THE RED-HEAD'S DRUM. 91 



butterfly has fluttered by lifting its modest 

 gray clad form but an inch or two above the tops 

 of the wire-grass stems, and pausing for a sec- 

 ond, here and there, on poised wing to scent or 

 view the earth beneath. Already gnats have 

 tried to enter my eyes and black ants have 

 crawled beneath my collar, but these are only 

 small troubles, mingled among the many greater 

 joys of a naturalist's day in the woods. 



The purplish petals of the daisy fleabane 22 or 

 white-top show prettily from its nodding corymb 

 which out-tops the ripening blue-grass stems on 

 the wooded slope before me. In the clover field 

 it is, to the mind of the hay-maker, a "weed" 

 which arouses wrath and warfare; yet, here, 

 isolated, it is to the botanist a daisy pure and 

 simple a flower well worthy of his admiration. 



While sitting on the front porch of the old 

 farm house I listened, for a time this morn, to 

 two red-heads sounding their shingle drums on 

 the barn across the way. One was near the 

 eastern end of the ridge of roof, the other on the 

 extreme western end some 60 feet away. Each 



**J3rigeron annuus (L.). 



