c6 Trotter, Some Nova Scotia Birds. Ljan. 



across the peninsula, with wide savannas of sphagnum bog, 

 swampy jungles of alder and tamarack, rocky 'barrens' covered 

 by a growth of dwarf blueberry, and here and there, in the hollows 

 between the ridges, the wafers of a glacial lake. Many streams 

 head in the bogs on the low divides, their waters dark with the 

 leachings of the peat, and flow west toward the Bay of Fundy and 

 east into the long inlets of the Atlantic. They widen out into 

 lily-covered ponds where the moose wades and feeds, and in 

 places the ancient building of the beaver has blocked their course 

 with meadows. Each spring the salmon, running up from the 

 ocean to spawn, stem the rapids of these rivers and leap their 

 waterfalls, and the angler will find the brook trout from the foam 

 flecked pools of the lower reaches to the head streams far back in 

 the bogs. 



Along the shores of the bays are the scattered settlements of a 

 fishing folk, hemmed in land^vard by the wilderness of evergreens. 

 Atone of these — the village of Harrington, just back of Cape 

 Sable Island — I spent the past three summers. It was mid-June 

 when we reached there and lilacs and horsechestnuts were in 

 bloom in the dooryards; a week or so later the air was sweet with 

 the blossoms of the May or English hawthorn, hedges of which 

 had been planted about some of the old houses. This renewal of 

 the spring was very pleasing to vis who had come from the early 

 summer of southeastern Pennsylvania. Back in the woods we 

 traced the footprints of spring where the dainty twin flower 

 (^Linncea) showed in patches of faint rosy bloom above the moss. 

 The dense thickets of Labrador tea {Ledum) and Rhodora, that 

 grew along the boggy waysides, were in blossom, and here 'and 

 there the chokeberry {Prunus virginiana) showed its flowers. In 

 old clearings a profusion of wild strawberries were slowly ripening. 

 The white flowers of the bunchberry {Cornus ca?iadensis), the 

 chick weed wintergreen {Trientalis), and the two-leaved solomon's 

 seal ( Unifolitan) showed everywhere through the woods. The 

 undergrowth of this region, except where dense forests of balsam 

 fir had excluded sunlight, was for the most part made up'of brake 

 {Pteris) , bayberry {Myrica), sheep laurel {Kalmia angustifolia), 

 and blueberry bushes ( Vaccinium canadefise and V. pennsyl- 

 vanicum) . 



