248 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [12:6-Sept., 1916 



with perhaps a corduroy road across them and with the logs a-swim 

 in spring, with whelms of peepers when the pussy willows were 

 out, frightsome snakes of all imaginary lands, and cat-bird nests 

 in the margins. To this day the squall of the cat -bird recalls a 

 cathole! Very well! They have gone with the Indian, the pas- 

 senger pigeon, the many curious traps concealed in the runways, 

 the burning logs, and the unsolvable mystery of the great woods. 



My father's farm was a zoological and botanical garden, — not 

 that it was different from any other farm, but because so many 

 things seemed to live and grow there that I thought I could never 

 find the end of them. To make a list of them, to put down where 

 I saw them and what they did, — this seemed the only way to find 

 out how many they were. This was no easy task, seeing that I 

 did not know the names of them, in the early days, and had little 

 way of finding out except to use such names as the settlers or cer- 

 tain antiquated books applied. Often I wonder whether the joy of 

 the field is so keen in these perfected days when everything is ex- 

 plained so carefully and we are so well instructed in what we ought 

 to see. 



Three sets of lists I remember to have kept ; one was of the daily 

 weather, one of the birds, and later one of the plants. Very simple 

 were these lists, scarcely to be dignified by the name of note-books, 

 but they served to prolong and to multiply the experiences. Any 

 old account book or composition book, with a few unused leaves, 

 was sufficient. These leaves were carefully ruled up and down 

 into columns for the name of the bird (marvellous names I must 

 have given them!), when it began to build its nest, when complet- 

 ed, the first egg laid, the subsequent eggs unto the last, the period 

 of incubation, when the birds flew, and how many. This was in- 

 deed a very simple record, but the number of nests under obser- 

 vation would run into the tens and perhaps more and each one 

 was visited every day as regularly as the other "chores" were car- 

 ried. It became a sort of game or play with me, and it was part 

 of the game to visit the nests when the birds were away and would 

 not be frightened. Back and forth from cultivating corn or driv- 

 ing the team here and there or following other regular farm work, 

 these nests were home-plates and bases (we did not have base-ball 

 then but only long-ball and two-old-cat), and reason enough to 

 go the long way or the short way. Some few of the old trees still 

 stand, and now, with memory running back to those years, I go 



