38 East and West 
nut-sided, Canadian, redstart, and ovenbird 
certainly nest here. The thrasher is an abun- 
dant summer resident and the crested fly- 
catcher a conspicuous bird. Of the small 
mammals the mink is perhaps the most 
typical. 
Saxifrage, columbine, and houstonia are 
the early flowers one will most associate with 
Cape Ann; and not in a summer day’s journey 
will one see more wild roses than on some 
rocky points and headlands. With the sweet- 
fern and the bayberry, the rose clings to 
the granite ledge at the edge of the sea, the 
rock so grim, so wintry, the rose so winsome, 
the sweet spirit of the month of June. In 
these wild-rose thickets the song sparrow 
builds by the sea and in the autumn I have 
seen the angry spray fall hissing upon the 
very spot where I recalled a nest embowered 
in roses the preceding June. 
In early autumn the dainty purple gerardia 
spreads itself over the Cape around the 
cranberry bogs and seems in very truth 
native to this granite soil. There are mellow 
hours in October, a softening of that cold 
heart which so soon is to succumb to the re- 
turning ghost of the ice and to become frigid 
and immobile again; hours when the waters 
