76 Native Brooks. 



portion of its course is still through pleasant pasture-land, 

 but a brook is so in sympathy with the season, that it 

 depends largely when you see it as to the impression it 

 leaves ; it seems in Winter hardly the one we knew in 

 Summer days. Occasionally, as late as April, the more 

 placid portions are frozen over, the caddis fly laivse and 

 water beetles may be seen on the bottom through the ice, 

 and it seems at such times nothing short of a miracle when 

 it is considered what a change a few days will bring, and 

 how considerable that change really is. When Spring is 

 fairly started it comes very fast indeed, and one may almost 

 give the day of the month by the unfolding of the benzoin 

 flowers they keep so truly the schedule time of the 

 season. 



On the banks of the branch of Palmer's Run, that 

 crosses the Turnpike to the north-west of Four Corners, 

 there stands a large white oak, with wide spreading 

 branches, and the fern Polypodium finds a home there, 

 growing on the top of a large boulder. This is a rare plant 

 on the Island, though so common northward and on higher 

 ground. An old Indian wanders often about the woods, 

 and occasionally along this stream, carrying a book of 

 songs under his arm, and when he gets tired of walking he 

 sits down and sings. He says he can sing better than he 

 can do anything else. One day he had a bundle of cat- 

 nip, which he had gathered for a cat belonging to a family 

 of his acquaintance in the city, and as he walked along he 

 gave an account of his people : "Among Indians, no edu- 

 cation. Father take child to another tribe he learn to 

 speak language. Go by horse, across great prairie only 



