[Footnote 13_b_: Page 8.--He was professor of Economy in the University
of Aobo, in Swedish Finland, and a member of the Swedish Royal
Academy of Sciences. His Travels in North America ("In Risa tel Nord
America"), 1748-51, first appeared in Swedish (Stockholm, 1753-61), and
subsequently in a translation, with the original somewhat abridged, by
John Reinhold Forster (Warrington and London, 1770; 2nd ed., 1772). A
translation in French by L. W. Marchand has also been published, and
it is from that I quote in the text. (For German and Dutch versions
see 'Nar. and Crit. Hist. Am.,' v., 244.) I have since found that
Forster, in a note (ii., 185, 2nd ed.) on the remarks of the Swedish
savant with respect to the study of science in the English colonies,
calls attention to the fact that "Mr. Kalm has forgotten his own
assertions in the former part of this work." Dr. Colden, Dr. Franklin
and Mr. Bartram, he continues, "have been the great promoters and
investigators of nature in this country, and how would the inhabitants
have gotten the fine collections of North American trees, shrubs and
plants, which grow at present almost in every garden, and are as if
they were naturalized in old England, had they not been assisted by
their friends and by the curious in North America." Forster also refers
to the schools, colleges and libraries already existing in the English
colonies as evidence that Kalm hardly did justice to the men of culture
in those countries. No doubt La Galissonière, Sarrazin, Gauthier, and
others created, for a time certainly, much interest in the practical
pursuit of science in Canada. The interest, however, must have been
necessarily confined to a very small class in the two or three towns
and garrisons to which La Galissonière's influence extended. Some
of the Jesuit priests like Lafitau (see note 11_a_) had a taste for
natural history, and have left us much information on the subject. But
Lafitau, La Galissonière, Gauthier, Sarrazin and others were not native
Canadians, though, like Charlevoix and his predecessors who wrote of
the country, they have left imperishable memorials connecting their
names with the literary and scientific history of New France. On the
other hand, Franklin, Bartram, Stith, the Mathers and Beverley, whose
names will be always associated with the early culture of science and
literature in the old English colonies, were American by birth and
education. Still these men represented a very insignificant influence
in the practical, money-making population of New England and the
middle colonies of which Kalm chiefly spoke. Their influence would be
relatively trifling compared with that which was necessarily exercised
by a governor like La Galissonière in New France, with its sympathetic
officials and priests, and which was necessarily contrasted by Kalm
with the indifference of the English colonists. Kalm failed, however,
to recognize the public liberty, commercial enterprise and secular
education which in New England and other colonial communities gave the
people the advantage over the habitans and French Canadians generally.
Instead, the spirit of materialism that was a distinguishing feature
of the active, enterprising English colonists, must have grated on the
susceptibilities of a student like Kalm, and prevented him from doing
impartial justice to the strong qualities of a rising nation.]