NATURE IN ACADIE. 51 



to limb, which is stretched tight when the limbs are 

 extended in leaping through the air ; the extension is 

 aided by one of the toes of the fore-paw being much 

 lengthened and inclined backward ; the tail also is 

 broad and concave below. 



The trailing arbutus, the exquisite little "mayflower '' 

 — emblem of Acadie — is in full flower about this time 

 of the year, and sure enough during the day I found it 

 growing in great profusion along the side of a forest 

 track. The pretty little white flowers, half hidden 

 among the leaves, remind one somewhat of our white 

 violet, and it would be hard to decide which possesses 

 the sweetest scent. All the esteem in which the violet 

 is held by Old-world Nature-lovers is lavished upon the 

 little " mayflower " here — and in much the same way, 

 for each spring it is sought for diligently, torn from its 

 enfolding leaves and carried heartlessly away to droop 

 and die in a glass or vase in some forgotten corner. 



But as with flowers so it is with birds. These beautiful 

 denizens of field and forest have no enemy more to fear 

 than civilized man, who is ever on the watch- to slaughter 

 — ever inventing fiendish appliances to capture and 

 cage them. Better, a hundred times better, were these 

 celestial pipers stretched stiff in death by some more 

 natural foe than doomed to pass their innocent lives 

 cooped up in small wired prisons far away from the 

 haunts of their delight, to sing their plaintive strains 

 day by day into the deaf ears of a heedless and uncaring 

 crowd. Strains of sorrow and upbraiding are they as 

 summer fades and the little prisoner longs for the clear 

 sweet air and his kindred's society among the quiet 

 upland stubbles. Dreary songless days of winter, amid 

 slush and fog, and far from his native woods and 

 meadows, now covered deep with crisp sparkling snow, 

 every little coppice glistening with the fairy forms of a 

 thousand enchanted palaces rising turret upon turret and 

 spire upon spire, desolate and silent in the stillness of 

 morning ; until perchance the sable blackbird breaks 

 the spell as he darts out noisily, scattering a million 

 sparkling gems in his flight, and chasing away the fairy 



