1909] The Ottawa Naturalist. Ill 



However, Strathroy was indicated as one of the small towns, 

 and from such, good botanizing is apt to be found at the end of 

 very short walks. Also, according to the map a river the 

 Sydenham seemed to course near this town; an augury of 

 more diversity in the flora and silva than strictly prairie or 

 mere upland districts are favored with. 



Landing at the railway station of this pleasant village a 

 half-hour before noon of June 12th, less than two hours later, 

 portfolio in hand, I walked forth on my first herborizing stroll 

 in Ontario. Having reached within a few minutes the further- 

 most and half meadowy outskirts of the town, I beheld close at 

 hand a depression in the open landscape, out of the midst of 

 which arose the familiar narrowly cone-shaped heads of larches 

 and arbor vitae. No prospect could have pleased me more; and 

 within a very few minutes I was in the midst of this tamarack 

 marsh. The arboreal vegetation of this I found to be quite 

 different from that of such tamarack swamps of southern 

 Wisconsin as I had been familiar with long years ago. There the 

 larches had been the only trees, and these so closely set as to 

 form a thicket hard to penetrate. Here there was no density 

 of arboreal growth. The larches stood somewhat apart from one 

 another, and there was arbor vitae freely interspersed; and there 

 was no dearth of deciduous trees, red maple, ash, basswood and 

 some others; but these small for their kind and slender; and 

 the habitat of them all was subaquatic; for everywhere one 

 had to pick his way along tufts of sedge, and the superficial roots 

 of trees, to avoid sinking over shoe in water. 



Between the dry bank that encircles the swamp and its 

 wooded portion one crosses in most places a narrow belt or rim 

 of Carices without shrubs or even much other herbaceous vege- 

 tation; usually more or less of marsh marigold and skunk 

 cabbage. Here the ground is firmer and less aqueous. 



Another treeless and shrubless portion of the tract is 

 central, and consists of a somewhat sinuously outlined shallow 

 pond, occupied mostly by yellow pond lilies, the muddy shore of 

 it beset with Calla palustris, this not yet in flower in the middle 

 of June. 



Bounded on the outside by the narrow rim of the caricetum, 

 and within by the considerable expanse of the calla-nymphaea 

 pond, the main body of the marsh, where grow the hydrophile 

 trees already listed, is the really paradisiacal part of it, as viewed 

 by the botanical eye; for here, the woods being quite open, the 

 open spaces are filled with a rich diversity of herbaceous plants, 



