248 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [12:6-Sept., 1916 



with perhaps a corduroy road across them and with the logs a-swim 

 in spring, with whelms of peepers when the pussy willows were 

 out, frightsome snakes of all imaginary kinds, and cat-bird nests 

 in the margins. To this day the squall of the cat-bird recalls a 

 cathole! Very well! They have gone with the Indian, the pas- 

 senger pigeon, the many curious traps concealed in the runways, 

 the burning logs, and the unsolvable mystery of the great woods. 



My father's farm was a zoological and botanical garden, — not 

 that it was different from any other farm, but because so many 

 things seemed to live and grow there that I thought I could never 

 find the end of them. To make a list of them, to put down where 

 I saw them and what they did, — this seemed the only way to find 

 out how many they were. This was no easy task, seeing that I 

 did not know the names of them, in the early days, and had little 

 way of finding out except to use such names as the settlers or cer- 

 tain antiquated books applied. Often I wonder whether the joy of 

 the field is so keen in these perfected days when everything is ex- 

 plained so carefully and we are so well instructed in what we ought 

 to see. 



Three sets of lists I remember to have kept ; one was of the daily 

 weather, one of the birds, and later one of the plants. Very simple 

 were these lists, scarcely to be dignified by the name of note-books, 

 but they served to prolong and to multiply the experiences. Any 

 old account book or composition book, with a few unused leaves, 

 was sufficient. These leaves were carefully ruled up and down 

 into columns for the name of the bird (marvellous names I must 

 have given them!), when it began to build its nest, when complet- 

 ed, the first egg laid, the subsequent eggs unto the last, the period 

 of incubation, when the birds flew, and how many. This was in- 

 deed a very simple record, but the number of nests under obser- 

 vation would run into the tens and perhaps more and each one 

 was visited every day as regularly as the other "chores" were car- 

 ried. It became a sort of game or play with me, and it w T as part 

 of the game to visit the nests when the birds were away and would 

 not be frightened. Back and forth from cultivating corn or driv- 

 ing the team here and there or following other regular farm work, 

 these nests were home-plates and bases (we did not have base-ball 

 then but only long-ball and two-old-cat), and reason enough to 

 go the long way or the short way. Some few of the old trees still 

 stand, and now, with memory running back to those years, I go 



