128 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



the bushes, no racketing engine to fuss with. The canoeist is 

 always looking ahead, not straining over his shoulder, his paddle 

 slips through the water without a sound and with hardly a ripple, 

 he can navigate narrow inlets and shallow coves where any other 

 craft would go aground, and he can force his way into swamps 

 where no other method of travel is feasible because of the depth 

 of black m.uck. He can alm.ost float on the dew on the grass. 



Of course the canoe has its limitations, but all true campers 

 should know and understand them. You can not jump around in 

 a seventy pound canoe as you would in a three hundred pound 

 dory. But neither can you jum.p around anywhere and expect 

 to learn the secrets of the home life of our timid birds and beasts. 

 If you can't control yourself, stick to botany and geology! The 

 birds won't like you. 



Nature-study from a canoe presupposes that you can swim, 

 can paddle and steer, and that you will use the only sensible pad- 

 dling position, that of kneeling in the canoe instead of sitting cocked 

 up on the seats. (There are two excellent reasons for this posi- 

 tion, safety and efficiency, but there is no room here to discuss the 

 essentials of paddling.) 



Now let's take a little trip and see what we can see. There 

 are three of us and I'll take the helm. The others can take 

 other canoes and steer their own courses, for you mustn't have too 

 many on a trip of this kind. At first we will all three paddle, 

 but later I'll work the canoe alone while you two "stop, look, 

 listen." As we launch the canoe a spotted sandpiper bows to us, 

 calls "peetweet" and circles low across the water to light a hundred 

 yards below. In the shallows a few brown newts or "salamanders" 

 scurry away and from a sunken log a big hornpout swings out 

 belligerently from his swarm of tiny black baby pouts. Punkin- 

 heads or sunfish are guarding their nests on the yellow sand, and 

 a little farther along shore we see the larger, pebbly circles of the 

 bass. A loon calls from the middle of the lake atid we swing our 

 bow off shore to watch its wonderful diving. A tiny baby loon 

 is with its mother and we paddle out until we are near enough to 

 see the silvery coating of air bubbles clinging to its black down 

 as the little fellow dives and tries to escape us. It can only 

 stay down a few seconds while its mother can stay under water for 

 three minutes at a time. 



