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play and sincerity which ought to prevail in historical discussions. The tradition may be correct or it may be false; there are a great many families in Scotland that claim to be of French origin, but without the slightest evidence to support such pretensions. The French and Scotch were allies in their wars against the English for centuries, and many Scotchmen were in the service of France. But I do not think many Frenchmen made their homes in Scotland for the latter was a very poor country with nothing about it to attract a Frenchman from his more fertile and beautiful native land.

When the census of 1671 were taken there were two brothers named Melanson living in Acadia, both residents of Port Royal. Pierre Melanson, the elder of the two, refused to give Father Molin any particulars about himself and his family, but he was then thirty-eight years old and had been married for six years to Marie Mius d'Antremont. The reader will observe that Jean Baptiste le Blanc was in error when he stated in his affidavit of 1767 that Pierre Melanson married Anne Mius. There was no Anne in the family of Phillippe Mius, the names of his two daughters being Marie and Madeline. This is not a very important matter but it illustrates the amount of reliance that can be placed in family traditions. Pierre Melanson was a tailor and the only one of that trade in Acadia in 1671. We have no information as to his wealth but he was probably well to do. He had three or four children in 1671 and he had nine in 1686 when the census was taken by de Meulles. He was then living at Mines. He was also called La Verdure, a name which his father had borne. Pierre Melanson was witness to a deed which was made at Port Royal in 1679 so that his removal to Mines probably took place after that date. In 1701 he was "First Captain of the Militia at