CAMP ABOMINATIONS. 91 



move down the valley much faster than had the 

 cow. 



Ants and cows are the abominations of this 

 camping place. The other things like gnats, 

 wood-ticks, chiggers and mosquitoes I can fend 

 off or easily withstand. The ants of several 

 kinds are all the time trying to feast upon my 

 food, or crawling over my dishes and cooking 

 vessels. When I find them in numbers on one 

 of my tin plates I place it on my stone stove 

 and the odor of roast formic acid soon greets 

 my nostrils. 



While washing the breakfast dishes the farm- 

 er came up bringing his ax and went to cutting 

 large sycamore poles. These we wired along 

 the base of the fence. He said he would soon 

 have that fence so it would keep out wild var- 

 mints, like coyotes and hyenas. If it keeps out 

 an old bony cow it will be good enough for me. 



At 6:30 I am seated in a butternut grove 

 watching the vicinity of a mulberry tree for the 

 approach of squirrels. A pair of indigo bunt- 

 ings have flitted several times before me. They 

 are silently hunting food, not noisily making 

 love. Slender bodied black dragon-flies move 

 here and there, resting at short intervals, poised 

 gracefully on the edge of some leaf. Hackberry 

 or emperor butterflies of two kinds 31 are plenti- 

 ful and one of them alights frequently upon my 



31 Apatura celtis and A. clyton Bd Lee. 



