14 
propose to offer you during the winter, by the way of amusement, and to keep up 
an interest in the Club, which has already given us so much pleasant intercourse. 
One of the chief benefits bestowed by an or ganization, such as ours, is that it 
enables one always to know where to find a sympathetic companion. 
Of all recreations, there is none, to my mind, more enjoyable than a walk in 
the country with a congenial friend. No kind of intercourse brings you into 
closer contact with a companion than taking a walk. You cannot take ten 
steps, even with a stranger, without feeling a necessity of saying something, and, 
if there is anything in aman, you can soon bring it out of him in a country 
walk. Now, it is very clear that a judicious choice with regard to your com- 
panion isa most important matter ; but it is not always easy to find one who has the 
sume tastes or takes an interest in the same subjects as yourself. John Burroughs, 
in “ Winter Sunshine,” writes as follows: “ Professional walkers are very fastidious 
in choosing or admitting a companion, and hence the truth of a remark of Emer- 
son that * you will generally fare better to take your dog than to invite your 
neighbor.’ Your cur dog is a true pedestrian ; he enters into the spirit of the 
enterprise ; he is not indifferent or preoccupied; he is constantly sniffing adven- 
ture; laps at every spring; looks upon every field or wood as a new world to be 
explored; is ever on some new trail; knows something important will happen a 
little further on ; whatever the spot, or whatever the road, he is always satisfied 
with it. Jn short, is just that happy excursive vagabond that touches one at so 
many points, and whose human prototype in a companion, when such can be 
found, robs miles and leagues of half their power and fatigue.” 
The most interesting companion in anything is undoubtedly the one who 
can tell you most about it. Therefore, the best companion in the country must 
bea naturalist, who can point out objects of interest and explain their beauties 
and wonders. No one looks upon the world so kindly as he does; no one else 
gives so muck attention to, or takes so much enjoyment from, the country as he 
does, and he holds a more vital relation to nature, because he is freer, and his 
mind is,more at leisure. Moreover, when a naturalist gets a friend, who is not 
one, out in the country, he feels a sort of moral responsibility resting upon him 
to find something particularly interesting to point out, so as to arouse his curi- 
osity, and, if possible, to convert him to the study of “ La Belle Science.” I say 
particularly interesting, because everything in nature is interesting and beauti- 
ful; and I defy anyone to bring me a single object, picked up by a country road- 
side, which is not beautiful, and even exquisitely so—a stick, a piece of straw, a 
leaf, or a stone, it matters not what, if properly examined and understood, they 
are all wonderful and lovely. Let us briefly consider these common objects one 
at a time, taking them in the order I have mentioned them. We will suppose, 
for the sake of demonstration, that the stick is part of the stem of a young Cana- 
dian Sugar Maple (Acer saccharinum). This tree belongs to that division of the 
vegetable kingdom known as Exogens, or plants which increase by the deposi- 
tion of a layer of new wood on their outer surface, beneath the bark, at regular 
periods. A plant stem, in its simplest state, consists merely of parenchymatous - 
