Note 42 — PETER KALM’s TRAVELS. (continued 2)

The plants which I have collected in Canada, and which I have partly described, I pass over as I have done before, that I may not tire the patience of my readers by a tedious enumeration. If I should crowd my journal with my daily botanical observations, and descriptions of animals, birds, insects, ores, and the like curiosities, it would be swelled to six or ten times its present size42. I therefore spare all these things, consisting chiefly of dry descriptions of natural curiosities, for a Flora Canadensis, and other such like things. The same I must say in regard to the observations I have made in physic. I have carefully collected all I could on this journey, concerning the medicinal use of the American plants, and the simples, some of which they reckon infallible43, in more than one place. But physic not being my principal study (though from my youth I always was fond of it) I may probably have omitted remarkable circumstances in my accounts of medicines and simples, though one cannot be too accurate in such cases. The physicians would therefore reap little or no benefit from such remarks, or at least they would not find them as they ought to be. This will excuse me for avoiding, as much as possible, to mention such things as belong to physic, and are above my knowledge. Concerning the Canada plants, I can here add, that the further you go northward, the more you find the plants are the same with the Swedish ones: thus, on the north side of Quebec, a fourth part of the plants, if not more, are the same with the spontaneous plants in Sweden. A few plants and trees, which have a particular quality, or are applied to some particular use, shall, however, be mentioned in a few words, in the sequel.