Fontanus - (E-Journal - McGill University)

Editors, The

Stephen Leacock and His Books 
by The Editors 
Stephen Leacock published during his lgetime a multitude of magazine stories and books. The following pages 
reproduce the dust jackets or covers of some of these books. Their design and style both evoke another era and 
present Leacock as he appeared to contemporary readers. All the illustrations are taken from copies in the Leacock 
Collection in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. 
De son vivant, Stephen Leacock a publit une foule de livres et de rtcits pour magazines. Les jaquettes et 
couvertures de certains de ces ouvrages sont reproduites auxpages suivantes. Leur style et leur conception e'voquent 
une autre $oque et prksentent Leacock tel qu'il apparaissait h ses lecteurs. Toutes les illustrations proviennent de 
la collection Leacock du de'partement des livres rares et collections spe'ciales. 
Stephen Leacock and His Books 
London: John Lane, The Bodley Head 
1914 
Stephen Leacock and His Boob 
London: John Lane, The Bodley Head: 
[I9161 
Stephen Leacock and His Books 
London: John Lane, The Bodley Head 
1919 
Stephen Leacock and His Books 
London: John Lane, The Bodley Head 
Third Edition [I9191 
Stephen Leacock and His Books 
New York John Lane Company 
1920 
Stephen Leacock and His Books 
London: John Lane, The Bodley Head 
1922 
Stephen Leacock and His Books 
New York: Dodd Mead and Company 
1928 
BEHIND THE BEYOND 
V. C. C L I N T O N  -.BADDELEY 
I 
AND 
STEPHEN LEACOCK 
LON 0 0 N i GLASCOW COWANS 1L GRAY M D  
London and Glasgow: 
1 s 
Gowans & Gray Ltd. 
132 
HE B I L L I A R D  
,wens & Gray Ltd. 
Srephen Leacock and His Books 
New York: Dodd, Mead & Company 
1936 
Stephen Leacock and His Book 
Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada Ltd. At St. Martin's House 
1932 
Stephen Leucock and His BOORS 
Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Dorm and Company, Inc. 
1934 
28 
Stephen Leacock and His Books 
PHEN 
K York:  odd, Mead & Cornpar 
1936 
Stephen Leaco~k and His Books 
Toronto: Thomas Allen, Publisher 
1937 
Stephen Leacock and His Books 
ITN THE I I CH 
STEPHEN LEACO CK 
London: John Lane, The Bodley Head 
Cheap Edition, 1930, Reprinted 1952 
7he Need for Dormitories at McGill 
Montreal, McGill Centennial Endowment 
1920 


