La Galissonière, who was an associate member of the French Academy of Science, and the most highly cultured governor ever sent out by France, spared no effort to encourage a systematic study of scientific pursuits in Canada. Dr. Michel Sarrazin,[13_a_] who was a practising physician in Quebec for nearly half a century, devoted himself most assiduously to the natural history of the colony, and made some valuable contributions to the French Academy, of which he was a correspondent. The Swedish botanist, Peter Kalm, who visited America in the middle of the last century, was impressed with the liking for scientific study which he observed in the French colony. "I have found," he wrote, "that eminent persons, generally speaking, in this country, have much more taste for natural history and literature than in the English colonies, where the majority of people are entirely engrossed in making their fortune, whilst science is as a rule held in very light esteem." Strange to say, he ignores in this passage the scientific labours of Franklin, Bartram and others he had met in Pennsylvania.[13_b_] As a fact such evidences of intellectual enlightenment as Kalm and Charlevoix mentioned were entirely exceptional in the colony, and never showed themselves beyond the walls of Quebec or Montreal. The province, as a whole, was in a state of mental sluggishness. The germs of intellectual life were necessarily dormant among the mass of the people, for they never could produce any rich fruition until they were freed from the spirit of absolutism which distinguished French supremacy, and were able to give full expression to the natural genius of their race under the inspiration of the liberal government of England in these later times. III.