Errric-—Birps OF A CANADIAN PEAT BoG 119 
subject of the ancestry of birds and their affinities within the 
Class, and to this truth the Owls form no exception. 
I have made and published numerous photographs from 
life of the Barred Owl and other species of the Strigide, but 
the figures illustrating the present article have never hereto- 
fore appeared in any ornithological publication, and, in the 
case of Figure 2, anywhere at all. 
BIRDS OF A CANADIAN PEAT BOG. 
BERGA Wi Gee SUES RE Ge 
A Canadian peat bog is a thing at once sought and de- 
lighted in, and on the other hand shunned and abhorred. It 
is shunned and avoided by nearly all classes of human so- 
ciety, that know of nothing but work, the amassing of money, 
and of pleasure in the old, accepted sense of the word. Such 
people cannot understand why a person should go to such 
an uninviting place, where one is drenched from underneath 
by water, visible or invisible in the deep moss, and also by 
the perspiration, wrung out of a person by the hot sun, 
under which one has to wade through the deep vegetation, 
without being able to walk in the shade. Add to this the 
hordes of mosquitoes, Jack of drinking water, the distances 
one usually has to tramp, often enough in wet clothing, etc., 
makes a condition of things which to invade without neces- 
sity, yes, even to find pleasure and profit in, seems to them 
nothing short of a sign of a serious affection of the brain. And 
yet, naturalists of several kinds, the botanist, entomologist, 
particularly the ornithologist, congratulate themselves, when 
they have such a bog in their neighborhood, and go there 
as often as they have an opportunity. 
Six miles east of Ottawa, the beautiful Capital of Canada 
and the former place of residence of the writer, there is such 
a bog of ample dimensions and bogginess, called the Mer 
Bleue. It is about ten miles long by one to four miles wide, 
