INTRODUCTION 
‘* There’s nothing left to chance below ; 
The Great Eternal cause 
Has made all beauteous order flow 
From settled laws.” 
Every plant, flower, and tree has a simple history of its 
own, not without its interest if we would read it aright. It 
forms a page in the great volume of Nature which lies open 
before us, and without it there would be a blank; in Nature 
there is no space left unoccupied. 
We watch on some breezy day in summer one of the 
winged seeds of the thistle or dandelion taking its flight 
upward and onward, and we know not where it will alight, 
and we see not the wisdom of Him 
‘Who whirls the blowballs’ new-fledged pride 
In mazy rings on high, 
Whose downy pinions once untied 
Must onward fly. 
‘* Rach is commissioned, could we trace 
The voyage to each decreed, 
To convey to some barren place 
A pilgrim seed.” 
—Agnes Strickland. 
When the writer of the little volume now offered to the 
Canadian public first settled in the then unbroken back- 
woods on the borders of the Katchewanook, just where the 
upper waters of a chain of lakes narrow into the rapids of 
the wildly beautiful Otonabee, that section of the province 
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