of pins in working on it the one word ‘Hagar,’ in letters six inches high.  The inspecting officer came in and the pin sign caught his eye.  He spelled it out letter by letter, ‘H-a-g-a-r,—­what was the matter with him?’ Johnnie retorted, ‘The him was a her, and she died of thirst in the wilderness.’  The inspecting officer says to Johnnie, ’Well, that would never happen to you.’”

A peculiar drumming wafts from the shore-line.  “Pa-pas-ku,” says one of the Cree lads, pulling his pipe from his mouth and listening.  Young Hudson’s Bay to my enquiring look returns, “The Canadian ruffed grouse,” which Sussex elucidated, “Bonasa umbellus logata,” at which we all feel very much relieved.

The Kid was pressing specimens, and, holding up a branch, the Mounted Policeman next her said, “Young jackpine, I think.”  “It belongs to the Conifer family,” corrects the Doctor.  “Oh!” says the Mounted Policeman, with a sniff, “then we’ll give it back to ’em the next time one of the Conifer boys comes round.”  The man of the river and the woods hates a Latin name, and any stray classic knowledge you have is best hidden under a napkin.  The descriptive terms men use here are crisp and to the point.  The vicious habit of giving birds bad names is one that grows, and you never know when the scientific have come to a finality.  For instance, little Robin Red-Breast ("the pious bird with scarlet breast” whose nest with four eggs the Kid discovered to-day), has successively lived through three tags, “Turdus migratorius,” “Planesticus migratorius,” and “Turdus canadensis.”  If he had not been an especially plucky little beggar he would have died under the libels long ago.  For my own part I cannot conceive how a man with good red blood in his veins could look a chirky little robin in the eye and call him to his face a “Planesticus migratorius,” when as chubby youngster he had known the bird and loved him as Robin Red-Breast.  One is inclined to ask with suspicion, “Is naming a lost art?” Any new flower discovered these days, every clever invention in the realm of machinery, is forthwith saddled with an impossible name.  If it had not been easy to clip the term “automobile” down to the working stub “auto,” the machine would never have run our streets.  Again, the decimal system is conceded to be far ahead of the asinine “five and one-half yards make one rod, pole or perch”; the only reason why the commonsense thing does not supersede the foolish one is that the sensible measurement has the fool tag on it.  Who could imagine ever going into a store and asking for seven decimetres and nine centimetres of picture-moulding, or dropping into the corner grocery to buy a hectolitre of green onions?  When man dug gold and iron and tin out of the earth he made things with them.  Now when we discover a new mineral we dub it “molybdenum” and let it rust in innocuous ease.  When man loses the art of nervous speech, his power of action goes with it.  And as we ruminate, the Bonasa umbellus togata drums on.