,THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. • 73 



NOTES BY THE WAYSIDE. 



READ BEFORE THE BIOLOGICAL SECTION OF THE HAMILTON 

 ASSOCIATION. 



BY WILLIAM YATES, OF HATCHLEY. 



One of our most pleasant outings was that undertaken dur- 

 ing the month of June just now past, the territory gone over being 

 a part of Brant County, and also a part of Norfolk County, near the 

 Lake. Erie shore, from about Port Ryerse to Turkey Point. We 

 were accompanied by Mr. James Goldie, sr., of Guelph, Ont., who 

 has inherited a large share of botanical and horticultural enthusiasm 

 from his father, who attained a certain historical fame seventy or 

 eighty years ago as a collector and classifier of British and North 

 American Floras. 



At the date of our starting out (June 15th) there had recently 

 been abundant rainfalls, and the wild rose bushes, J^osa blaiida and 

 Rosa lucida, which adorned the margins of the fields and the waste 

 places by the roadsides, bore a greater profusion of their aromatic 

 pink blossoms than usual ; and a number of the small frame dwel- 

 lings of the residents of these light sandy localities seemed fairly 

 embowered with this interesting shrub, which flourishes best in a 

 dry and porous soil. We noticed, also, amid the " Oak Scrub " bor- 

 dering the road near the village of Walsh (Charlotteville Township) 

 the handsome blue spikes or thyrses of the Lupine, Lupinus peren- 

 nis, a sight never to be forgotten. 



In a number of farms that one passes, a feature of great beauty 

 and picturesqueness was lent to the sandy knolls by the clustering 

 aggregations of Lithospermuin hirtum, whose cyme-like masses of 

 yellow blossoms rivalled the brilliancy of the flowering Gorse bushes, 

 which (as narrated in botanical annals) aroused the admiration of 

 Linneaus on viewing these flowers for the first time on an Enghsh 

 common. This species is larger, but has scarcely as symmetrical 

 foliage as its congener L. canescens, which is the common form in 

 Brant County. 



