gularly or by more than a few hands.

On the road leading from town to the Skunk River one has glimpses of
another industry. Limekilns, with uncouth signs announcing lime for sale
at twenty-five cents a bushel, thrust themselves almost into the road,
and the cabins or neatly-whitewashed board huts of the lime-burners
border the way. Some have grass-plots and mounds of flowers around them:
others are without ornament, if we except the children with blue eyes,
red cheeks and hair like corn-silk that hang on the fence and watch us
ride by.

Skunk River is a broad, still stream, with hilly banks heavily wooded
with willow, oak, maple, sycamore and bass-wood. Here we find the
earliest wild flowers in spring: blue and purple hepaticas blossom among
the withered leaves on the ground while the branches above are still
bare, and a little later crowds of violets and spring-beauties brighten
the tender grass; clusters of diacentra--or "Dutchman's breeches," as
the children call them--nod from the shelter of decaying stumps to small
yellow lilies with spotted leaves and tufts of fresh green ferns.

The place is equally a favorite bird-haunt. The prairie-chicken, the
best-known game-bird of the State, chooses rather the open prairie, but
wild-ducks settle and feed here in their migratory journeys, attracting
the sportsman by their presence; the fish-hawk makes his nest in the
trees on the bank; the small blue heron wades pensively along the
margin; and the common wood-birds, such as blackbirds, bluebirds, jays,
sparrows and woodpeckers, chatter or warble or scold among the branches.
Sometimes the redbird flashes like a living flame through the green
tree-tops, or the brilliant orange-and-black plumage of the Baltimore
oriole contrasts with the lilac-gray bark of an old tree-trunk.

Besides the small wild flowers there are many shrubs and trees that
bloom in spring. The haw tree and wild plum put forth masses of small
creamy-white flowers, the redbud tree blooms along the water-courses,
the dogwood in the woods and the wild crab-apple upon the open hillside.
The crab trees often form dense thickets an acre or two in extent, and
when all their branches are thickly set with coral buds or deep-pink
blossoms they form a picture upon which the eye delights to rest. Spring
redeems even the flat prairie from the blank monotony which wearies the
eye in winter. There are few places in this vicinity where the virgin
sod has not been broken,