474 
liULLETlX OF TIIK NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
seen before, crowned the sides and summits of the ridges. Grav, 
yellow and white birches, rock maples, beech, spruce, with occasion- 
ally some giant white pines told of generous conditions for growth. 
The white birch and red spruce were especially noteworthy. Tlie 
white birch in all its luxuriance I had never seen until I saw it on 
these hillsides. Some well-rounded and symmetrical boles, fully two 
feet in diameter, rose tapering to the height of sixty or seventy feet, 
the white bark contrasting with the vivid green of its wealth of foliage. 
Tt deserves its title of “ The Lady of the Woods.” And here were 
lordly spruces that guarded the gateway to what might be well termed 
the “ Country of the Spruces ” that we were now entering. They rose 
from seventy to ninety feet in height, straight as an arrow, long, 
slender cone-shaped trees like church spires that were suggestive of 
some sylvan city of churches — and who would not be a worshipper in 
a city like that 
When our guides left us at the lower end of Trowsers Lake on the 
morning of the 5th July, we devoted ourselves to the consideration of 
how our 300 pounds weight of baggage and stores could be put away 
with sufficient compactness and safety in our little basswood canoe of 
sixty pounds weight. This accomplished, we paddled up the left 
“ leg” of the lake, before a stiff north-west breeze, to the site of our 
first permanent camping ground, five miles away. Here we remained 
several days exploring the lakes and forests in the vicinity. 
The next morning we started out through a woodland portage path 
to the next lake, about a mile and a half distant, carrying our canoe, 
Indian fashion, on our shoulders, resting at times and enjoying the 
rare beauty that met the eye at every step. It was an ordinary well- 
beaten path, trodden, perhaps, for centuries past by the feet of Indian 
hunters, guides, trappers, and perhaps by mere adventurers like our- 
selves. The vegetation was typical of nearly all our northern forests, but 
the different layers of vegetation had never appeared so distinct and well 
arranged as along this particular woodland path. Lowest down was a 
carpet of moss, chiefly hypnums, amid the dead leaves of previous 
summers. Struggling through this and forming the second layer were 
those plants that delight the wayfarer in nearly all our woodland 
grove.s, the Wood Oxalis not yet in bloom, the slender Linnsea, “ with 
its twin-born heads ” and delicate fragrance, the Solomon’s Seal 
{Smilacina), occasional patches of blue violets, the Clintonia, the Gold- 
