THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 219 



the visits to a new district, the tramps in England and \\'ales. the trips to Ire- 

 land and Scotland, one long revel of delight; and what began it all? A few 

 hours of drudgery with a botanical key and half a mile of common dusty road, 

 trodden casually one April afternoon at the end of a day in school. 



After two years in Smith's Falls 1 accepted a private tutorship in the 

 neighbouring town of Perth, with headquarters at the Rideau Lakes^ from April 

 to October. My pupil was as ardent a nature lover as I was myself and there 

 grew up between us a close friendship of the give-and-take kind. His paradise 

 was bird land, and if I taught him half as much about flowers in our long sum- 

 mer rambles as I learned about birds, we have both good cause to be grateful. 



No one can haunt the countryside for flowers so constantly as I did 

 without storing up quite a fund of mental notes, conscious or unconscious, 

 about their fellows, furred and feathered. Where I had missed at first the 

 Skylark from the meadows, I came to look for the Horned Lark, the Meadow 

 Lark, the Song Sparrow, the Vesper and the Bobolink; if I could no longer 

 hear the Blackbird and the Thrush, I could listen to the Bluebird and the 

 Robin, and train my ear to tell apart the notes of the Catbird and the Oriole; 

 while, in the woods themselves, I learned to trace to their source a score of 

 mysterious notes from Cuckoos, Flycatchers, Thrushes, Vireos and Warblers 

 —the Wetfoot, the Wood Pewee, the Veery. the Oven Bird, the Redeye and 

 the Yellowbird. About the swamps and marshes of the Rideau abounded 

 Crackles and Soldier-birds, Mudhens. Crebes, Bitterns and Herons; sometimes 

 we flushed a Woodcock or caught a rare glimpse of Gallinule, Green Heron or 

 Least Bittern. It was here that I first met the Great Northern Diver, the im- 

 mortal Loon, and learned to admire its mastery of the watery element. One- 

 day, too, on the Lower Rideau. 1 had a unique experience; I was trolling slowly 

 round a small island within a few yards of its wooded shore when I surprised 

 a loon on its nest ; in a flash it scrambled down the bank and made a running 

 dive for the open, actually passing just under the bow of my little skifif; I 

 could see the bird so distinctly as to note the powerful oarage of its great black 

 webs, but what astonished me most was to see that its wings were not closed 

 tight to the sides, but thrust partly forward and out, so that the water streamed 

 away in greenish bubbles over the edge of the pinion ; the wings must of course 

 be used like fins to keep the bird on an even keel and plane up or down when 

 submerged in its limpid depths. 



Soon after dusk the loon.sufifers disembodiment and all night long you 

 may hear from some abode of lost souls its wild cries and shouts of maniacal 

 laughter. Sound is the strangest of all our bodily sensations; objects of sight 

 have nothing mysterious about them ; there they are before us plain to the view, 

 and easily verified if we choose by touching or handling; but sounds are a 

 thing apart, unsubstantial, the ghosts and wraiths of the ear. Ever since the 

 race was in its infancy men have broken their hearts over an echo, and pined 

 away with infinite yearning; we have peopled the night with all kinds of 

 fabulous beings to be known only by their cries ; the cuckoo, the white throat, 

 and even the nightingale owe their charm to being hidden; to see the singer 

 is to touch the magician and his virtue departs. When night or the leafy screen 

 of the forest seals up the eyes, what a dance the imagination is led through that 



