U THE EEPQKT ,0^ THE Xo. 36 



the leafy month, of June. South-east alone, bounded" on three sides by woods, you 

 caught a glimpse of open meadow, a tiny wedge driven into the forest by the hand 

 of man. 



In the swamps of old Ontario, though the whole Dominion go dry, you may 

 still drink deep of this wine of life, till you fairly reel with the beauty of it all. 

 Over the road dragonflies hover and dart; butterflies flutter in varied hue, little 

 Blues and Coppers and Hairstreaks ; once in a' while a great Fritillary or a Swallow- 

 tail comes sailing along; far up in the vault of sky a pair of hawks wheel and 

 poise, their faint keening, from that giddy height, falls feebly on the ear. From 

 the depths of the swamp come at intervals the gentle croon of the Mourning Dove, 

 the sweet, long-drawn whistle of the Whitethroat; presently, drowning all else, 

 from some hidden turret in a Balm of "Gilead showers down a flood of delicious 

 "music, sweeter than the carol of a robin, perhaps 'the notes of that master-singer, 

 the Eose-breasted Grosbeak. Who could be blind and deaf to all this? Not even 

 an entomologist in the last Stage of " cerambyciditis." Mosquitoes and deer-fly are 

 soon forgotten; indeed, when taken in bulk, as it were, they are much less of a 

 nuisance than retailed in ones and twos; I had far rather move imperturbably 

 through an open swamp, the pincushion for a thousand, than sit on a verandah and 

 smash desperately at half a dozen, or crouch abjectly under canvas listening to the 

 shrill slogan of one. In the open they are mere pin pricks and we can cry with 

 happy-go-lucky Launcelot Gobbo — " Here are simple scapes ! If fortune be a 

 woman, she's a good wench for this gear." 



Eefreshed as by a draught of s'^ring water I plunged once more into the 

 swamp, following a woodman's path to the south of the gravel road. A little way 

 in, the path bore to tl^e right and at length debouched on a dry upland pasture west 

 of the wood. Beside the path were a number of straggling shrubs of spiked 

 maple, and the bloom was not quite over. In just such surroundings near Port 

 Hope I had taken on these blossoms' not a few beetles of interest and one or two of 

 considerable rarity. Above all, a unique specimen of a small Anaglyptus, which 

 had been declared in Montreal the male of Microchjtiis gazelluld. Spiked maple, 

 too, is the favorite haunt of Corymbites hamatus, a Aery prettily marked click- 

 beetle. It was too late, however, and all I could find were a few specimens of 

 Leptura capitata and Callimoxys sangulnicoUis. But I marked the place in my 

 mind for an early visit in 1916, and made my way home by the newly found gravel 

 road, a forced and zig-zag course, uphill and downdale, along the claw of my 

 spreading fan of woodland, past Burnham's, to the Ijift Locks and the City. 



In the fourth week of June I made my third visit to the Wood of Desire, 

 holding to the gravel road till almost the end of the journey, when I skirted a 

 fence due north to where the thimbleberry bushes grew. They were a snowy mass 

 of blossom now, and two of the sprays, either from situation or from the greater 

 maturity of their flowers, had quite a number of beetle visitors; among others a 

 solitary Lepiura 6-inaculata, and (better still) along with two specimens of 

 Leptura proxima — the flrst that season — behold ! Leptura chrysocoma. This last 

 I had never taken, though, two or three seasons before, I had heard of a lucky 

 collector in Port Hope making quite a haul. 



Altogether the experience of this first season served only to enshrine the Wood 

 of Desire in my heart as a haupt that agfe could not wither nor custom stale. Again 

 and again in fall and winter I found myself longing for the spring. Alas! its 

 coming was advertised in the almanac weeks before it appeared, and it was actually 

 Victoria Day before I exchanged New Year greetings with my inamorata. 



Now perhaps it may spell for you a cozening fancy — the glamour of imagina- 



