He wrote a popular book on the trees of India and edited a major regional flora apart from publishing many of his other observations, mainly in the journal of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) that he was associated with.

)He studied at St. Mary's High school at Mazagaon in Bombay (now Mumbai) and worked for a while under Father Ethelbert Blatter at St. Xavier's College as a laboratory assistant and curator.

He was a prolific writer and published 200 articles and papers in the Journal of the BNHS, covering plants, birds, mammals and insects.

Blatter and which was published under the aegis of the Imperial Council of Agricultural Research, will remain for many years the standard work on the subject.

Equally outstanding in merit are his various revisions of the genera and species of Indian plants which the Society was privileged to publish.

[2] The BNHS instituted the Charles McCann Vertebrate Fieldwork Fund in his memory to promote field research.