62 THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 
praschoppers ; yet about twenty well rooted specimens were removed 
to where they may not be so likely to ‘‘ blush unseen ” or to ‘‘ waste 
their sweetness on the desert air.” Another interesting shrub that 
was noticed, and seven or eight of its samples appropriated, was the 
potentilla fruticosa. About an acre of boggy pasture land was over- 
run by this rather rare shrub. Situate by fhe roadside, less than a 
quarter of a mile eastward from the picturesque village of Vittoria, 
this potentilla might easily be mistaken for one of the numerous 
species of St. John’swort, although the foliage of the former has a 
greater resemblance to some of the heathworts and has a very neat 
appearance but is pinnate (five to seven foliate) and clustered near 
the flower cymes. The tephrosias, too, are exceedingly handsome 
when in flower, with their yellow and red blossoms, the banners 
spreading and the stamens mostly in two sets, or brotherhoods, and 
seventeen to twenty-nine leaflets, hoary on the underside. We saw 
some patches of these flowers, an acre or two in extent, on waste 
land and the herb has rather a rank, unpleasant odour which pro- 
tects it from being depastured by the groups of wandering bovines, 
which in the summer time are often allowed to wander to seek their 
subsistance by the roadside in the townships bordering on Lake Erie. 
One of the farmers, who is alandholder, near the north shore of 
Lake Erie, told us that on the break up of winter, and as soon as the 
winter wheat fields are bare of snow, large numbers of wild geese alight 
on the green surface to nibble of the tender young wheat plants, and 
unless driven off by being fired at and chased, by gunners and rifle- 
men, do much damage to the prospective crop, but as soon as the 
ice accumulations on the reedy and sedgy margin of the bays and 
inlets have melted and disappeared, the anserine visits to the wheat 
fields cease. 
The farmer on whose land we dug up the lithospermums told 
us that a flock of forty or fifty wild pigeons came this fall to feed on 
his wheat stubble, and that they still live in the neighboring woods 
(this being a beedhnut year). 
Dec. 4th, 1899. 
What a remarkably fine autumn we have experienced. Blos- 
soming dandelions abundant in the roadside grass up to the present 
date. Farmers about here are, some of them, working with team 
