ORCHID-HUNTING 15 1 



On that day the Ornithologist and myself were on 

 our way to a rattlesnake den, the secret of which 

 had been in the Pan family for some generations. 

 In past years Jim's forbears had done a thriving 

 business in selling skins and rattlesnake oil, in the 

 days when the rattlesnake shared with the skunk 

 the honor of providing an unwilling cure for rheuma- 

 tism. Our path led up through masses of color. 

 There was the pale pure pink of the crane's-bill or 

 wild geranium, the yellow adder's tongue, and the 

 faint blue-and-white porcelain petals of the hepatica, 

 with cluster after cluster of the snowy, golden- 

 hearted bloodroot whose frail blossoms last but 

 for a day. 



That very morning a long-delayed warbler-wave 

 was breaking over the mountain, and the Ornitholo- 

 gist could hardly contain himself as he watched the 

 different varieties pass by. I recall that we scored 

 over twenty different kinds of warblers between 

 dawn and dark, and I saw for the first. time the 

 Wilson's black-cap, with its bright yellow breast 

 and tiny black crown, and the rare Cape May warbler, 

 with its black-streaked yellow underparts and orange- 

 red cheeks. The richly dressed and sombre black- 

 throated blue and bay-breasted were among the 

 crowd, while black-throated greens, myrtles, magno- 

 lias, chestnut-sided, blackpolls, Canadians, redstarts, 

 with their fan-shaped tails, and Blackburnians, with 

 their flaming throats and breasts glowing like live 

 coals, went by in a never-ending procession. 



All the way Jim kept up a steady flow of anecdote. 



