The dwarf Canadian cornel, bears a corymb of red berries, which are highly ornamental to the woods throughout the country, but are not otherwise worthy of notice, for they have an insipid farinaceous taste, and are seldom gathered.
The Crees extract some beautiful colours from several of their native vegetables.

They dye their porcupine quills a beautiful scarlet, with the roots of two species of bed-straw (galium tinctorium, and boreale) which they indiscriminately term _sawoyan_.

The roots, after being carefully washed are boiled gently in a clean copper kettle, and a quantity of the juice of the moose-berry, strawberry, cranberry, or arctic raspberry, is added together with a few red tufts of pistils of the larch.

The porcupine quills are plunged into the liquor before it becomes quite cold, and are soon tinged of a beautiful scarlet.

The process sometimes fails, and produces only a dirty brown, a circumstance which ought probably to be ascribed to the use of an undue quantity of acid.