i86 MY LIFE 



or burnt-up pastures, and reached Trowbridge Station at 5.30, 

 where I was met by Mr. Cook, with whom I was to stay. 

 We had supper, of tea, fruit, etc., and I afterwards tried their 

 stereopticon lantern, which was very poor. The next evening 

 (Friday) I gave my lecture on ''Darwinism," and offered to 

 give that on "Colours of Animals" on Monday evening as a 

 return for their hospitality. The next morning Professor Beal 

 took me to a fine bit of original swamp forest, with features 

 which were quite new to me. Throughout my wanderings in 

 the Sierra and the Rockies I had never met with any sphag- 

 num moss, which I should often have been glad of to pack my 

 plants in. In this bit of forest, however, there were acres of 

 such sphagnum as I had never seen before, forming a con- 

 tinuous carpet more than a foot thick, and in this congenial 

 rooting medium there were numbers of very interesting plants. 

 American pitcher-plants (sarraccnia) were abundant, but 

 what pleased me more were quantities of the elegant orchis 

 (Habcnaria ciliaris), with curious fringed flowers, making 

 quite a sheet of yellow in places, its tubers not in the soil, but 

 embedded in the sphagnum a few inches below the surface. 

 There was also a curious little plant called gold-thread, allied 

 to the hellebore, and a number of ferns. Among the shrubs 

 were tall vacciniums, and the beautiful red-berried Nemo- 

 panthes canadensis, allied to the holly, but deciduous. 



On Sunday I saw the botanical garden attached to the 

 college, the library, and the insect collections, which latter 

 were very fine as compared with our English species. Of 

 moths of the genus Catocala, instead of our four species there 

 were about twenty, many of them much larger and more 

 gorgeously coloured, while the Saturnias and other groups 

 were in equal proportion. After giving my lecture on 

 " Colour " in the evening, I had to hurry off to catch the train, 

 in which I slept, and reached Kingston the next day early 

 in the afternoon. Here I had been invited to spend a few 

 days in a delightful old country house on the shores of Lake 

 Ontario, in the refined and very congenial society of Mr. and 

 Mrs. Allen, and their two daughters. I much enjoyed this 

 visit, and my genuine admiration of the writings of their only 



