Swales and Taverner — On Lake IMuskoka Birds. 61 



noted for its rocky wildness and, although the shores are here 

 and there occupied by the summer cottages of the tourists, 

 their influence scarcely extends back from the lake farther than 

 the eye can reach. The country has been lumbered over and 

 all marketable timber extracted, but if it were not for the rot- 

 ting pine stumps one sees on every hand the observer, when 

 out of sight of the sparkling waters of the lake, might imagine 

 himlself buried in the primeval forest unprofaned by the intrud- 

 ing foot of civilized man. The country has, it is true, suffered 

 the concomitant evils that follow the lumbermen, as the great 

 expanses of burnt ridges manifest, with their gaunt gray skele- 

 ton pine standing like the monuments of a vanished age 

 scarred black with fire and bleached with storms to every shade 

 of soft and solemn grey. Scattered clearings exist here and 

 there hemmed around with forest except where they manage 

 to break through the leafy barrier to the lake or run up to the 

 barred ridges from which the life of the soil has been burnt by 

 repeated forest fires. 



The Beaumaris side of the lake is settled to a greater extent 

 than the opposite side, and the stage road from Beaumaris to 

 Bracebridge runs through clearings of an older and more set- 

 tled type. The Bala side, towards which Gibralter Island lies, 

 exhibits all the characteristics of a new country whose agricul- 

 tural future is almost hopeless. Hay and fodder for a few- 

 cattle and sheep and a little green stuff for home and tourist 

 consumption is about all that is raised, and the harvesting 

 among the stumps and rocks has to be done with the almost 

 vanished scythe, while oxen and jumpers largely take the place 

 of horse and farm wagon. 



The principal forest growth is pine, both Norway and white, 

 with considerable masses of hemlock scattered about and cedar 

 thickets in the lower parts. Deciduous trees are, however, 

 plentiful and "beech flats" are common enough, while the rest 

 of the land is filled with forest growths of oak, maple, bass- 

 wood, American hornbeam, and other hardy timber. The sec- 

 ond growth is generally poplar mixed with white birch which 

 usually succeeds the former short-lived growth and is in its 

 turn replaced by mlaple and oak. In the latter stage in ex- 



