This was the season for musquitoes and black flies.  The latter are ten times the worse of the two.  This happened to be a bad fly year, and I, being a new comer, was nearly devoured by them.  Luckily, they do not last more than a month, and it is only before rain that they are so very annoying.  I have seen children whose necks were one mass of sores, from the poisonous nature of their bite:  sheep, calves, and foals, are sometimes killed by them.  Nor is this, indeed, an unfrequent occurrence.  It must be, however, borne in mind that, as the country is cleared up, and the woods recede, the flies disappear.  In the clearings along the front townships, the flies are not more troublesome than they are in England.

The farm on which I now reside used to swarm terribly with flies, lying, as it does, near the water; but, for the last three years, it has been entirely free from them, especially from the black flies.*

[* These insects are always much worse, and more numerous, when the spring is backward, and the floods are higher than usual.  From close observation, I believe the larvae are deposited during high water on the rocks, when, as soon as the water falls, the heat of the sun hatches the insects.  I have remarked large stones, which had been under water during the flood, covered over with small brown coloured cells, exactly the shape, and very little bigger than a seed of buckwheat.  From out of these cells, on a sunny day, the flies rise in clouds, for they bite through the envelope, and emancipate themselves.  Being provided with a sharp appetite, they will attack you the minute they are at liberty.  These pests begin to appear between the 10th of May and 1st of June, according to the earliness or lateness of the season.  Towards the end of June, numbers of small dragon-flies make their appearance, which soon eat up all the black-flies, to which repast, you may be sure, they are heartily welcome.]

A person who understands chopping, can save himself a good deal of trouble and hard work by making what is called a plan-heap.  Three or four of these may be made on an acre, but not more.  The largest and most difficult trees are felled, the limbs only being cut off and piled.  Then all the trees that will fall in the same direction, should be thrown along, on the top of the others, the more the better chance of burning well.  If you succeed in getting a good burn for your fallow, the chances are, if your plan-heaps are well made, that they will be mostly consumed, which will save a great many blows of the axe, and some heavy logging.

CHAPTER VIII.

A logging bee. —­ Lime-burning. —­ Shingling. —­ Arrival of my brother-
in-law. —­ Birth of my son. —­ Sad journey to Darlington. —­ Lose my
way. —­ Am refused A lift. —­ My boyish anger. —­ My wife’s death. —­
The funeral. —­ I leave Darlington.