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The Canadian Field-Naturalist 



[Vol. XXXVI 



to see on a near view of them that they must be 

 close cousins to the Figworts (Scrophulariacese) 

 with their two-lipped corolla subtended by a spur, 

 and it lent added interest to the family to know 

 that the lovely little Butterwort (Pinguicula) , so 

 familiar a feature of Scotch and English moorland 

 bogs, was their next of kin. 



The very same summer what might have proved 

 a mere passing interest was made permanent by 

 the discovery of a second species of these beautiful 

 yellow flowers, a plant of much more delicate 

 habit with a very slender graceful stalk and 

 floating stems of fine-cut clean-looking foliage. I 

 found it in the heart of a sphagnum bog near 

 Newtonville, floating on a pool near some hand- 

 some spikes of the Prairie Fringed Orchid {Habe- 

 naria leucophsea) and surrounded by Pitcher 

 Plants iSarracenia), Beard Tongue (Pogonia), and 

 Grass Pink (Calopogon). A goodly fellowship, to 

 be sure, and yet, it seemed to me, it was well 

 worthy of its company. I had some diflficulty in 

 identifying it, for the book of descriptions to 

 the tyro of the Flatleaved Bladderwort and the 

 Lesser Bladderwort are easily confused. It is 

 certainly the former that I have found occasional- 

 ly since, and I believe I was right in referring my 

 Newtonville find to that species {U. intermedia). 



In 1901 I went camping on the south shore of 

 Lake Nipissing and in the sandy margin of a bay 

 there, beside our tent, I discovered a very beautiful 

 and highly fragrant spurred flower on a naked 

 scape, which I took to be a bladderwort, but of 

 bladders and even of roots there wasn't a trace to 

 be found. I had no botany with me, and for 

 over a month these specimens of the Horned 

 Bladderwort had to lie hidden in my note book as 

 a baffling mystery along with the Golden Hedge 

 Hyssop {Gratiola aurea). Late that autumn I got 

 Mr. James Fletcher, of Ottawa, to help me read 

 these and other botanical riddles, notably one of 

 two years' standing, the now widely distributed 

 Least Toad Flax {Linaria minor). To have three 

 kinds of bladderwort on one's calling list, so to 

 speak, was a great satisfaction childish, of course, 

 but who of us does not envy the child his first 

 meeting with every one of scores of earth's trea- 

 sures? 



More than fifteen years ago, when I paid my 

 first visit to Algonquin, I was delighted to find 

 both the Larger and the Horned Bladderworts 

 abundant in the Park, and as I knew of several 

 bogs near Port Hope where the Flat-leaved species 

 grew, I felt I had always within my grasp that 

 exquisite pleasure of the nature lover, second only 

 to the pleasure of making new friends, that of 

 renewing acquaintance with old. 



And so matters stood till some five years ago, 



when I ventured, as an annual camper in Algon- 

 quin, to master the arts of paddle and portage. 

 "All things come to him who waits", is true enough 

 of the insects, birds and beasts that came to call 

 at our camp on Cache Lake; but there is a race 

 of beings held in durance vile by wicked enchant- 

 ment. They may not go a-visiting, and these, 

 alas! are the botanist's sole care, the flowers of the 

 field. 



Apart from the joy of exploring that the art of 

 the portage provides, treading perhaps where 

 human foot seldom if ever trod, there is this other 

 lure, peculiarly the botanists', that round the very 

 next bend he may make some new discovery in 

 flowers. The very first portage I ever made in 

 Algonquin only one-quarter of a mile from Cache 

 Lake brought me what an amateur's vanity 

 delights to think the discovery of a lifetime, a 

 colony of Crag Woodsia {Woodsia scopulina), a fern 

 hitherto known only from the Rocky Mountains; 

 and here was I ten feet above level ground and only 

 100 miles from Toronto, staring at scores of tha 

 plants within a few rods of a beaten trail. 



My second portage enabled me to cross a little 

 beaver pond above White's Lake, and here in the 

 black ooze of the margin left bare by the shrinking 

 water of an exceptionally dry summer, I caught 

 sight of hundreds of tiny magenta flowers on 

 scapes less than three inches long. Here and there 

 a deer had waded boldly through them to drink, 

 but they fairly defied the foot of man to reach 

 them from shore, or his canoe from the water. I 

 managed at last to outwit these mocking imps with 

 the long arm of a cedar pole, and, cutting off a 

 few stragglers, brought my captives back in 

 triumph to camp. 



They were certainly a bladderwort, and, so far, 

 to me a bladderwort had always meant a brignt 

 yellow fiower; I knew nothing of purple blooms 

 in the genus. A careful study of Gray's botany 

 showed that these tiny dull magenta blooms, set 

 cross-wise on the top of their scape, their lower 

 lip uppermost and the spur remote from the lips, 

 must be the Reversed Bladderwort {U. resupin- 

 ata). Here was a find, indeed; I was now on 

 visiting terms with four species, two rooting in 

 the mud, one purple and one yellow, and two 

 fioating in the water. 



Next season was a very wet one and the ooze 

 beds of U. resupinata were submerged all through 

 August; but the disappointment was somewhat 

 allayed by my finding both U. vulgaris and U. 

 cornuta growing about the head pools and margin 

 of this interesting little beaver pond. 



In 1920, there was a great drought and by the 

 middle of August I knew from the water-level on 

 Cache Lake that a trip to the Beaver Pond would 



