144 



The Ottawa Naturalist 



[Vol. XXXII 



46. trumpeter swan, Olor buccinator. 



The Ward brothers have observed Swans of two 

 different sizes. One shot in 1904 weighed thirty- 

 two pounds and was so large that Frank Ward, a 

 large man, could not close his hand about the neck 

 behind the head. Mr. Ward, Sr., says that swans 

 nested on the lake in 1893-94 and that he watched 

 the old one with cygnets one day for hours. This 

 can only refer to the Trumpeter Swan and is strong 

 circumstantial evidence of its occurrence. Our 

 informants also tell us that the big swans are not 

 as wary as the small ones, do not keep as con- 

 sistently in the centre of the open lake, and are more 

 easily taken. The voice is also quite different from 



that of the smaller species, being either a single 

 "Whoop-Whoop" or a louder, clearer, and less shrill 



"Coo-coo " that can be plainly heard for miles. 



Frank Ward tells of a wounded one uttering a long 

 drawn note of such extreme mournfulness that it 

 moved him deeply, thus substantiating, in a measure, 

 the fabled song of the dying swan. These trumpeters 

 do not come with the large flocks of Whistlers, but 

 usually as individuals accompanied by one or two 

 dark cygnets. Two have been seen as late as the 

 early spring of 1917. 



(To he continued.) 



The asterisk (*) denotes that specimens were 

 taken. 



THE ORCHIDS OF HATLEY, STANSTEAD COUNTY, 



QUEBEC. 



By H. Mousley. 



In that interesting book, "How to Know the 

 Ferns", Mrs. Theodora Parsons recounts how a 

 friendly rivalry used to exist amongst fern students 

 as to who could claim the greatest number of species 

 for a given area. Possibly if such a rivalry exists 

 amongst students of the orchid family, I might take 

 a prominent place, for I can lay claim to having 

 found seventeen species and one variety of orchids 

 (or just one-quarter of all those known to occur 

 in Eastern North America) within a radius of one 

 mile of my residence, and I am beginning to wonder 

 whether Hatley is not an "El Dorado" for these 

 lovely flowers, the same as Dorset and Pittsford 

 (both in the State of Vermont) are for ferns. On 

 a two hours' walk in the former place thirty-three 

 species and four varieties of ferns have been found, 

 but then it must be remembered that the party find- 

 ing them had made the study of ferns a speciality, 

 whereas I do not lay any claims to being considered 

 a specialist in orchids or even a botanist. Still from 

 childhood I have always had an innate love of the 

 beautiful, and it has been whilst pursuing my favour- 

 ite study of ornithology, that I have made a side 

 line, so to speak, of botany, having collected and 

 named some two hundred or more local species of 

 wild flowers, at odd moments when from some 

 cause or another birds were scarce. Possibly I owe 

 my success with the orchids almost entirely to the 

 warblers, for in making a special study of this 

 family of birds, I generally seem to have been most 

 fortunate in securing my rarest finds, the following 

 up of a Cape May Warbler (Dendroica tigrina) for 

 instance giving me my first sight of that exquisite 

 little orchid. Calypso hulhosa. 



Hatley is a pretty little village lying at an eleva- 

 tion of 1 ,000 feet above the sea level, the country 



all round being of an undulating character with 

 plenty of small streams, many of which eventually 

 find their way into Lake Massawippi, a fine sheet of 

 water about nine miles long, lying on the western 

 side of the village. Between this lake and the 

 village there stretches a long belt of low-lying woods 

 composed largely of spruce, fir and cedar, with hem- 

 lock, maple, birch, beech, ash and other deciduous 

 trees intermixed. It is in these woods principally to 

 the north-west of the village that most of my records 

 have been made, although there is a famous bog to 

 the north-east, where several species are to be found 

 growing in profusion including Arethusa bulbosa. 



During most of my eight years' residence here 

 (1911-1918) I have resided about one and a half 

 miles to the south of the village, but in May, 1917, 

 I made a temporary change and occupied a house 

 about a mile or rather more to the north of the 

 village until October, 1918. Previous to making 

 this change I had only observed six species of orchids 

 to the south of the village, so that my change of 

 residence is responsible for an additional twelve, the 

 ground being of a more swampy nature and better 

 suited to the requirements of orchids, although I do 

 not wish it to be understood that a systematic worker 

 could not find any of these twelve additional ones to 

 the south or east of the village, for indeed I myself 

 have already done so during the present year 

 (1918); nevertheless I think the localities indicated 

 will be found to be the most productive, as the fol- 

 lowing annotated list (taken in the order given in: 

 Gray's Manual of Botany, Seventh Edition) clearly 

 shows : 



Smaller yellow lady's slipper, Cypripedium 

 parviflorum Salisbury. My first acquaintance with 

 this fragrant flower was on June 22,1917, when I 



