DECEMBER. 
353 
rations have now ceased, and they are not immediately 
pressed with work, some time is devoted to excursions of 
friendship and pleasure ; and even the travelling which 
business requires is made an agreeable recreation* 
C. — How do the farmers employ themselves during the 
winter season generally ? 
F. — The feeding and tending of their cattle and other 
stock, a daily employment, consumes much of the short days, 
and the supplying of the immense fires which we are compel- 
led to keep up, makes considerable inroads upon the residue. 
The grain is threshed, and cleaned, and carried to market, 
with other produce. — After this, or at intervals, the great- 
est portion of the winter's labour is performed in the forest, 
in felling and splitting cedars for fencing-rails, cutting hard- • 
wood for the twelvemonth's supply of fuel, (which, with the 
drawing it to the homestead on large sleds, forms no small 
part of a winter s work,) and cutting and drawing logs for the 
saw-mill. So that no part of a Canadian farmer's time can 
be considered without employment, though in winter he does 
contrive to snatch a few days from toil, to devote them to 
amusement. 
C. — I see a little bird creeping up the perpendicular 
trunk of a maple tree ; it looks just like a mouse in size, 
colour, and manners : is it a species of Nuthatch ? 
F. — No : our Nuthatches are all of a light blue colour 
above ; this is the Brown Creeper ( Certhia Familiar is J, a 
bird much resembling that family in appearance and habits, 
but with a slender curved bill. It does not appear to be 
common with us, or if it is it must be very shy, as I have 
seldom seen it. It crawls about the trunks and limbs in 
every direction with great agility, in search of small insects, 
which are lodged in crevices of the bark, and similar situ- 
ations. 
