Caterpillars, black beetles, and
ants roam the wilds of this lower world, making their way through
miniature groves and thickets like bears in a thick wood.

And how rich, too, is the life of the sunny air! Every leaf and flower
seems to have its winged representative overhead. Dragon-flies shoot in
vigorous zigzags through the dancing swarms, and a rich profusion of
butterflies--the leguminosae of insects--make a fine addition to the
general show. Many of these last are comparatively small at this
elevation, and as yet almost unknown to science; but every now and then
a familiar vanessa or papilio comes sailing past. Humming-birds, too,
are quite common here, and the robin is always found along the margin of
the stream, or out in the shallowest portions of the sod, and sometimes
the grouse and mountain quail, with their broods of precious fluffy
chickens. Swallows skim the grassy lake from end to end, fly-catchers
come and go in fitful flights from the tops of dead spars, while
woodpeckers swing across from side to side in graceful festoon
curves,--birds, insects, and flowers all in their own way telling a deep
summer joy.

The influences of pure nature seem to be so little known as yet, that it
is generally supposed that complete pleasure of this kind, permeating
one's very flesh and bones, unfits the student for scientific pursuits
in which cool judgment and observation are required. But the effect is
just the opposite. Instead of producing a dissipated condition, the mind
is fertilized and stimulated and developed like sun-fed plants. All that
we have seen here enables us to see with surer vision the fountains
among the summit-peaks to the east whence flowed the glaciers that
ground soil for the surrounding forest; and down at the foot of the
meadow the moraine which formed the dam which gave rise to the lake that
occupied this basin before the meadow was made; and around the margin
the stones that were shoved back and piled up into a rude wall by the
expansion of the lake ice during long bygone winters; and along the
sides of the streams the slight hollows of the meadow which mark those
portions of the old lake that were the last to vanish.

I would fain ask my readers to linger awhile in this fertile wilderness,
to trace its history from its earliest glacial beginnings, and learn
what we may of its wild inhabitants and visitors. How happy the birds
are all summer and some of them all winter; how the pouched mar