English

Stephen Leacock and His Books

Peteghem, Alfred Van

Notes and Comments 
An Early Canadian Herbal 
By Alfred Van Peteghem 
Montreal antiquarian bookdealer 
The first Canadian plant book is generally accepted to be Iac[obus] Comvti doctoris medici parisiensis 
canadensivm plantanm, aliarumque nondum editarum historia . .. printed at Paris (Simon le Moyne) in 1635. 
Indeed, it is the first book exclusively devoted to Canadian plants. Cornut was never in Canada', and antiquarian 
bookdealer Lathrop C. Harper in his Catalogue of Americana, part N, 19432, states that "it is said that as there 
was no one in Canada capable of writing this book the Jesuit fathers collected all the specimens and shipped them 
to France." A comment by Tromel indicates that "a large number of the plants are described here for the first 
time".3 
Likely the first botanical "book" relating to North America was published in 1620. It is entitled Histoire des 
Plantes, Nowellement trouukes en 1'Isle Virgine, & autres l ieu,  lesquelles ont estk prises & cultiukes au Iardin de 
Monsieur [Jean] Robin Arboriste du Roy. Non encore veues n 'y Imprides par cy deuant. . . . also printed at Paris4. 
The entire work consists of a title-page and 14 engravings, and is variously listed in Sabin as 16mo (32024) or 32mo 
(72042). I recall seeing a copy of it in 1975 or 1976, and to the best of my recollections it was no more than about 
8 cm. high by 6 cm. wide. While it claims to describe plants "of the Virgin Islands and elsewhere", one of the 
plates is called the "Lillium canadensis. " 
Shortly after Robin's Histoire des Plantes was on the market, I acquired Pietro Castelli's Exactissirnu descriptio 
rariorvm qvarvndam plantarvm, que continentur Rome in Horto Famesiano: Tobia Aldino [pseud.] Cesenate avctore. 
Illustr."' et rev."' Principis et cardinalis Odoardi Famesii medico chimico, et eiusdem horti pr~fecto. published at 
Rome, by Jacob Mascardus, in 1625. This folio volume bound in contemporary "wallpaper"-style (block-printed) 
boards consists of [6] preliminary leaves, 100 p., 1 l., and a [6] p. Index. There are 22 full-page illustrations, as 
well as 5 text illustrations (copper engravings). I later sold this volume to McGill University. 
Being "of extreme rarity", I was unable to trace the whereabouts of the copy of Robin that I had seen. Sabin 
lists two copies: John Carter Brown and Harvard. National Union Catalogue also gives the Library of Congress 
as a third holding. There ai-e no less than 17 locations for the Castelli in National Union Catalogue, indicating the 
book is not nearly as rare. The Library of Congress gives as its authority for the author's name Tiraboschi's 
Letteratura italiana. A manuscript note on verso of the "Typographvs lectori" leaf in the McGill copy supports this 
assertion. The note reads "Huius operis verus auctor fuit Petrus Castellus Medicus Romanus, ut pater ex litteris 
maiusculis simul collectis, quae sunt in haec epistola" (The true author of this work was Petrus Castellus, Roman 
Doctor, . . . .). Indeed, the capital letters of the "Typographvs Lectori" leaf spell out his name. 
Nobody, however, appears to have noticed the book's Canadian content. The standard Canadiana and Americana 
bibliographies do not point out the fact that several plants are of North American origin. Among the American plants 
illustrated there is the "Panis Hyiuccae Mexicanae", the "Aloes Americana florida" and the "Ricinus Americanus" 
(Figure I), with leaves that look suspiciously like the maple leaf. 
Furthermore, another three plates depict a "Canadian" plant: "Hyivcca Canedana" (Figure 2), "Flores Hyivccae 
Canedanae" , and "Radix hyivccae canadanae" . Webster's Dictionary defines yucca [from W. Ind. @rob. Taino) 
