5 6 Trotter, Some Nova Scotia Birds. 



across the penirisula, with wide savannas of sphagnum bog 

 swampy jungles of alder and tamarack, rocky ' barrens ' covered 

 by a growth of dwarf blueberry, and here and there, in the hollows 

 between the ridges, the waters of a glacial lake. Many streams 

 head m the bogs on the low divides, their waters dark with the 

 leachmgs of the peat, and flow west toward the Bay of Fundy and 

 east mto the long inlets of the Atlantic. They widen out into 

 hly-covered ponds where the moose wades and feeds, and in 

 places the ancient building of the beaver has blocked their course 

 with meadows. Each spring the salmon, running up from the 

 ocean to spawn, stem the rapids of these rivers and leap their 

 waterfalls, and the angler will find the brook trout from the foam 

 flecked pools of the lower reaches to the head streams far back in 

 the bogs. 



Along the shores of the bays are the scattered settlements of a 

 hshmg folk, hemmed in landward by the wilderness of evergreens 

 At one of these -the village of Barrington, just back of Cape 

 Sable Island - I spent the past three summers. It was mid-June 

 when we reached there and lilacs and horsechestnuts were in 

 bloom m the dooryards; a week or so later the air was sweet with 

 the blossoms of the May or English hawthorn, hedges of which 

 had been planted about some of the old houses. This renewal of 

 the sprmg was very pleasing to us who had come from the early 

 summer of southeastern Pennsylvania. Back in the woods we 

 traced the footprints of spring where the dainty twin flower 

 {Lmn^^a) showed in patches of faint rosy bloom above the moss 

 The dense thickets of Labrador tea {Ledum) and Rhodora that 

 grew along the boggy waysides, were in blossom, and here and 

 there the chokeberry {Primus virginiana) showed its flowers In 

 old clearings a profusion of wild strawberries were slowly ripening 

 The white flowers of the bunchberry {Cornus canadensis), the 

 chickweed wintergreen {Trientaiis) , and the two-leaved Solomon's 

 seal {Um/ohum) showed everywhere through the woods The 

 undergrowth of this region, except where dense forests of balsam 

 fir had excluded sunlight, was for the most part made up of brake 

 {Pteris) bayberry {Myriea), sheep laurel {KaMa angusti/olia), 

 and blueberry bushes {Vaccinium canadense and V. pemisL 

 vanicum) . 



