62 THE EEPOET OF THE No. 36 



insect carriers, and the prevention of this chiss of diseases lies at his door, rather 

 than at that of the physician. Either that, or sanitarians must be trained in what 

 is now known as medical entomology. 



SECOND DAY'S SESSION— FRIDAY, NOV. 3ed. 

 THE AVOOD OF DESIRE. 



Feancis J. A. MoRKis, Peterborough. 



In September, 1913, al)out a week after my arrival in Peterborough, I found 

 myself toiling, one hot afternoon, up a steep hill -side just east of the city. All 

 the explorer's romantic sense of adventure thrilled me, for these were pioneer 

 days in a new district, and I was very curious to knoAV what lay beyond the hill, 

 what sort of view would unroll before me from the little knot of pines that topped 

 the height. Up and up I struggled, like stout Cortez, till at last I won to the 

 coveted vantage-ground, and found myself staring out over a wide and varied 

 strath that rolled ocean-like between the Otonabee and Indian River. 



In the foreground, to the south, lay Burnham's wood, brimful as a magician's 

 box with insect marvels I was to conjure forth next season. And "east of there, 

 after a mile or more of open country, the timber lands began again ; at first just 

 scattered farm lots of elm and maple, but, from a point in the middle distance, 

 not far south of the, C.P.R. there stretched across the background a wood far 

 larger and denser than any of these; widening as it went, it spread to the south- 

 east verge of sky in the form of an enormous fan. In view of its distance, this 

 must, if continuous, be a veritable forest, and field glasses trained upon it revealed 

 no break in all its surface; it stood the test — a solid fan of timber, ribbed with 

 hemlock and spruce, fringed witli pine, the framework compact of beech and 

 maple. 



Though I found enough to engross my attention next season, in the forefront 

 of this woodland paradise, yet always in imagination loomed up that mysterious 

 background; and when, in May of last year, I drew the covers of Burnham's wood 

 repeatedly without a single view-halloo of novel game, elfin fingers from the far 

 horizon, beckoning fast and furiously, would no longer be denied. So in the first 

 week of June, with a fardel as, varied as that of Autolycus, I set out across country 

 for this wood of my desire and merrily hent the stile, as light-hearted and innocent 

 a snapper up of unconsidered trifles as any son of Hermes in the land. 



Like every fastness worthy the mime, it had its approaches well guarded; for 

 a mile or more along its northern frontier I probed vainly for a point of penetra"- 

 tion ; thickets of prickly ash, a Inroad belt of willow and alder, a meandering 

 stream of uncertain channel, all combined to form a zariba moated and im- 

 pervious. x\t last, by the north-east corner of the wood, the swamps drew to a 

 narrow neck, and along an old winter road strewn with elm logs I stole my first 

 entrance — the planet in the ascendant doubtless Mercury, lucky star of all pedlars 

 and the light-fingered gentry. 



No sooner had I crossed the threshold and won to the heart as it were of tliis 

 dark tower of romance than I became the butt — the more than willing target — for 

 a perfect bombardment of new discoveries. On one of the elm logs that had 

 served me for drawbridge in the passage of the moat, I caught a gleam'i of steely 

 blue about the corrugated bark. It was Physocnemum hrevilinenm, and I soon. 