native name] as a plant of the lily family, having stiff, sword-shaped leaves and white flowers in a single cluster, 
found in the southwestern United States and Latin America. 
The plant illustrated by Castelli is similar to the "Yucca recurvifolia", also known as yucca pendula and yucca 
r e c ~ r v a , ~  which is said to be "a native of coastal regions of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi . . . allied to yucca 
Notes and Comments 
Figure 1. "Ricinus Americanus. " 
(Department of Rare Books and Special Collections) 
Notes and Comments 
Figure 2. "Hyivcca Canedana. " 
(Department of Rare Books and Special Collections) 
Notes and Comments 
gloriosa and as an intermediate between the two species, yucca recurvatu is occasionally found; some botanists 
regard yucca recurvifolia as a variety of yucca gloriosa. Introduced into Britain in 1794, it is quite hardy and is 
occasionally seen in private gardens, and, for example, grows at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Its gracefully 
recurved leaves are quite thin and flat on the upper surface for most of their length. Yucca gloriosa, a native of 
coastal areas from North Carolina to Florida, has thicker, stiffly erect leaves. Some forty species of Yucca occur 
in the southern United States, Mexico and the West Indies. They differ from Agave in having perianth segments 
and stamens which are inserted at the base instead of the top of the ovary, as in A g ~ v e " . ~  
Castelli himself states that the descriptions of yucca vary considerably: "Missa nobis est planta ex Canada regione 
Hyiuccae nornine, quam conferentes cum Hyiucca, seu Yuccaab aliquibus descripta, tam variat ab ea, qulm ij 
descriptores inter se, vt Monardes, Gomara, Ouiedus, Cardanus, atque Scaliger. " (It is our aim to compare common 
factors between this plant from the Canadian regions which is called Yucca, with Yucca elsewhere described, as 
much as the variations in descriptions is concerned, as the degree in variations between authors, such as Monardes, 
Gomara, Oviedus, Cardanus, and moreover Scaliger). He insists the plant is a yucca, and of Canadian origin: ". . . 
nostram Hyiuccam legitimam esse certo pronunciare iure dubitaremus (ciim eas regiones, vbi spontB, & satiue 
nascitur, & eam colunt certis tantum, & per somnium viderimus) nisi Indi quidam, & alij etiam, qui Hyiuccam in 
India viderunt, & commederunt, nostram aspicientes plantam testati essent, ipsam legitimam esse Hyiuccam ex qua 
panem Indi conficiiit. " (Our Yucca certainly, beyond any doubt, genuinely originated only in certain parts of the 
Indies, and exists still elsewhere, - in those regions, where they sprout spontaneously, and as cultivated plants; 
though they are certainly more often grown; we examined them in dormant state - but the Yucca which is found 
in the Indies, and is eaten there, prove, by the plants we examined, precisely why it is truly the Yucca with which 
Indian bread is made). 
The French, by 1625, had not yet made their inroads into the Mississippi region; the only French settlement in 
New France at the time was Quebec (Trois RiviBres was not founded until 1634, and Montreal in 1642). Castelli 
might have referred to plants brought back from Florida during the voyages of LaudonniBre, Ribault, and Gorgues, 
who visited Florida in 1561-67.7 However, in that case he would not have insisted on their Canadian origin, 
because the "Aloes Americana Florida" is identified as originating there, and not in Canada. Since the plant was 
"introduced into Britain in 1794, . . . is quite hardy and . . . grows at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew" could these 
have been specimens legitimately brought back from Canada? Was the plant still growing here in the early 1600s 
