HOME OF THE OLD ERRATICS. 55 



XIII. 



Aug. 11, '01. Another week, with all its 

 toils, its sorrows, its hopes, its pleasures, has 

 come and gone forever. It is another dreamy 

 August Sabbath day. I, at present, am dream- 

 ing niy life away. What naturalist does not 

 dream much ? On the way hither I passed an 

 osage-orange tree and its sight, for some reason, 

 called up the dim recollection of an old story of 

 English hedges and the poachers who lounge 

 beneath them. When, as a boy, I read that 

 story, I longed to be a poacher, but now I am 

 content to be a naturalist, and lounge beneath 

 an oak tree at my boulder's rim. 



Where is the mother ledge of these old er- 

 ratics ? Somewhere in the Canadian wilder- 

 ness it reposes. The wide valley before me has 

 been carved out by the meandering stream since 

 they were dropped. The acids of decaying 

 lichens have eaten numerous small pit-holes over 

 their surface. Exposed for centuries to sun and 

 shade, to wind and frost, they rest as they fell 

 monuments of the mighty ice sheets of the misty 

 past. When my bones are dust and memory of 



