soft, white flowers among woolly-backed leaves, and one cannot help wondering if the tea which the early colonists are supposed to have brewed from them was not somewhat outlandish in flavor. The island is a meeting-ground for the black spruces from the northern muskeg swamps and the pitch-pines from the sand barrens to the south, while the scruboaks reach their northern limit in the United States, mingled with a flora that the jargon of the botanists calls subarctic. The forests on the island are unusually varied in their leafage; they are really only comparable to the forests of Japan in complexity of texture, but a certain radiance and beauty of coloring is all

ern woods have flashes of birch gleaming against dark spruce and wind-driven pine, and are carpeted with a ground cover of unrivalled beauty. Patches of the lustrous and pervasively flavored wintergreen yield to tangled mats of Linnæus's favorite twinflower, and long, pale runners of partridgeberry, with symmetrically paired and accurately spaced leaves, make prim sylvan processions toward sheets of scarlet bunchberries. harsh leathery leaves of Mayflower huddle in tight clusters under the shelter of rocks, and in the aromatic depths enchanter's nightshade and goldthread cover the ground at the roots of tropically robust clumps of cinnamon-fern. There

The

are acres of rhodora growing in the deep, peaty soil of the low-lying, moist meadows which now fill some of the preglacial lake basins. In earliest spring sheets of the pale reddish flowers, mingled with spraylike tufts of shadbush, are framed in rims of blackish evergreens, and although the much-praised flowers are dull in color compared with other azaleas, the very masses of them give the austere wintry landscape a flush of color as welcome as the song of the first robin.

The new government land will serve

one of its most useful purposes as a refuge for birds. It is already known to be most favorably placed as a breeding-place for many of the arctic species which come to the island in their southernmost flights, and in the coming years the sanctuary of the reservation will shelter more and more birds safely within its limits. Sea and lake shores, high cliffs, deep forests, wide marshes and meadows give a variety of nesting-places which already draw more than a hundred and forty different species to the island. Ornithologists have long

the near neighborhood of houses, while in most gardens humming-birds dart and chatter and play all through the summer days. For a long time an eyrie has been perched high above a cliff overlooking the sea, and not infrequently the great birds are seen sweeping over the valley hundreds of feet below.

Game used to be plentiful on the island and is again increasing; deer are multiplying and becoming quite tame, and the startling whirr of the ruffed grouse as he rises is heard on many an autumn walk. Mink were found until recently, and now and again a fine fox pelt was brought in by a trapper. In Champlain's time the Indians came to the island to hunt beaver, and although they and the beaver have both disappeared, here and there some of

should have been known and loved for many years by the thousands of people who have come to find refreshment in its quickening air, blended from sea and forest. After winters spent in cities, men and women go to Mount Desert to play and work and roam in its forests or sail its waters, and live in its beauty till it becomes a part of their lives. The opalescent light which often covers the bay and islands in the early summer mornings appealed to John La Farge, whose sketches show his appreciation of its tenderness and charm, and he also delighted in the dark pines, holding fast to the granite rocks, above the deep-blue foam-streaked sea. Marion Crawford laid the scene of one of his shorter novels on the island, and was always interested in comparing

its northern sea and shore with the Italian coast, which he knew so thoroughly. Mount Desert had another sympathetic admirer in Doctor Weir Mitchell, who loved it both wisely and well. He was often seen walking on the mountain trails, with springy step and eyes alert, keenly interested in all he saw and delighted to discover far-away recesses in the forests and hills. He eagerly spoke of possibilities for paths to give access either to the unknown canyon of a ferny brook or to a bluff headland from which a new point of view might be seen. His unfailing enthusiasm and wise counsel were of incalculable use in helping the development of the system of paths begun and carried on with unflagging energy by Waldron Bates. For many years Mr. Bates devoted a large part of his summers to indefatigable exploration of the hills and valleys. A tireless walker and fearless climber, he enjoyed nothing so much as working out a good path up an incredibly steep crag or finding a way between rock ledges to some quiet grove hidden in a fold of the mountain. His boyish excitement over

a new trail swept his fellow workers along with him, and day after day he would go back to some particularly baffling cliff till he had found a way around or over or through it. He started the path system which has made the hills accessible to many a walker who would otherwise have found the dense forest growth a hopeless barrier. He gave much of his too-short life to studying the island and linking together mountains, shore, and hitherto unknown districts in a continuous series of trails which make it possible to tramp from one side of the island to the other on ways either level or steep, according to the walker's mood or choice.

In 1901, at the suggestion of President Eliot, whose son Charles Eliot, the distinguished landscape-architect, had conceived a like scheme for Massachusetts, Mr. George Bucknam Dorr assembled a group of people who saw clearly and acted wisely in organizing themselves into the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations. Two years later the legislature of Maine confirmed the incorporation of the organization. Its purposes were