INTRODUCTION 



" There's nothing left to chance below ; 



The Great Eternal cause 

 Has made all beauteous order flow 

 From settled laws." 



EVERY plant, flower, and tree has a simple history of its 

 own, not without its interest if we would read it aright. It 

 forms a page in the great volume of Nature which lies open 

 before us, and without it there would be a blank ; in Nature 

 there is no space left unoccupied. 



We watch on some breezy day in summer one of the 

 winged seeds of the thistle or dandelion taking its flight 

 upward and onward, and we know not where it will alight, 

 and we see not the wisdom of Him 



" Who whirls the blowballs' new-fledged pride 



In mazy rings on high, 

 Whose downy pinions once untied 

 Must onward fly. 



" Each is commissioned, could we trace 



The voyage to each decreed, 

 To convey to some barren place 

 A pilgrim seed." 



Agnes Strickland. 



When the writer of the little volume now offered to the 

 Canadian public first settled in the then unbroken back- 

 woods on the borders of the Katchewanook, just where the 

 upper waters of a chain of lakes narrow into the rapids of 

 the wildly beautiful Otonabee, that section of the province 



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