but completely wiped out by some extremely cold and long winter? It is not illustrated in Cornut's Canadensivm 
plantarvm, ten years later. Cornut, however, must have been aware of Castelli's work: the Exactissima descriptio 
. . . is dedicated to Cornut and, therefore, Castelli would have given him a copy. 
However, Castelli may well have examined more than one species of plant and erred when he assumed them to 
be one and the same; no bread is made of the "yucca"; the plant Castelli examined in its "dormant state", evidently 
was nothing but an ear of corn. 
Notes 
1. Toronto Public Library, A Bibliography of Canadiana, First Supplement, Toronto, 1959, no. 4663, quoting 
(bibliographer, librarian, book collector, dealer?) Tromel from Sabin, A Dictionary of Books relating to America 
from its Discovery to the Present Time, vol. IV, 1871, no. 16809. 
2. Op. cit. 
3. Op. cit. 
Notes and Comments 
4. Sabin, op. cit., vol. X W ,  no. 72042, stating this is the corrected title of No. 32024; vol. Vm. No. 32024, has 
the footnote "of extreme rarity. Not mentioned by Rich or Ternaux." Jean Robin, 1550-1629, was Henry IV of 
France's gardener. 
5. Morley, Brian D., et al. Wildflowers of the world. A thousand beautiful plantspainted by Barbara Everard. 
(London: Ebury Press and Michael Joseph, 1970), plate 168. 
6. Op. cit. 
7. These voyages are described in Rent5 Goulaine de LaudonniBre's extremely rare L'histoire notable de la Floride 
sitvee es Zndes Occidentales, contenant les trois voyages faits en icelles par certains Capitaines & Pilotes Franpois 
. . . , Paris, 1586. 
8. Morley, op. cit. 
In Touch with History 
The Archival Collection of Professor Thomas Henry Clark 
By Jason Pan 
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences 
MCGILL CENTENARIES 
The year 1993 marked two historic centennial observances; the festivities marking the 100th year of Redpath 
Hall, and the celebration of Emeritus Professor Thomas Henry Clark's 100th birthday, acknowledging his seventy 
years of distinguished service at McGill. 
Redpath Hall is reserved in its usual serene and tranquil composure to the witnessing of McGill history through 
the ages. Professor Clark is also a living link to the past century of history. This paleontological centurion is a 
gentleman scholar from another time and age; yet he is still vigorous and active in academic and intellectual 
pursuits. 
After graduating from Harvard, Thomas Henry Clark came to McGill in 1924 as an assistant professor in the 
Department of Geology. He was Logan Professor in Paleontology from 1931-1962, and was the head of the 
department from 1952-1959. Clark also undertook other important appointments; working as geologist for the 
Geological Survey of Canada 1926-193 1, Curator of the Redpath Museum 1932-1952, and geologist for the Quebec 
Department of Mines 1938-1963.' He has been an Emeritus Professor at McGill since 1962, and also an Advisor 
in Geology at the Redpath Museum from 1964 to the present day. 
In professional circles, Clark is highly regarded and esteemed for his outstanding contributions in the geosciences. 
He is recognized by his colleagues and peers to belong to a very exclusive and select company, as one of the top 
Canadian scientists in the 20th century. He has been elected to some of the highest professional offices: he was 
President of the Geological Society of Canada, and Head of the Geology Division of the Royal Society of Canada. 
In 1971, the Geological Association of Canada (the professional body of the geoscience community) granted him 
its highest award, the Logan Gold Medal. This award, named after Sir William Logan, the founder of the 
Geological Survey of Canada, acknowledged Clark's distinguished contribution and his major accomplishments in 
the advancement of geoscience in Canada. 


