vi FAMILIAR FEATURES OF THE ROADSIDE. 



be possessed by any one individual ; as a consequence, 

 complete knowledge accrues through a number of 

 channels each one of which is supplied by some spe- 

 cialist; but the source of all knowledge is Nature. 

 Ours, then, is the boundless opportunity of learning 

 directly from the borders of the road many simple 

 and interesting facts; I say boundless, because the 

 small beginning opens expansively toward a larger 

 study of Nature, which becomes more and more 

 attractive the further we advance. 



One of the first things which impresses the ob- 

 server of Nature is her infinitude. There is a new 

 kind of a bug on some stick or stone in every county 

 we enter. There are countless miniature butterflies 

 (Hesperia) flitting among the weeds and grasses, no 

 two of which are alike. A well-known butterfly 

 crosses our path, and scarcely is he gone before two 

 new ones appear, neither of which we can recollect 

 ever having seen before. The tree toad's familiar 

 voice pipes in the swamp, but there are other voices 

 piping with it whose origin we can not trace to their 

 proper source. To every one thing we know, or 

 think we know, there are twenty others which we 

 are quite sure we do not know. A wild rose, we 

 thought, was simply a wild rose ; but we learn that 

 there are a dozen species, each one of which has a 

 very distinct character of its own. Eglantine we 



