THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 139 



The woods, it may be, are not so grand and imposing as those 

 of some other portions of the country, but it is enough that 

 they teem with Hfe and that their autumn coloration, as I 

 deem it, is unsurpassed. Here it is true, no lofty peaks rear 

 their hoary heads, but, loathed in sunlight or capped with mist, 

 appear the hills to invite many and many a ramble of explora- 

 tion. The largest streams that I became acquainted with were 

 mere brooks that oftimes became dry in summer, but I con- 

 tend that one may learn to love such vulgar rivulets as truly 

 as Thoreau loved his classic pond. 



He whose wont it is to seek solitude delights to wander 

 in the lowlands — represented here in Illinois by what are 

 termed "bottoms." Perchance it is a broad, level tract, bor- 

 dered on either side by tree-clad hills, while throughout its 

 length flows, or rather drags, a sluggish, meandering brook a 

 few inches deep and two or three feet wide, on the average, in 

 summer, but capable, in spring of overflowing the entire space 

 between the bases of the two lines of hills. Cow paths lead 

 through the wilderness of weeds. Brush heaps, their forms 

 revealed but not their substance, are overgrown with and over- 

 whelmed by, climbing false buckwheat, Virginia creeper, 

 moonseed, bindweed, Smilax and climbing bittersweet, while 

 all around, the tangled Compositae — those Anglo-Saxons of 

 the vegetable world — obstruct and delay the few human feet 

 that venture here to scar the ground. The chewinks, at one's 

 approach, chirp and fly from the hidden brush piles to the ad- 

 jacent hazel shrubs of the hills, while a startled marsh-wren, 

 in its flight, follows the windings of the creek. 



A place that the Illinois naturalist always delights in is 

 the vicinity of an old coal-mine — not necessarily one that has 

 been worked on a large scale, but rather such a one as was 

 operated by one or two miners only, who performed their 

 work and left nature undefiled. A simple tunnel we perceive, 

 sloping into the side of a hill — and what we behold is all there 



