38 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



was hacked to the heart; at one point near the centre of the stump, 

 a section of wood, more strongly impregnated with resin, had 

 resisted their efforts and stood up, a great jagged tooth, in the 

 midst of the ruins, but chiselled so thin as to be partly translucent 

 and in three or four places actually perforated. For quite a long spell 

 we had watched the pair, one on each side of this partition wall, 

 tapping and drilling like miners entombed. Seen at close quarters, 

 with their great size, the crimson crest produced behind the head, 

 the long wiry neck and ponderous bill, above all with their amazing 

 proficiency, they presented an impressive spectacle indeed, these 

 master-craftsmen in the ancient order of foresters. 



No sooner had we realized we were going to make good as 

 campers than we bought a canoe and mastered the arts of uaddle 

 and portage. It took a season and more of good hard work, but 

 even ten years' hard labour would have been getting off cheap 

 for all the swag we pocketed cracking that crib. Paddle and 

 portage are the master key to the Park. Last August, for instance, 

 we made a week's trip to the middle of the Park and then down 

 the Oxtongue river to the High Falls near the Lake of Bays; 

 every hour of every day chock full as a plum pudding of the 

 fruits and spice of discovery, and overlarded and basted with 

 sweet sauce of the same till the Nature lover in us had fed too 

 fat almost to waddle; for me the peak of romance was reached 

 on this trip when we discovered, floating on the main channel of 

 Joe Creek, masses of a beautiful flower of delicate violet, a flower 

 that thirty years ago was known only on the Atlantic Coast, but 

 since then reported from ponds in North Indiana and Michigan — 

 the Purple Bladderwort. 



This I call the Freedom of the Park, and it came to me as 

 soon as ever I learned to portage. My first trip under a canoe 

 was across the trail from Cache Lake to Hilliard, and it was by 

 way of resting neck, back and shoulders from the strain of the 

 load, that I clambered along the ledges of cliff just south of the 

 path, where presently I found myself staring at plants upon 

 plants of a fern I had never seen before, the Crag Woodsia {Woodsia 

 scopulina) recorded up to that time only from stations in the 

 Rocky Mountain's ; and here was I in the heart of Ontario and within 

 ten feet of level ground. 



