known. As most of his time was spent in travelling and herborizing, he did not write much; thinking that the best way he could serve science was by introducing new plants into Europe. Still he has left a history of the oaks of America, published in Paris in 1801, containing a description of twenty species of this tree; besides notes on his travels, which are scattered through the work of his son, who had accompanied him in some of his voyages to America; and a manuscript diary, which the latter presented to the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia. But his notes and herbaria have furnished materials for a work still more interesting to Canada,—the flora of North America published in Latin by the eminent botanist Claude Louis Richard, in 1803, (the year in which Michaux died,) forming two volumes 8vo, with 52 plates, and in which upwards of 1700 plants are described.

Michaux had already visited England, the Pyrenees and Spain, and had brought with him from Persia a splendid collection of plants and seeds, when the French Government, desiring to introduce into France some of the trees and shrubs growing in North America, charged him with the mission of procuring them.

Instructions had been given him to travel over the United States and collect seeds and roots. He arrived in New-York in November 1785, from whence during two years he made excursions to New-Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland. During the first year, he sent to France twelve boxes of seeds, several thousand specimens of trees, and some Canadian partridges, that multiplied at Versailles. He also laid out a garden near Charleston, South Carolina, which was to serve as a starting point for his southern exploration.

In 1787, he made a journey to the Alleghany Mountains. Having ascended the Savannah to its source, and found many beautiful plants and several kinds of oaks, he also proceeded to

the sources of the Tennessee, and thence returned to Charleston, having travelled three hundred leagues through Carolina and Georgia. Many of his notes contain remarks on the most interesting plants which he met with, and even point out the places where they were discovered, in such precise terms that it would still be easy to find them out. In 1788 and the following year, he successively visited Florida, the Bahama Islands, and Virginia. On the 1st of July he arrived at Washington Court House, a hamlet in the latter State, which then passed for the first town in that part of the world, though it contained only "twelve wooden houses," and could afford but indifferent cheer to the traveller.

After other excursions to different parts of the Union, attended with more or less success, he came to Canada, in 1792; having spent some seven or eight years in the United States. His first researches in passing from one country into the other, were made on both shores of Lake Champlain, where he noticed many plants, -all mentioned in his flora. Then directing his course towards Montreal, he arrived in this city on the 30th of June, and having remained here only a few days, started for Quebec. On his way down he stopped at Sorel, and there found the Rhodora Canadensis. His sojourn in the ancient metropolis of Canada was also of short duration, as it was important he should avoid being overtaken by winter in his progress northward. Having sailed down the St. Lawrence as far as the Saguenay, he landed at Tadousac, the first out-post of the Hudson's Bay Company in that direction, situated at the entrance of the river, and at one time much frequented by the Indians for the purpose of trading; it is now a pretty village. Here he remained a few days, during which he collected some specimens. He next ascended the Saguenay in a bark canoe, and early in August reached Chicoutimi, where the river ceases to be navigable for large vessels. As his way to Lake St. John lay through an almost unexplored wilderness, and as the journey had never been undertaken except by aborigines and a few missionaries, he secured the services of a half-breed and three Indians, with whom he proceeded up the river Chicoutimi and Lake Kinogami, and, after a short portage, through Lake Kinogamichich, down the Aulnet River and Belle Riviére, thus reaching Lake St. John after six days' travelling. At Lake Kinogami he found an aquatic plant, Lobelia Dortmanna, which has not since been met with there; its light blue corolla surface, while the leaves are entirely submerged. covered many specimens on the shores of Lake St.

floats upon the Michaux disJohn; and he

saw in the surrounding forest the red pine Pinus rubra, the white spruce Abies alba, and the cedar, Thuya occidentalis; this situation is the farthest north in which these trees had been seen. He remarked that the white pine, Pinus strobus, was scattered over a vast extent of country, but not equally so, having seen some on the banks of Lake Mistassin as far north as forty leagues from Lake St. John; it is however very common two degrees south of that. The Larix Americana, or American larch, generally called tamarack in Canada, abounds in the environs of the lake; the hemlock spruce Abies Canadensis, which thrives on the shores of Hudson's Bay, is also abundant.

dwell near the

Pointe Bleue,
Having jour-

Our indefatigable voyager then ascended the Mistassin, sometimes called Rivière des Sables, which falls into lake St. John, and which, with the exception of a few short portages, is navigable for canoes a distance of 120 miles. It was then, and still is the route followed by the Mistassin Indians, who great Lake Mistassin, and who come to trade at the most northern post in the Canadian territory. neyed for 120 miles up the river he came to the foot of a waterfall. High banks of rock contract the width of the stream, which is precipitated from an elevation of eighty feet over ledges of stone resembling huge steps. Here the intrepid botanist stopped to scramble over the drenched rocks in quest of new specimens pausing now and then to admire the grandeur of the scene.

Continuing his route over the mountains intervening between Canada and the Hudson's Bay Territory, and from whose summit he had a view of the immense valley lying beyond, he reached Lake Mistassin on the 4th September, having halted a few moments to herborize on the shores of the Lac des Cygnes, one of the many lakes which, with numerous streams, water this region. Mr. Brunet, from whose pamphlet, we scarcely need observe, the information contained in this notice is gleaned, gives some interesting details and traditions connected with the great Lake Mistassin, but into these we have neither time nor space to enter. The northernmost point reached by Michaux was one which our author indicates as being on Rupert River, at a short distance from Hudson's Bay; the Indian guides, dreading the approach of winter, would proceed no farther. He however had an opportunity of determining the exact latitude at which the trees of the north cease to grow, and of recording his observations on the topography of the country. It was while exploring in the neighborhood of Lake Mistassin that he found the pretty species of prim