An Early Canadian Herbal

Pan, Jason

In Touch with History: The Archival Collection of Professor Thomas Henry Clark

-, -

Back cover

Lindeman, Yehudi

Witness Testimonies of the Holocaust and the Meaning of Memory

Cohen, Montague

Notes and Comments 
Construction began in the late summer of 1967 for a building whose initial contracts called for expenditures of 
$5,900,000.3 Although an October 1968 opening was hoped for, the actual date was January 2 1, 1969. Eleven days 
earlier on January 10, Redpath Library was closed and a crew of 190 people worked on twenty-four hour a day 
shifts moving out all the books and furniture and leaving an empty shell. Its interior was subsequently gutted and 
rebuilt during 1969-1970 to accommodate the Undergraduate Library in the three lower stories and the Blacker- 
Wood and Blackader-Lauterman Libraries in the upper stories. Although the Undergraduate Library was disbanded 
in the late 1980s, the spatial configuration of Redpath remains much the same. 
The total cost of building McLeman Library was eventually $7,430,000: $3,050,000 from the estate of Isabella 
McLennan and other bequests, $2,880,000 from the government of Quebec and $1,600,000 from the Canada 
Co~nc i l .~  Although this was a great deal of money at the time, by 1994 standards it seems relatively modest. 
McGill continues to enjoy a main library whose total stack and user capacity has yet to be exhausted. It also enjoys 
an outstanding building whose internal convenience and external prominence continue to attract attention and 
comment. 
One question still remains. When will a plaque be unveiled commemorating Isabella McLeman, the McLeman 
Family, and the Library's formal opening on June 6, 1969? 
Notes 
1. The author acknowledges with gratitude the assistance of Mr. David Bourke in writing this article. Also of 
assistance were the following records: McGill University Archives. RG40 Library. Files 621-623 container 0174, 
and file 647 container 0175; McLennan Library, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. Alphabetical 
files, McLennan Library. 
2. Peter F. McNally, "Dignified and picturesque: Redpath Library in 1893," Fontanus, v. VI (1993), 69-84. 
3. "New McGill library designed to break 'bottle-neck' in learning process, " Montreal Star, (August 12, 1967), 23. 
4. "The McLennan Library, " McGill Alma Muter Fund Newsletter, v. 1, no. 2 (February 1969), 3. 
Macdonald Physics Building: 1893-1993 
By Montague Cohen 
Professor, Department of Physics 
This year is the centenary of the opening of three important buildings on the downtown campus: the Macdonald 
Physics Building, the Macdonald Engineering Building and Redpath Hall. Only the first of these (Figure 1) will 
be discussed in this article. 
The teaching of physics at McGill began in 1854, when the Department of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy 
was set up. However, little progress was made in teaching 'practical science' before 1878, when the Faculty of 
Applied Science was inaugurated, with Henry T. Bovey, Professor of Civil Engineering, as Dean. The next step 
was taken in 1891, when Sir William Macdonald endowed a chair of physics and John Cox, a Fellow of Trinity 
Collge, Cambridge, was appointed as the first incumbent. Macdonald also provided generous funds for erecting 
and equipping a physics building and Cox was asked to visit laboratories in Europe and America to gamer ideas 
as to the design and furnishing of such a building. The architect chosen was Andrew T. Taylor. 
Macdonald Physics Building, ca. 1900 
(McGill University Archives) 
Notes and Comments 
The Macdonald Physics Building was formally opened on February 24,1893 by the Governor General of Canada, 
Lord Stanley. The building was considered to be the finest of its kind in North America - perhaps in the world - 
thanks to Macdonald's "everything of the best" philosophy. It was designed in Romanesque style and constructed 
of Montreal limestone lined with pressed brick, and with woodwork of quartered oak. The walls were three feet 
thick at the base. In order to facilitate experiments in electromagnetism (an important field in the 1890s) some parts 
of the building, including the magnificent quartered oak stairway, were constructed entirely with the use of iron. 
The main entrance hall (now no longer used as such) was provided with an elegant stone fireplace inscribed with 
the motto "Prove All Things. " (Figure 2) The cost of the building, excluding equipment, was £29,000 ($145,000), 
i.e. about 23C a cubit foot. 
According to Arthur Stewart Eve (who came to McGill from England in 1903 and was Chairman of the Physics 
Department from 1919 to 1935), the Macdonald Physics Building was intended "to meet the requirements of the 
ensuing fifty years." (Eve, Nature, July 19, 1906.) In fact, the building served as a physics teaching and research 
centre for over 80 years and still functions well, albeit in a different role. 
However, a building alone does not constitute a university department, particularly a science department. 
Accordingly, Macdonald instructed Cox to prepare estimates for equipment and apparatus for the new laboratories. 
Cox submitted a request for f5,000 in response to which £6,000 was provided! Moreover, this was not the end 
and, in fact, the purchase of equipment continued until 1897, by which time £22,000 had been spent and the Physics 
Buidling was deemed to be "fullly equipped." However, Macdonald continued to make grants from time to time 
for special purchases such as radium, a liquid-air machine, and books. 
Perhaps most important of all, Macdonald provided funds for staffing the new department (although it was not 
formally designated as such until much later). In particular, he endowed a second chair, this time in experimental 
physics. The first incumbent was Hugh L. Callendar, also from Cambridge, who quickly established himself as 
a world authority on the physics of heat. Callendar specialized in high-precision measurements of thermal quantities 
and his platinum-resistance thermometer became widely accepted as the standard for the measurement of 
temperature. 
