ORCHID-HUNTING 151 
On that day the Ornithologist and myself were on 
our way to a rattlesnake den, the secret of which 
had been in the Pan family for some generations. 
In past years Jim’s forbears had done a thriving 
business in selling skins and rattlesnake oil, in the 
days when the rattlesnake shared with the skunk 
the honor of providing an unwilling cure for rheuma- 
tism. Our path led up through masses of color. 
There was the pale pure pink of the crane’s-bill or 
wild geranium, the yellow adder’s tongue, and the 
faint blue-and-white porcelain petals of the hepatica, 
with cluster after cluster of the snowy, golden- 
hearted bloodroot whose frail blossoms last but 
for a day. 
That very morning a long-delayed warbler-wave 
was breaking over the mountain, and the Ornitholo- 
gist could hardly contain himself as he watched the 
different varieties pass by. I recall that we scored 
over twenty different kinds of warblers between 
dawn and dark, and I saw for the first.time the 
Wilson’s black-cap, with its bright yellow breast 
and tiny black crown, and the rare Cape May warbler, 
with its black-streaked yellow underparts and orange- 
red cheeks. The richly dressed and sombre black- 
throated blue and bay-breasted were among the 
crowd, while black-throated greens, myrtles, magno- 
lias, chestnut-sided, blackpolls, Canadians, redstarts, 
with their fan-shaped tails, and Blackburnians, with 
their flaming throats and breasts glowing like live 
coals, went by in a never-ending procession. 
All the way Jim kept up a steady flow of anecdote. 
