146 



Certain it is that in early autumn the industrious little creature sets to 

 work, and much of its time is spent in cutting and piling up leaves 

 which it conveys to some hole among broken rocks, that has been 

 chosen for the winter. 



Three species of trees grew about our camp, all conifers : a spruce, 

 Picea Engelmani ; a hemlock, Tsuga Mertensiana ; and a balsam, 

 Abies sub-alpina ; none of them were of large size, but although we 

 were camped within a few hundred feet of the snow, they were almost 

 as laro-e as the same species had been a thousand feet below. No fruit 

 of any kind was found at the altitude of our camp, but about a mile 

 lower down the mountain Vaccinium myrtilloides and Vaccinium 

 ovalifolium formed in many places the principal undergrowth j the 

 berries of the latter resemble our common blueberries in appearance, 

 but are much more acid, and not valued highly when other fruit is to 

 be had. Vaccinium myrtilloides is unequalled among Canadian wild 

 fruits; its berries are large, about half the size of the cultivated black 

 cherry, which it exactly resembles in colour, the flavour is exquisite, 

 and it possesses the rare quality of leaving no feeling of satiety, no 

 matter how many of them may be eaten. 



Of small birds there were about a dozen species on the mountain, 

 several of them forms of common occurrence in Eastern Canada ; the 

 pine siskin (Spinus pinusj and white- winged cross-bill ( Loxia leucop- 

 teraj were flocking together, the i-asping note of the red breasted nut- 

 hatch and the assertive call of the kinglet ( Regulus calendulus) were 

 frequently heard, several little winter wrens sang continually behind 

 our camp, and a family of mountain blue-birds (Sialia arctica) occu- 

 pied a hollow tree near us. Although we were camped at an altitude 

 of more than G000 feet the rufous-backed humming bird ( Trochilus 

 rufus) was almost as common as it had been at the coast. Of game 

 birds but two species were shot, the blue or sooty grouse ( Dendragopus 

 obscurus fidiginosus ) and the rock ptarmigan ( Lag opus rupestris) ; the 

 former is a common bird throughout Western British Columbia, and 

 we had counted upon shooting as many of them as we should need for 

 food ; the ptarmigan is found only on the summits of high mountains, 

 generally near the snow. 



The descent of the mountain was not so difficult as disagreeable, 



