THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 85 



the ploughman^ made the conquest over these inveterate natural 

 forces complete. 



While walking along the highway through the Township of 

 North Nor,vich, one day during the past autumn, some peculiarities 

 in the growth of the Solidagos that bordered the roadway, set me 

 thinking about the influence of soil, situation, and drainage on 

 vegetable development. Those specimens of, I think, S. Canadensis 

 that grew in the strong and fertile clay-loam of the district just 

 referred to, had a burly robust appearance, much less tall and devoid 

 of the gaunt scrawny air that seems to characterize their congeners 

 in the more sandy soil and less windy situations, such as when in the 

 shelter of the high rail fences of Burford Townsnip. The floral 

 racemesj one fancied, gave indications of the circumstances or stimuli 

 to which they had been subjected. The denseness and compactness 

 of the flowers on the gracefully moving peduncles had a clotted and 

 congested appearance; and although none of the specimens that grew 

 near the beaten track of vehicles, had an altitude of more than three 

 feet, their stems were clothed with about the same number of leaves 

 that their taller, five to six feet high, nook situated congeners were 

 equipped with. 



Then also, it is an allowable surmise^ that the influence of 

 surroundings accounts for the fact that the much and slenderly 

 branched form, known as Solidago ulmifolia (Wood) is the pre- 

 ponderant species in the wet and weedy peat boggy soils that occur 

 so frequently along newly made roads in this part of our Province. 

 This species has also fewer root fibres, and is marked by longer and 

 slenderer branches, which probe their way to a share of sunlight, 

 through the interstices of the leaves and branches of the swamp 

 plants and bushes, with which this farm has to sustain fierce 

 competition. 



The present autumn has been marked by our non-observance of 

 those clamorously, noisy and agitated assemblages of crows that 

 annually occur in semi-wooded districts towards the end of October 

 and that mostly precede ihe departure of the bulk of the corvine 

 community to more genial climes. Nevertheless several curious traits, 

 illustrative of crow manners, may be perhaps not unfitly alluded to in 

 this note. 



