AN OWL’S HEAD HOLIDAY. 249 
rods ’’ have betrayed me into saying more than 
I intended. .It would have been enough had 
I mentioned that the way is in many places 
steep, while at the time of my visit the con- 
stant rains kept it in a muddy, treacherous con- 
dition. I remember still the undignified and 
uncomfortable celerity with which, on one oc- 
casion, I took my seat in what was little better 
than the rocky bed of a brook, such a place as 
I should by no means have selected for the pur- 
pose had I been granted even a single moment 
for deliberation. 
‘“‘ Hills draw like heaven” (as applied to 
some of us, it may be feared that this is rather 
an under-statement), and it could not have 
been more than fifteen minutes after I landed 
from the Lady of the Lake — the “ Old Lady,” 
as one of the fishermen irreverently called her 
— before I was on my way to the summit. 
I was delighted then, as I was afterwards, 
whenever I entered the woods, with the ex- 
traordinary profusion and variety of the ferns. 
Among the rest, and one of the most abun- 
dant, was the beautiful Cystopteris bulbifera ; its 
long, narrow, pale green, delicately cut, Dick- 
sonia-like fronds bending toward the ground at 
the tip, as if about to take root for a new 
start, in the walking-fern’s manner. Some of 
these could not have been less than four feet in 
