74 Rhodora [APRIL 
swamps between the ridges scattered individuals of tamarack and 
black spruce persist from an earlier growth. Some specimens of the 
latter are fifteen to twenty feet high — a very good size for Connecti- 
cut. Most of the plants here mentioned are noteworthy in this 
region: it was, therefore, with anticipations which we tried to keep 
prudently chastened that, in August, 1918, we at last started on our 
expedition to Long Pond. 
War-time train service had made the locality difficult of access. 
'The best way to reach it and have a few clear hours there seemed to be 
to take an afternoon train to the nearest railroad station, walk in, 
carrying what we needed, to an old farm clearing near the pond, 
spend the night in the fields there and do our botanizing the next 
morning. This we accordingly did. It was a novel experience for us, 
but proved distinctly entertaining. The one real drawback was a 
lack of drinking water, for finding which we had trusted to luck. By 
morning we were driven to a desperate attempt to collect dew from 
the grass, where there seemed to be enough of it to slake the thirst of 
an army. "The attempt failed; but it led to the interesting scientific 
discovery that a dewdrop is by no means the crystal pure article the 
poets would have us believe it. On the contrary, it is a globule of 
incredibly dirty water: its primary function must be to relieve the 
atmosphere of all — positively all — its impurities. 
At breakfast, we were honored by a visit from a mink, which moved 
about at a safe distance and barked at us. We suspected him of 
jeering at our waterless condition: he knew where the water was. 
Later we found out; and, much refreshed, began our botanizing. 
Rhexia virginica grew sparingly at the edge of the clearing where we 
had camped. A few rods away, in the edge of the swamp, was a good- 
sized patch of Smilacina trifolia, a species not previously reported 
from Windham County. Long Pond itself, when we reached it, 
proved to be quite different in character from Little Pond. All 
around it ran a more or less broad belt of mucky swamp, grown up to à 
well-nigh impenetrable tangle of bushes and sedge, among which young 
red maples were beginning to creep in. At one point where firm 
ground came close to the water, a path led down to it. Here we 
found a boat, of the awkward flat-bottomed type usual on New 
England ponds, and half an oar. Fortunately, it was the business 
half. As no better equipment seemed available, we set forth with 
this, in the face of a rather lively breeze. After some three hours’ 