Early in February, 1896, little more than a month after the discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen 
in Germany was announced to the world, Professor Cox set up the equipment for the production of the radiation 
in the Macdonald Physics Building and succeeded in making the first radiographs in Canada. These early X-ray 
photographs included the first clinical radiograph in North America (of a bullet lodged in a young man's leg) to be 
used as an aid to a surgical procedure (for removing the bullet) and reproduced in a scientific journal: Montreal 
Journal of Medicine, March 1896. 
In 1898 Callendar left McGill and the vacant post was filled by a young New Zealand physicist who had just 
completed three years of graduate research in the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge. During his n@e years at 
McGill (1898-1907), Ernest Rutherford carried out pioneering research in the newly discovered field of 
radioactivity. He established the nature of the radioactive process, the exponential law of radioactive decay, the 
details of the uraniun-radium series and the nature of the alphaparticle. Rutherford's work at McGill laid the 
essential foundation on which he later (1910) constructed the nuclear model of the atom, the basis of the 'atomic 
age.' Ernest Rutherford's Nobel Prize (1908) was awarded for his work at McGill University. Indeed, two of his 
collaborators at McGill would later themselves become Nobel Laureates: Frederick Soddy, a young Demonstrator 
in Chemistry, and Otto Hahn, a graduate student from Germany. What other building, in McGill or elsewhere, has 
nurtured three future Nobel Prizewinners in the first fourteen years of its existence? 
In a short article it is, of course, impossible to name--let alone discuss--all the distinguished scientists who 
worked in the Macdonald Physics Building after Cox, Callendar and Rutherford. A parital list must include Eve, 
Notes and Comments 
Howard Barnes, Louis King, Norman Shaw, John Stuart Foster, David Keys, Anna McPherson, Stuart Marshall, 
Walter Hitschfeld and Robert Bell, each of whom merits an article to himself or herself. And that excludes all the 
physicists who are still alive and working in the Department. 
It must not be forgotten that the Macdonald Physics Building was designed not only for research but for teaching, 
too. Indeed, in an early article in Nature on "Physics and Engineering at the McGill University, Montreal" 
(October 4, 1894), the Physics Building is described as "designed for the teaching and study of physics (including 
mechanics) with special regard to (1) its intrinsic importance as an integral part of a liberal education in the Faculty 
of Arts; (2) its essential necessity as a study preliminary to the courses of engineering, mining, and practical 
chemistry in the Faculty of Applied Science, (3) prosecution of scientific research." It will be noted that the 
principal aims did not include the education and training of professional physicists! That came later, as Rutherford 
and others demonstrated the potential of Montreal as a world centre of science. 
The Macdonald Physics Building served its original purpose, as a home for the teaching and development of 
science, until well past the Second World War-far beyond the original 50 years suggested by Eve-but, inevitably, 
it became too small and too inconvenient to satisfy the needs of modem physics. In 1977 the Physics Department 
moved into a new building on the upper campus, appropriately named the Rutherford Physics Building. The old 
Macdonald Building was then gutted, remodelled (at least, internally) and converted into a library. The Physical 
Sciences and Engineering Library was officially opened on May 19, 1982. Thus William Macdonald's original 
bequest, for the service of science and engineering, lives on in another guise. Long may it continue! 
Views of Rome, Visions of Rome 
Piranesi W i t s  from the Nobbs Collection in the Blackader-Lauterman Library, 
McGill University 
By Ron Hawie 
Ph.D. candidate, Department of Art History 
Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) was one of the great masters, along with Rembrandt and Goya, of the 
highly demanding medium of etching. He was also that rarity, an artist who was able to combine commerce and 
conviction. For while he successfully supplied the ever-increasing demand by tourists for inexpensive souvenirs 
of Rome, Piranesi never abandoned his own personal vision of what the city stood for. 
Briefly stated, Piranesi's concept was that the seeds of classic art had origniated in Italy, germinated in Greece 
and flowered most perfectly again in Rome.' The more that archaeological discoveries refuted him, the more 
steadfastly, and profusely, Piranesi maintained his position. This wrong-headed obsession led Horrace Walpole to 
write of "the sublime dreams of Piranesi, who seems to have conceived visions of Rome beyond what it boasted 
even in the meridian of its splendo~r."~ Piranesi's images, however, clearly matched the romantic, neoclassic 
sensibility then so prevalent, particularly in northern Europe. 
Although his name is forever attached to Rome, Piranesi was actually Venetian. He was born, and had his early 
training (as an architect and a theatrical set decorator) in Venice, and the romantic spirit of this city seems to infuse 
his etcher's needle. So does the Venetian sense of drama, which had been sharpened by study with Bibiena, the 
self-styled inventor of the scena per angolo, (the use of exaggerated low-angle diagonal perspective in stage 
scenery). Thus, Piranesi's work melds two traditions which appear mutually exclusive: that of the Baroque theatre 
with that of topographically accurate renderings of ar~hitecture.~ 


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Stephen Leacock and His Books

An Early Canadian Herbal

In Touch with History: The Archival Collection of Professor Thomas Henry Clark

Back cover

Witness Testimonies of the Holocaust and the Meaning of Memory

Contents

Macdonald Physics Building: 1893–1993

Les Archives Photographiques Notman du Musée McCord

The Leacock Mission Statement

Front cover

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