ds about Moxie Lake were literally carpeted with Linnaea. I had
never seen it in such profusion. In early summer, the period of its
bloom, what a charming spectacle the mossy floors of these remote woods
must present! The flowers are purple rose-color, nodding and fragrant.
Another very abundant plant in these woods was the Clintonia borealis.
Uncle Nathan said it was called "bear's corn," though he did not know
why. The only noticeable flower by the Maine roadsides at this season
that is not common in other parts of the country is the harebell. Its
bright blue, bell-shaped corolla shone out from amid the dry grass and
weeds all along the route. It was one of the most delicate roadside
flowers I had ever seen.

The only new bird I saw in Maine was the pileated woodpecker, or black
"log cock," called by Uncle Nathan "wood cock." I had never before seen
or heard this bird, and its loud cackle in the woods about Moxie was
a new sound to me. It is the wildest and largest of our northern
woodpeckers, and the rarest. Its voice and the sound of its hammer are
heard only in the depths of the northern woods. It is about as large as
a crow, and nearly as black.

We stayed a week at Moxie, or until we became surfeited with its trout,
and had killed the last Merganser duck that lingered about our end of
the lake. The trout that had accumulated on our hands we had kept alive
in a large champagne basket submerged in the lake, and the morning we
broke camp the basket was towed to the shore and opened; and after we
had feasted our eyes upon the superb spectacle, every trout, twelve or
fifteen in number, some of them two-pounders, was allowed to swim back
into the lake. They went leisurely, in couples and in trios, and were
soon kicking up their heels in their old haunts. I expect that the
divinity who presides over Moxie will see to it that every one of those
trout, doubled in weight, comes to our basket in the future.

WINTER NEIGHBORS.

The country is more of a wilderness, more of a wild solitude, in
the winter than in the summer. The wild comes out. The urban, the
cultivated, is hidden or negatived. You shall hardly know a good field
from a poor, a meadow from a pasture, a park from a forest. Lines and
boundaries are disregarded; gates and bar-ways are unclosed; man lets go
his hold upon the earth; title-deeds are deep buried beneath the snow;
the best-kept grounds relapse to a state of nature; under the pressure
of the