THE OREGON NATURALIST. 
NATURAL HISTORY IN CANADA, 
The Field Naturalist’s Club of Ottawa, the 
Capital of the Dominion of Canada is perhaps 
as active an [nstitution of the kind as the country 
possesses, the majority of its members taking 
both an active and lively interest in its proceed- 
ings, 
has a monthly excursion to some point of inter- 
During the summer months this Club 
est accessible by rail, boat, or conveyance, with- 
in a radius of forty miles from the city, and the 
surrounding country, diversified as it is by moun- 
tain, river and forest, affords excellent scope for 
outdoor work, These excursions are very large. 
ly attended, the Club numbering three hundred 
members, Northwards from Ottawa the Lauren- 
- tain range of mountains, acknowledged by geoi- 
ogis!s as remnants of the earliest land on records 
affords charming exploration ground, rolling in 
long undalatious with rounded rather than rugg- 
ed summits they leavea margin of some eight or 
ten miles dropping in a gentle slope to the edge 
of the Ottawa river, whilst back beyond that 
in 1gin lie mountains rich in minerals of most 
every description. Southwards from the city 
there isnot only abundance of forest, but there 
is also a remarkable formation known as the 
‘*Mer Bleu’, evidently the bed of a long ago 
dried up lake, over thirty miles in length with 
a width of from two to five miles, the soil of 
which, a deep black mold still remains wet 
enough to be covered with sfaghnum and asub- 
To the Botanist this lake bed 
yields, many rare and valuable flora, 
stratum of peat. 
In addition to the monthly excursions every 
Saturday sub-excursions are organized, on foot 
to wooded nooks and grassy meadows, within 
The leaders of the 
various branches take charge of different parties 
easy distance of the city. 
attending, actng as instructors and materially 
Dur- 
ing the winter months a course of lectures is 
aiding the younger mem) ers of the party. 
organized and very well attended tie subjects 
chosen being always some matter of local inter- 
est. In this way an interest is kept up in the 
proceedings of the Club which otherwise the in- 
terruption of the winter months might interfere 
with, The experience of the Club shows that 
E71 
there is nothing more productive as a means of 
exciting interest in Natural History than out- 
door work, for,with some given object in view, 
such as botanising, fossil hunting, or shell gather~ 
ing, a zest and pleasure is given far more con, 
ducive both to mental and bodily health than 
an ovdinary listless stroll with no object in view. 
There is no-one who goes out among the wild 
flowers of the woods or the birds of the air who 
does not come back wlth a feeling of satisfaction 
and happiness, all wrought by the salutary in- 
fluence of Nature. We may get ideas from 
books but we get them better from Nature direct, 
books and nature being, one a reflex of the 
other. Added to this, one great use of the so- 
ciety is the interchange of ideas, and questions 
asked at its gatherings, although perhaps unan- 
swered at the moment, eventually lead to sub- 
sequent information tiereon. 
H. B. Sma, 
Ottawa. 
WARD’S HERON IN FLORIDA 
My knowledge of this bird is confined to one 
small cypress swamp near Tallahassee, 
In the spring of 1893 while searching for 
Snowy and Little Blue Heron’s eggs I came ur- 
on one large nest which [ learned afterwards was 
a nest of the Ward’s Heron, It contained three 
young birds which [ suppose must have been 
one month old, This wasin April, I searched 
diligently for other uesis of this Heron but with- 
out success, 
In 1894, I again visited this swamp and found 
three young birds in this same nest and another 
nest very near, whica also contained three young, 
On the 13th, of April this year, I again visit- 
ed the swamp. In the first nest which was now 
about as large as an ordinary umbrella, there 
was three young as before, and in the second 
There 
was three more nests in the swamp, in all five, 
nest of 94 there was also three young, 
and in two of the new nests were young, In 
the third, were three eggs heavily incubated. 
These were the first eggs I had seen in the three 
years. The nest of 93 was in a small cypress 
