270 IOWA ACADEMY OP SCIENCE Vol. XXVI, 1919 



Pierce's bridge is one of my favorite haunts and has revealed 

 many secrets hid in Mother Nature's story book. There I found 

 the rare grey birch — fifty of them ; the fragile clifT brake growing 

 from a crack in the limestone blufif; and here,' too, I put three blind 

 baby woodchucks to sleep one Memorial Day — but that is another 

 story. 



Cedar river, or Wa-shood Ne-shun-a-ga-tah, Big Timber River, 

 as the Winnebagoes once called it, makes a big curve in Osage town- 

 ship, circling about Osage with a radius of two miles from west to 

 south. Pierce's bridge is south of Osage, the Middle bridge is 



KiG. !•-. — The old Lime Kiln Road, Osiige. 



southwest, and two miles west of Osage on Main street is another 

 bridge. The most bewildering experience that ever came to me 

 was the day I found the colony of deep blue-purple Chelone glabra 

 or Turtle Head near the Middle bridge. They stood all of five feet 

 tall in the brink of the river, close to a bubbling spring. Every 

 year they come true as to color. This same mutant has been found 

 near Pierce's bridge by Mrs. Walter Wheeler, of Osage. 



The old Lime Kiln road leads out of Osage southwest to the 

 Middle bridge and is bordered on one side by vertical bluffs, and on 

 the other side for some distance by Sugar creek. 



Spring- Park is a tract of about forty acres of land owned by an 

 association for a picnic and camping site. Here is found a wonder- 

 ful spring flowing the year round. From it flows a little brook filled 



