INTRODUCTORY PAGES. 



" There's nothing left to chance below ; 



The Great Eternal ciuse 

 Has made all beauteous order flow 



From settled laws. "' 



^c5)VERY plant, flower, and tree has a simple history of its own, 

 ^O not without its interest if we would read it aright. It forms 

 d^ a page in the great volume of Nature which lies open before 

 us, and without it there would be a blank, — in nature there is no 

 space left unoccupied. 



We watch on some breezy day in summer one of the winged 

 seeds of the Thistle or Dandelion taking its flight upward and onward, 

 and we know not where it will alight, and we see not the wisdom of 



Him 



"Who whirls the l:)lowl)alls' new fledged pride 



In mnzy rings on high, 

 Whose downy pinions once untied 



Must onward fly. 



Each is commissioned, could we trace 



The voyage to each decreed, 

 To convey to some barren place 



A i^ilgrim seed." — Agnes Strickland. 



When the writer of the little volume now offered to the Canadian 

 public first settled in the then unbroken back-woods, on the borders 

 of the Katchawanook, just where the upper waters of a chain of 

 lakes narrow into the rapids of the wildly beautiful Otonabee ; the 

 country at that time was an unbroken wildernes.s. There was no 

 opened road for the rudest vehicle on the Douro side of the lakes, 

 and to gain her new home, the authoress had to cross the river at 

 Auburn, travel through the newly cut out road in the opposite town- 

 ship, and again cross over to the Otonabee at the head of the rapids 

 in a birch-bark canoe. There was at that period no other mode of 



