September, 1922.] 



The Canadian Field-Naturalist 



107 



reminding one of the "imderwings". A rare visitor 

 indeed! But we have scarcely ceased to congratu- 

 late ourselves when another unexpected beauty 

 arrives. This is late July, but there against the 

 sash is one who has tarried behind her gay June 

 companions pale Luna. Ah! well may she be 

 called the "queen of the night"; for of all the gay 

 procession no creature can excel her for the dainty 

 refinement of her pale green jewel-set apparel, 

 bearing its delicate train. 



Far into the night the fairy pageant continues, 

 and reluctantly we darken the light that lures to us 

 these winged gems of the forest. 



A strange touch of mystery there is about this 

 infinite nightly tide of living forms from which a 

 small side current is turned for a moment by the 

 lighted window of a little cabin. Whence its 

 source? Whither its goal? In answer to the first 

 we stumble across stray fragments of evidence. 

 This afternoon we were sitting by the gnarled roots 

 of an old yellow birch. As our eyes wandered lazily 

 over the brown and yellow pattern of last year's 

 fallqn leaves, they involuntarily became focused 

 upon a fragment of colour of peculiar shape. As 

 we looked closer it transformed itself into a yellow 

 and brown geometrid, resting with wings pressed 

 flat against a rolled leaf. The fresh perfection of 

 its wings led us in curiosity to unroll the leafy 

 cylinder, and there, within, we found the newly 

 broken pupa case. Here this bit of perfect beauty 

 had escaped through fall and winter the bustling 

 search of the migrant sparrows, and the prying eyes 

 of the brown wood mice. The other day we lifted 

 a loose flat stone, and there, firmly fixed to its lower 



surface, was the brown, furry cocoon of a tiger moth. 

 Or again, from the open end of that tough silky 

 little bag that we raked up with the brown leaves 

 had come a brown-winged Polyphemus 



And whither? To mate, and lay their eggs, and 

 die. But not so with all. In the very corner of 

 our little illumined window is a fine spun web of 

 silk, and crafty Arachna sees many a tiny moth and 

 dainty mayfly become hopelessly entangled in her 

 silken threads. And she is only one of a countless 

 sisterhood; for by the tell-tale dew we see that 

 every tree and bush is hung with treacherous nets. 

 A little higher, on the border of the zone of light, 

 dark figures flit back and forth along the level of the 

 eaves The brown bats have learned that in this 

 artificial twilight is good hunting, and the many- 

 colored wings that strew the ground next morning 

 show that scores of fairy visitors never quite reach 

 the luring light. Others, momentarily stunned by 

 the treacherous glass, fall fluttering to the ground 

 and mysteriously disappear. Does even Mother 

 Earth herself turn traitor to these, her children, and 

 swallow up their fluttering forms? We stoop to 

 look for the last that fell, and find, sitting beneath 

 the cabin wall, dark toads. Those close-shut 

 mouths look innocent enough, though this big 

 fellow in the middle is gulping and swallowmg in a 

 rather saspicious manner. 



But in the face of countless enemies the tiny eggs 

 of next year's myriad forms are left in quiet pool, 

 on blade of grass and tender leaf; and if we too are 

 spared to come next year to this, our little cot 

 among the trees, we'll greet again the little people 

 at our window-pane. 



RAMBLING BY THE GRAND RIVER 



By Mary Pettigrew 



THERE are many lovely places all over 

 Ontario for the outdoor lover to explore and 

 I have had brief excursions through a few of 

 them, but the one district I know best is the Valley 

 of the Grand River, particularly the fourteen miles 

 of its course between the towns of Gait and Paris. 

 Our home was in Glen Morris, a tiny village 

 halfway between these two towns, and the woods 

 climbed up the hill almost to our back door, so 

 pine branches beckoned and birds called us irrestibly 

 to explore the shadowy, sweet-smelling ravines of 

 the wooded, hilly country along the Valley of the 

 Grand. 



It is a country of ravines. You walk across what 

 appears to be a level field, and are surprised to see 

 before you tree tops on a level with your feet. 

 These are growing along the sides of a basin hol- 



lowed out in the gravelly soil, and on coming to 

 the edge you look down on a circular amphitheatre 

 full of trees, and usually a pond or marshy spot at 

 the bottom. The slope is easy enough to descend, 

 but it is steep, and it is hard work to climb out again 

 on a hot day. Sometimes the ravines are long and 

 narrow like the valley of a stream, but blocked 

 abruptly at either end by a small hill. 



In one place there is a series of five ravines in 

 succession. On climbing out of the first, the 

 rambler stands on a ridge, looking down into a 

 second, and so on through ravine after ravine, until, 

 climbing out of the last, he stands on the highest 

 ridge and looks down over a level space covered 

 with hazel bushes, young pines, and maples, to the 

 River flowing close in against a high, gravelly 

 bank, down which, year by year, cedars and white 



