THE PARKS. 



IT is reported that in old days, while the Indians still 

 lived on the dunes and open sandy ground by the 

 pond-meadow, that a settler of giant stature used to 

 stalk about the woods and clearings, and when the natives 

 saw his stalwart form approaching, they ran from fear. 

 This big, burly man was ever accompanied by a dwarfed 

 son, who was so inseparably attached to his gigantic sire> 

 that when the latter died, he also took to his bed, and only 

 survived him a few days. Thus the barren fields are not 

 without legendary interest the giant walked there and the 

 Indians ran away. It is easy to conjure up the scene in 

 those twilight hours, when the globes of fluffy milkweed 

 seeds lend a glamour of uncertainty, and invite the sprites 

 and dryads of the woodland, to a shadowy procession. 



There are five of these fields that were once cultivated, 

 but are now partly overgrown with briers and young trees, 

 and are surrounded on three sides by woody hedges, or the 

 woods themselves. My companion once called them " the 

 parks." In several of the fields there are small fairy circles 

 of moss, often quite exact in outline, and this same moss 

 (Polytrichwri) also grows in one of the parks, on the little 

 hills where corn was planted many years ago. The field 



