208 Field and Forest Rambles. 



the ostler that we were " photographers ! " but the crowning 

 absurdity was when my friend, bursting with laughter, came 

 to inform me that he had just been accosted by one of the 

 lookers-on, who asked, in confidence, " when the performance 

 would take place ?" — whether Punch and Judy, a panorama, 

 or a musical entertainment were "guessed," I cannot say, but 

 nobody could divine our legitimate undertaking. The sporting 

 part was .intelligible, and the geologist's hammer looked like 

 prospecting for minerals and such-like, both of which they could 

 understand, and appreciate in a way ; but the gathering of wild 

 flowers and putting them in paper was beyond the conception 

 of these goodnatured backwoodsmen. 



Owing to the kindness of my excellent friend Mr. Board- 

 man, on the following day we found a bell-tent, an Indian, 

 and a canoe at our service ; so taking in the necessary stores 

 for several days' consumption, we at once launched our frail 

 bark, and shot across the glassy waters of the Schoodic lakes, 

 into the wild wilderness. 



Thus, on the nth of August we left Princetown, on the side 

 of Lewey's, the most south-westerly of the Schoodic chain. 

 Here the surrounding country is flat, and the banks of the lakes 

 are more or less covered with dense forest and shrub, which 

 also clothe several islets, whilst the margins are profusely 

 overgrown by aquatic plants, where, among the violet-blue 

 flowers of the pickerel weed, I recognized the well-known 

 Cardinal flower, with its intensely red and elegant petals. 

 The Yellow Water-lily was plentiful, but its far more gorgeous 

 rival, the White Nymphaea, was less common, and confined to 

 secluded reaches, where, with "snowy bosom sunward spread," 

 it blooms gaily by the side of broods of the exceedingly 

 handsome wood duck (Aix sponsa), and its far less attractive 

 congener the black duck (Anas' obscurd). In such forest- 

 locked and weedy ponds, as the canoe shoots through the 

 rushes, it will require only some practice in Order to secure 

 a fair bag of wild fowl, or, with bait or spinning tackle, to 



