Читать книгу Studies of Plant Life in Canada: Wild Flowers, Flowering Shrubs, and Grasses - Catharine Parr Traill - Страница 4

Table of Contents

"There's nothing left to chance below;

The Great Eternal cause

Has made all beauteous order flow

From settled laws."

Every plant, flower, and tree has a simple history of its own, not without its interest if we would read it aright. It forms a page in the great volume of Nature which lies open before us, and without it there would be a blank; in Nature there is no space left unoccupied.

We watch on some breezy day in summer one of the winged seeds of the thistle or dandelion taking its flight upward and onward, and we know not where it will alight, and we see not the wisdom of Him

"Who whirls the blowballs' new-fledged pride

In mazy rings on high,

Whose downy pinions once untied

Must onward fly.

"Each is commissioned, could we trace

The voyage to each decreed,

To convey to some barren place

A pilgrim seed."

—Agnes Strickland.

When the writer of the little volume now offered to the Canadian public first settled in the then unbroken backwoods on the borders of the Katchewanook, just where the upper waters of a chain of lakes narrow into the rapids of the wildly beautiful Otonabee, that section of the province was an unbroken wilderness. There was no road opened, even for the rudest vehicle, on the Douro side of the lakes, and to gain her new home the authoress had to cross the river at Auburn, travel through the newly cut road in the opposite township, and again cross over the Otonabee at the head of the rapids in a birch-bark canoe. There was at that period no other mode of connection with the northern part of the Township of Douro. Now a branch railroad from Peterboro' terminates in the flourishing village where once the writer wandered among the forest pines looking for wild flowers and ferns.

As to the roads, one might say, with the Highland traveller,

"Had you but seen these roads before they were made,

You'd have lift up your hands and have blessed General Wade."

The only habitations, beyond our own log cabin, at the date of which I write, were one shanty and the log house of a dear, lamented and valued brother, the enterprising pioneer and founder of the prosperous village of Lakefield.

It may easily be imagined that there were few objects of interest in the woods at that distant period of time—1832—or as a poor Irish woman sorrowfully remarked, "'Tis a lonesome place for the likes of us poor women folk; sure there isn't a hap'orth worth the looking at; there is no nothing, and it's hard to get the bit and the sup to ate and to drink."

Well, I was better off than poor Biddy Fagan, for I soon found beauties in my woodland wanderings, in the unknown trees and plants of the forest. These things became a great resource, and every flower and shrub and forest tree awakened an interest in my mind, so that I began to thirst for a more intimate knowledge of them. They became like dear friends, soothing and cheering, by their sweet unconscious influence, hours of loneliness and hours of sorrow and suffering.

Having never made botany a study, and having no one to guide and assist me, it was acquiring knowledge under difficulties, by observation only; but the eye and the ear are good teachers, and memory is a great storehouse, in which are laid up things new and old which may be drawn out for use in after years. It is a book the leaves of which can be turned over and read from childhood to old age without weariness.

Having experienced the need of some familiar work giving the information respecting the names and habits and uses of the native plants, I early conceived the idea of turning the little knowledge which I gleaned from time to time to supplying a book which I had felt the great want of myself; but I hesitated to enter the field when all I had gathered had been from merely studying the subject without any regular systematic knowledge of botany. The only book that I had access to was an old edition of "North American Flora," by that industrious and interesting botanist, Frederick Pursh. This work was lent to me by a friend, the only person I knew who had paid any attention to botany as a study, and to whom I was deeply indebted for many hints and for the cheering interest that she always took in my writings, herself possessing the advantages of a highly cultivated mind, educated and trained in the society of persons of scientific and literary notoriety in the Old Country. Mrs. Stewart was a member of the celebrated Edgeworth family. Pursh's "Flora," unfortunately for me, was written chiefly in Latin. This was a drawback in acquiring the information I required; however, I did manage to make some use of the book, and when I came to a standstill I had recourse to my husband, and there being a glossary of the common names, as well as one of the botanical, I contrived to get a familiar knowledge of both.

My next teachers were old settlers' wives, and choppers and Indians. These gave me knowledge of another kind, and so by slow steps, and under many difficulties, I gleaned my plant-lore. Having, as I have said, no resource in botanical works on our native flora, save what I could glean from Pursh, I was compelled to rely almost entirely upon my own powers of observation. This did much to enhance my interest in my adopted country and add to my pleasure as a relief, at times, from the home-longings that always arise in the heart of the exile, especially when the sweet opening days of Spring recall to the memory of the immigrant Canadian settler old familiar scenes, when the hedges put out their green buds, and the Violets scent the air; when pale Primroses and the gay starry Celandine gladden the eye, and the little green lanes and wood-paths are so pleasant to ramble through among the Daisies and Bluebells and Buttercups; when all the gay embroidery of English meads and hedgerows put on their bright array. But for the Canadian forest flowers and trees and shrubs, and the lovely ferns and mosses, I think I should not have been as contented as I have been away from dear old England. It was in the hope of leading other lonely hearts to enjoy the same pleasant recreation that I have so often pointed out the natural beauties of this country to their attention, and now present my forest gleanings to them in a simple form, trusting that it may not prove an unacceptable addition to the literature of Canada, and that it may become a household book, as Gilbert White's Natural History of Selborne is to this day among English readers. And now at the age of eighty-three years, fifty-two of which have been spent in the fair province of Ontario, in her far forest home on the banks of the rapid Otonabee, the writer lays down her pen, with earnest prayers for the prosperity of this her much beloved adopted country, that with the favor and blessing of our God it may become the glory of all lands.

Lakefield, Ont., 1884.