34 



the track of the St. L. & O. Brancli of the C. P. K., between which 

 and Hog's Back is a piece of mixed hardwood and evergreen bush, 

 which, later in the season, we christened "Warbler's Paradise." It is a 

 ■week too eai'ly for most of the warblers yet, and we see little but king- 

 lets and nuthatches, creepers and chickadees, but within a month we 

 saw, in this small resting-place of the Spring migrants, all or nearly all 

 of the eighteen warblers we met with in our first year's investigations. 

 Here I sat the whole of one afternoon in the beginning of May, and 

 exclaimed to myself (for I was alone this time) as one after another, 

 the Myrtle, Magnolia, Blackburnian, Black-throated Green, Yellow 

 and Yellow Palm, Warblers, and the Redstarts, astonished me by the 

 brightness and variety of their plumage and the sprightliness of their 

 movements. Later still we found here such gems as the Black-throated 

 Blue, the Chestnut-sided, the Bay-breasted, the Black-poll, and the 

 Canadian. But to come back to April 29th, and resume our walk. 

 Here it was that we saw a garter-snake and a copper-snake, (at least 

 that is what we called Ihem when we were boys), and here we note that 

 the poplars, alders, and hazels shed pollen at the slightest touch. 

 Here, too, we take the first swim of the season, at least 

 one of us does, and it is a very shoi^t one, for the water 

 is several degrees colder than the air, but evidently it is long 

 enough to excite the wonder of the denizens of the deep, for 

 while dressing after the bath, a muskrat pokes his nose up at the 

 water's edge at the very feet of the bather, gives one look of astonish- 

 ment at the demented human, who has thus early invaded his watery 

 domain, then turns up his tail in evident disgust and "silently steals 

 away." Later, as we lie resting among the pine bristles on the Hog's 

 Back, we see a flock of ten ducks making all haste to reach some of the 

 mountain lakes to the North of us, but this time they are out of range,, 

 and we turn homewards without having bagged any game bird but the 

 snipe. Much worth telling occurred on the home journey, but I have 

 already kept you long enough, and I should like to te]l you before I 

 finish of another kind of a tramp, and to show you that, though I have 

 chosen a Spring walk to write about, almost as much enjoyment, though 

 of a different kind, may be had from a tramp on snowshoes, in the 

 depth of Wintei'. 



