forest in this region is a thing of the past. Once in a while we see a fine old tree, usually in the village streets; an elm or a plane tree, a pine, a maple or an oak. But most of the wood is "second growth," or more frequently a third or fourth growth, and yet much cutting is going on, and some of it is very, very evil. These steep, rocky hillsides can never be made productive, and the removal of the forest covering will merely destroy their beauty and lead to the washing away of the slowly accumulated soil, and the consequent demoralization of the springs. In some places there are indications that former clearings are again growing up into wood but more frequently the young timber is being removed while of little value in itself. Occasionally the soil uncovered in the swales may be readily worked and made productive, but usually it is closely strewn with big and little masses of trap-rock which will forever render profitable cultivation practically impossible. And all the time you are conscious that the ground already cleared is inadequately tilled, and that a wise economy would turn all this labour into another channel.

As I walked through aisle after aisle of the Agricultural Building in Jackson Park,

and examined the products of the great western farms, and the means by which these products were obtained, I wished over and over again that the farmers of New England could be with me, and see for themselves why it is that they do not meet with success in the old style of general farming, and why the competition in which they are engaged is necessarily a losing one, and New England shows so many "abandoned farms." I am sure there is a future for them, and a prosperous one, but it must be under other conditions, with a consideration of their situation and the character of the market.

I thought a few weeks ago that I had gathered my last fringed gentians, but I found a few to-day in my special preserve, opened wide to receive the comforting rays of the sun after last night's rain. I have left many to scatter their seed for next year, and I hope that the lovers of this beautiful flower will learn to keep their demands within moderate limits, for like the mayflower it threatens to leave frequented neighbourhoods. It is, I believe, a biennial, and not like the mayflower an evergreen perennial, and is therefore not so great a sufferer as that because of the ruthless

dragging up by the roots to which it is exposed; but I have found a pair of pocket scissors not inappropriate in gathering it, and would modestly suggest to others the use of such, both for the fringed gentian and the mayflower.

To my list of plants in blossom must be added the charlock, the common and the French mullein, all found during the past week. But the flowers are rapidly becoming fewer. The asters are scarce and even the wild carrot, which continues so long to adorn the fields and roadsides with its beautiful lace-like blossoms, seems likely ere long to fail us. As the leaves fall, the orange berries of the bitter-sweet, of which we have a profusion, make more and more of a show, especially now that they have opened and exhibit the deeper orange of the ripe seeds within, while the red berries of the black alder gleam in the lowlands with their wonted brilliancy.

OCTOBER 28, 1893.

V.

I HAVE been re-reading Ruskin's "Elements of Drawing." He may be as bad an instructor as the art critics say, I think perhaps he is, — but we cannot possibly do without him. Who has eyes if he has not? What a love for the facts of Nature! What a sense of the poetry of form and colour and motion! And what a vigorous pen and what strong muscular English! Yes, and what magnificent prejudices and splendid egotism! Reject all his instructions, if you like, and take some other course of study, but do not fail to read and ponder all that he has to say to you. And make sure that if you do not look at Nature as lovingly as he does, you will never do your best at finding out her secrets and revealing them (in confidence) to others.

By the way, I do not know anything else so preposterous as the claim made by some who assume a special love for the spectacle of Nature, of her glorious clouds and sparkling skies and sturdy trees and beau

tiful flowers, that you must bury yourself in ignorance concerning them, in order to estimate them at their true value. With great superiority they tell you that they want to look upon the flowers and inhale their perfume, not to pull them to pieces and find out how they are made; to watch the clouds rolling through the heavens, not to know that they are masses of sun-lighted vapour, and that the barometer is rising or falling. Is it so easy to unravel the mystery of life? Do you have but to turn your hand, to discover that the great earth as well as your small globe is hollow, and that all dolls, big and little, are stuffed with sawdust? How petty the awful universe must seem to such people! Have they ever thought, after the ancient poet, "When I consider the heavens, the work of thy hands, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou regardest him?"

I have sometimes watched those who have expressed themselves as I have above indicated, but I have failed to discover in them any peculiar intensity of passion for grace of form, glory of colour, smoothness of melody, or richness of harmony. I have