194. ^H,E CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 



British Isles, no matter how securely hidden it might fancy itself from the long 

 arm of the Naturalist. 



I was as helpless as a child, and as full of curiosity, for I had just entered 

 a new world full of novelties ; hundreds of flowers and insects that"i had never 

 seen before, flaunted their beauty in front of me at every turn ; scores of birds 

 with strange plumage and unfamiliar cries met my gaze on every walk in the 

 country ; and like a child, too. I wanted at first to know^ just their names, to 

 have a simple label that T could attach to them, some definite word that I could 

 hunt up in a book, and so round out my field observations. 



It is not given to all to enter second childhood thus wide-eyed and men- 

 tally alert, and for the sake of others who may be similarly placed or may want 

 in adult life to enter on the study of Natural History, I wish here to record 

 some of my early experiences as a stranger in a strange environment to which 

 the senses of his neighbours had grown dulled from boyhood. And let me tell 

 you, I found it far harder to learn the secret of the sights and sounds that met 

 me than if I had been a child. The world of childhood and boyhood was for- 

 ever shut to me, and often I found myself envying the youngsters who were pen- 

 etrating such mysteries day by day, without conscious effort, by companionship 

 with their fellows and the traditions of their kind. I was herded with the 

 grown-ups and found most of them sadly ignorant and careless of the Natural 

 life about them. 



It was when summer was already sinking into the lap of autumn, and 

 within a fortnight of my setting foot in Canada, that I took up my quarters in 

 Toronto preparatory to a 3-term session at the School of Pedagogy. Almost 

 the first things that had struck me were the wonderful clarity of the air, and 

 the lavish way of the sun in spilling whole weeks of blue unclouded summer 

 days over the land. As we steamed up the St. Lawrence, I had noted with as- 

 tonishment the sharp outlines and bright colours of the houses along the dis- 

 tant shore, so different from the hazy indistinctness of an English landscape. 

 On landing at the docks I had been taken through Montreal on a sight-seeing 

 tour ; I can't remember now what "Notre Dame" looked like either inside or 

 out, but I know that the streets and sidewalks of the city were literally covered 

 with grasshoppers, almost in the heart of the business section. About Toronto 

 when you walked in the fields, every step you took squirted showers of these 

 insects, as well as crickets and locusts, up at your face. It was as hard to steer 

 a conversation safely through such elements as for a swimmer to breathe in a 

 choppy sea, — you never knew when you were going to get a mouthful ; and 

 often it was impossible to be quite sure whether your last ejaculation had been 

 a word or an insect. After a little experience one learned to wade along in 

 silence, glasses jammed close up to one's eyes and mouth tight shut, like a ship 

 running through heavy seas with port holes closed and hatches battened down. 

 Ontario had been in the grip of a drought for five or six weeks, a very excep- 

 tional thing, I was told ; but most of the twenty-five years passed in Ontario 

 since 1894 have only gone to prove the rule of this exception. 



My walks that Fall were mostly in the direction of Rosedale, and all of 

 them alive with wonders; chipmunks and groundhogs, severally after their kind, 

 came chattering and frisking forward with eager curiosity to meet the tender- 



