NATURE STUDY. 



PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE 



Manchester Institute of Arts and Sciences. 



Vol. IV. March, 1904. No. 10. 



A Point of Honor. ^^^^vorvc 



BY FREDERICK W. BATCHELDER. Ui^TANlC^^ 



The hard winter walk described in the February num- 

 ber of Nature Study was truly a labor of love. Only a 

 true lover of nature and of his kind would have undertak- 

 en it. The immediate impelling motive was the solicita- 

 tion of a friend who was temporarily disqualified from 

 performing the task. Aside from that, the honor of Man- 

 chester and of the Institute were at stake, to say nothing 

 of the local botanists. 



It is nearly ten years since first I visited, in company- 

 with a friend of like mind, the remarkable locality in the 

 extreme northwest corner of Manchester known as the 

 "rhododendron swamp." This local station of Rhoden- 

 dron maximum is very difficult of access, being a high, 

 wet swamp which occupies an extensive depression be- 

 tween rocky and barren hills, the whole locality being, 

 it is said, so destitute of mone}- value as not even to ap- 

 pear on the assessors' books. The time of our visit was 



