218 LEPlbOPTERA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



dium, &c., are to be found in flower, and then the ravine is in 

 its beauty. I could here run riot in telling of its summer glo- 

 ries; of the rocks clothed with flowers and ferns; of the dark 

 branches of the cedars and hemlocks ; of the blue birds, the 

 baltimores, the scarlet tanagers, that make it their abode ; but 

 I must not do so. I only just hint to my readers that such 

 things are, and that there are in that ravine beauties, which 

 they 



" Caged in the space of Europe's pigmy span 

 Can scarcely dream of; — which their eyes must see, 

 To know how beautiful this world can 6e." 



So much for the spot where some of the happiest hours of 

 my life were spent, and where I first learned " to honour the 

 Americans as a nation, and to love many of them as personal 

 friends," feelings which grew upon me more and more the 

 longer I stayed amongst them. 



llie period I spent in this place was from the middle of 

 May to the middle of August, except that I took a short ex- 

 cursion, of about three weeks, to Niagara, the borders of Penn- 

 sylvania, and the central part of New York, during which 

 journey, of about 600 miles, I travelled over some interesting 

 country, never before visited, I believe, by an English travel- 

 ler. That my time was not idled away during the many 

 weeks I spent in that spot, I hope soon to show, by the fre- 

 quent mention I shall make of it when I come to the moths. 



In August I left the house I had so long made my home, 

 and proceeded west. On this journey I did not stay long in 

 any one place, in fact, a few days hunting near Cincinnati, 

 sometimes in company with that excellent botanist and right 

 good-hearted man, Thomas G. Lea, was all I did until I 

 reached Albion, in Edward's County, Illinois. At that place 

 Mr. Foster (w^ho had rejoined me at Cincinnati), and myself 

 spent several days. It was at the house of a near relation 

 of more than one English entomologist, that we were most 

 kindly entertained. The situation was truly beautiful, and 

 the fine October weather added to the pleasure derived from 

 seeing Nature where man had molested her so little. The 

 house stood on the edge of a small prairie, now one waving 

 mass of asters, of all shades of blue and white, and sometimes 

 purple, Solidagines, Rudheckidd, and an infinity of composite 

 flowers. This prairie, probably, is not above four miles long, 

 and is skirted by the most noble timber, with here and there 

 scattered clumps of trees. What nobleman in England has 

 a park to be compared to it ! 



" These are the gardens of the desert, these 

 The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful, 



