58 The Ottawa Naturalist. [Ju-ly 



SUB-EXCURSIONS. 



Old Beaver Meadow, did you say? Follow the old road 

 past the old toll-gate and you'll come to it. You must be mis- 

 taken, for the meadow where the Field Naturalists gathered 

 on the 18th of May, 1907, could never be called old. Such a 

 charmingly fresh and beautiful spot! Nature in all the sugges- 

 tiveness of youth! The delicate traceries of the branches of 

 elm and maple were half concealed, half set forth, by a wonderful 

 indescribable adornment of fluffy tufts and tiny tendrils and 

 wee curled buds. Leaves^ did you call them? Such an ordinary 

 name! Nature has nothing so ordinary! And, Oh! the colors 

 of everything! That delicate yellow green and the cool silver- 

 grey, and those browns golden brown, brown and reddish 

 brown! How the colors of Spring haunt the mind of the artist, 

 as with futi^.e attempt he mingles the tints of his paint box, 

 trying with the seductive wiles of combination to catch just that 

 tone ! How it pursues him in his dreams- -just that tone ! 



But imagination would wander as the Field Naturalists 

 wandered that afternoon, and would that the results of its 

 meanderings might be as satisfying. Through the cedar woods 

 they went, some here, some there; some to find happiness in 

 the gentle hepatica, fair trillium and aromatic ginger-root, and 

 treasures of tree and shrub, others in the birds, the many 

 colored warblers and sweet-voiced sparrows, others again 

 absorbed in the little creatures that creep or fly, some indeed 

 that both creep and fly, and yet again, a group who find the 

 greatest charms in a hard, grey substance which sometimes 

 yields its secrets reluf^tantly, V^ut those secrets po<^sess the charm 

 of the classics in that, though dead, they live forever. 



As.for us, and there were many like us, we enjoj^ed something 

 of it all. "Gleam and gloom, and woodland bloom, and breezy 

 breaths of all perfume!" An overturned rock showed groups of 

 tiny ants, brown and black, like moving beads. Ever and anon 

 the clear, sweet note of the white-throated sparrow came to us. 

 Then, through a barbed-wire fence to a cutting of lime-stone 

 rock. What an interesting old-time world, Mr. Wilson points 

 out to us! Shells and crinoids and coral, all preserved, as Mother 

 Nature knows how, between the leaves of her hard, grey book. 

 Such an alluring story for those who will trouble to read! 



Then back through the woods! Now some one finds a 

 "good old snail with an English name." Then a flash of color 

 calls to our eyes, it is a warbler! There is another! But what 

 a beauty! Such a brilliant orange throat and yellow head and 



