The Montreal Star: Sir John Macdonald. Strange as it may appear, there was one point upon which the Rt. Hon. Sir John A. Macdonald and the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie, lifelong opponents as they were in political affairs, cordially agreed and gloried in it, and that was their love for the wild flowers of Canada. Sir John's home was set among flowers. These, of course, were cultivated, but in many a nook and cranny up sprang the hardy native beauties, and they were left undisturbed. There was not much time for sweet commune with nature in the life of the prime minister. His days were chiefly spent in political turmoil, yet every summer he could have been seen amid the meadows and pine woods near his seat on the St. Lawrence enjoying his brief holiday in companionship with the wild flowers of the Dominion he ruled so long.

Eager as he was to see the manufactory started throughout the land, he nevertheless had a love and a thought for the wonderful army of flowers which it is man's destiny ultimately to drive to newer haunts. He realized that the growth of towns and cities, and the spread of agriculture would ultimately make it difficult to secure specimens of many plants now abundant to the hand of every young person in Canada, whether in town or country, and he encouraged the study of plant life. Like his successor in office, the Hon. Sir John Abbott, Sir John truly loved rural life.

Sir John Abbott roamed his estates the picture of a countryman. Clad in rough garb, with knickerbockers, and heavy boots and stockings, he strayed among the wild flowers undeterred by marsh or rough hillside. Much of his grounds, although improved, was left to the native beauties of Canada, and he was a man of taste. To Sir John Macdonald, as to Sir John Abbott, it was a life-long sorrow that no effort was made to familiarize the boys and girls and men and women with the wild flowers of Canada. Honorable Alexander Mackenzie.

When the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie, a humble stone mason, first came to Canada, and from the deck of the ship observed the long, low shores of Anticosti densely clad with which spruce, dwarfed by the distance, he exclaimed that he had seen better heather in Scotland. But the same love which led him to speak of his native heath and to notice the vegetation of the land of his adoption when it first appeared above the horizon, soon made him an eager admirer of the wild flowers of Canada. To see them was to love them, and he took advantage of every opportunity to them. Many were the rambles he took amid their haunts to gather in their sweet intercourse strength for his daily task of governing the country, and to them he turned when evil days fell upon him.

One of the few laments he ever uttered was in this connection, when writing to a friend he expressed his regret at being no longer able to climb the rocks and look into every nook and cranny as he used to do. He was all exile from the land of purple heather and the wee modest crimson tippet flower, but here under alien skies he found many a familiar friend who had crossed the seas as long before, and with them others which excelled them in innocence and beauty. He was too wise a man to go through meadow or wood having eyes vet seeing not. He realized that the wild flowers of Canada were beyond compare, and delighted to draw the attention of his friends to their wonderful beauty and diversity. Honorable Alexander Mackenzie died without seeing one of his fondest hopes realized- -the publication of a work to make Canadians and aliens, too, familiar with the color, form and blooming time of the wild flowers of Canada.