tail-feathers, and wild, powerful strokes 
of its long-pointed wings. We saw in 
all nearly a -dozen oif the solitary sand¬ 
pipers, four feed'Hig close together and 
very tame. 
A pair of blue-winged teal also sprang 
from the flats, and passing us, on their 
way up-stream, showed all their marks 
in the sunlight, the duck light brown, 
the drake with a bright, White crescent 
before the eye, and broad spaces of a 
delicate light blue on the wings. 
Shortly after we passed the Wilming¬ 
ton hound stone, we came to the im- ; 
posing ruins on which nearly a century 
ago, the Middlesex Canal carried freight 
from Boston to Lowell. There are two 
stone abutment walls, and one stone pier 
in the middle of the stream. They must 
be thirty feet high, and look all the | 
more massive compared with the slender 
stream below. From the top of the piers 
the banks of the canal run off on each 
side, still sharply defined, but in the 
channel where once the barges passed, 
tall pitch pines and elms are growing. 
A deep semicircular depression in the 
top of the stone piers shows where the 
water, held in a wooden casing, like 
some gigantic trough, was led to its task, 
high over the idle and wanton Shaw- 
sheen. 
The first yellow swallow-tailed butter¬ 
fly is always a mark of a new season; 
when they come from their chrysalids, 
the early spring is over. 
Some species of water insect too, about 
the size of a June beetle, had either just 
emerged from its pupa stage, if it has 
one, or else was about to mate, or for 
some other reason, best known to itself, 
was seeking to better its position in the 
world. We saw great numbers of this 
insect, each clinging to the top of a blade 
of sedge, from which it dropped quickly 
back into the water at our approach. It 
may be that they were simply taking the - 
air, but at this time of year, it is safer 
to assume that such a passage from the 
element in which a creature is at home 
to another, is in some way closely con¬ 
nected with the great problem of mul¬ 
tiplying and taking possession of the 
earth. 
As we passed the road from Billerica 
to Burlington we were aware of a man 
perched on tihe cross trees of a telephone 
pole, where the sun could warm him or 
the breezes cool him. and where all the 
odors from the willow catkins and the 
other pollen-bearing plants could assail 
him. Bait with him, too. it was bus'L 
ness, not pleasure, that had carried him 
to what. seemed to us an enviable emi¬ 
nence. He suddenly produced a receiver 
(Is there one hanging at the top of each 
telephone pole?) and began a conversa¬ 
tion with a fellow linesman Who, he told 
us, was perched on another pole a mile 
away, 
We passed very few human beings 
in the course of the day. While we were 
at lunch, a collie, who ought to count 
as a human being, discovered us, and 
very kindly shared my dessert with me. 
His master turned up later, and asked 
us what luck we had had. We explained 
that we had found everything that we 
had come fbr, and could therefore an¬ 
swer truthfully, the best In the world. 
Whether there were any fish to be 
caught, we could not say. We passed 
several fishermen, but none would con¬ 
fess to having caught anything. One 
had a lantern hung to a bush beside 
him, evidence that he was going home 
late in the evening, and that he was en¬ 
gaged in what some of the boys with 
whom I went to school called “paoutin’.’’ 
How long it takes a canoe to get from 
Bedford to Ballardvale I cannot say; it 
was ‘half-past six when we reached 
Lowell Junction, and we were assured 
that the river beyond that point had by 
no means overcome its tendency to eva¬ 
sion and double dealing. We “took out,” 
therefore, at Lowell Junction, and after 
carrying the eanoe over a barbed wire, 
up a steep railway embankment, and 
along an eighth of a -mile of track, were 
ready to believe that a canoe goes better 
in the water than on land. The arc i 
lights had been burning for some time j 
when I reached home. I counted under 
one over a hundred June beetles that j 
had flown against the globe and fallen ! 
to the ground. The forces that had im- ! 
pelted the water Insects to mount their 
blades of sedge were evidently still at 
work in the warm May night. 
Na tube About Boston 
X. 
BY RALPH HOFFMANN 
The Public Garden In May comes very 
near to the ornithologist's idea of heaven. 
Not that he is particularly partial to beds of 
red tulips with magenta borders, nor be¬ 
cause he derives any great pleasure from the 
contemplation of municipal statuary. The 
point is to find a circumscribed area where 
flowering trees and shrubs furnish cover and 
food to the migrating birds, and where the 
surrounding wilderness of houses keeps them 
in one little haven of refuge. Under certain 
conditions one can find in such oases trees 
which resemble that on the Audubon chart, 
where the delighted eye passes from species 
of comparative to those of absolute rarity, 
ending with perhaps a Cape May warbler, 
preening his plumage on a leafless branch. 
I have had no opportunity to visit the Pub¬ 
lic Gardens this month, but rumors of its 
attractions have reached me, and I am pre¬ 
pared to receive from more fortunate corre¬ 
spondents accounts of the treasures which 
•It has contained. I have gone each morning 
to my task, like Ulysses passing the en¬ 
chanted isle, and given no heed to the voices 
of the sirens. There have been times when, 
my resolution has been put to a severe test. 
Wednesday, May 22, seemed to be the high 
tide of bird migration in this vicinity. How 
