Maine to the Chaleur Bay district, we rode from Perth to Fredericton along the St. John River-a scenic day that makes one glad that there are woods growing in places too wild of contour to be shackled even by stern Mistress Agriculture. Thence our way turned northerly, beyond first one and then another Miramichi River until we reached the "Bay of Heat" where our chief interests centered. On Shippigan Island we visited five potato fields. The aphid count for the three further fields registered zero. That for two twin-sized fields, separated by a tiny meadow, within stone's throw of the ferry landing, was recorded as "a few Macrosiphum solanifolii." The reader is by this time sufficiently initiated into. the mysteries of the hunt to see why it was logical at this point for the consulting entomologist to hazard the statement, "There are rose-bushes nearer the ferry-side fields than the other three." But because there were no rose-bushes in sight, the reader may be permitted also to enjoy briefly the flippant phytopathological query as to whether the aphids may not have arrived via the ferry line? However this was really no laughing matter. If Macrosiphum solanifolii overwinters only on rose, roses must be there even if they are invisible! I confess to a feeling of panic as I continued what looked to be, on account of the time limit imposed, a vain search. Then, when, in the middle of the shorn meadow separating the two potato fields, I came upon the stubs of a lilac clump, hope revived. For lilacs are not native to Shippigan Island. Where a clump of lilacs make shift to grow, there was once a dwelling, even though the ruins that marked its site are gone. It was as if those lilacs beckoned, and on hands and knees I followed the clue as diligently as any other Sherlock Holmes, and found at last, among the mown grass stubbles, the stubbles, too, of mown rosestems, short but thrifty. Here then was bait enough to tempt the fall migrants from the adjoining fields-the link that kept the cycle of the potato aphid intact on Shippigan Island. And the thorns that pricked my hands as I plucked an evidential stem from the ground caused a pain that was physical merely and healed. completely by the salve of a triumphant spirit.

The next morning a peninsula, a small almost-island, near Shippigan was visited. In the two fields first entered, aphids were disporting themselves somewhat freely. They were less numerous in the third field, fewer still in the fourth, and in the midst of the fifth field I gathered my courage and said, "We are going away from the source of infestation. The rose-bushes are nearer the first fields. If we had time we could find them." To which our guide replied quietly, "We will take time."

The inhabited dooryards in the vicinity were innocent of roses,

VOL. XV-12

but behind the two most heavily infested fields we found a cellar ruin, along the walls of which the prophesied rose-bushes were growing. And also, in this deserted dooryard, long since forsaken, a great mass of the same sort of roses grew clumped over an area as big as that covered by the ruins themselves. That was a neat demonstration of a scientific method, was it not? To tell by looking at a potato field whether one was approaching or receding from a rose-bush. I hoped the phytopathologists did not guess how glorious a moment that was to the consulting entomologist. For the hero of Conan Doyle's pages never felt more keenly a triumph in tracing to a logical conclusion a treasured hypothesis.

But the silly pride that surged up gratefully 'to greet those · roses soon ebbed. There was that about them that touched more deeply. Their true romance was after all not of the brain but of the heart-hearts long since dead. And over the graves of their memories the blossoms of roses smiled that day. For though the sun of August shone upon them, and the reddened rose fruits spoke of a full spring-time blow, a few belated blooms were now in flower. And the frail sweet things echoed as with the music of forsaken gardens.

Those roses, blossoming in memoriam over the graves of forgotten homes of yester-long-ago, lure my desire across the sea to the land mayhap where Evangeline's kin once dwelt. Perchance such roses grow even yet in old world places-not dooryards belike, but in untilled tangles; I think so-wild roses, their single blossoms rich of hue, and their leaves a hard clear yellowish green, fresh and clean even under August suns. And if it seem unlikely that the old-world folk brought so common a thing as a wild rose with them, may it not be that their choice double darlings were grafted on a sturdier stock? And after the bitter cold winds of the "Bay of Heat" had blasted the tender growth, the neglected root-stems came unto their own blossoms even in the stern wilds of their adopted land! How otherwise?

Later that same day we saw again that rose of yester-year. This was near "Black Rock." Our guide called a halt there and pointing to the left said, "There and a bit beyond are two fields which registered last year a score of one hundred per cent. mosaic."

One hundred per cent. mosaic! My pet aphids must have been busy. Somehow the fact that there were no roses in sight had ceased to trouble me. I left my comrades clicking their counters in the potato fields and struck out alone along a bordering lane. It led me back beyond the potatoes, beyond a mowing and beyond an oatfield. There I found them-my rose-bushes, a great and ancient mass of them, pushing against a fence that headed a high

bank. When I had returned and made my report, the others of the party went to view the roses with, it seemed to me, a certain curiosity. Indeed, when they caught sight of the great clump, the guide, regarding me somewhat quizzically, demanded, "Do you mind telling me how you found these roses, coming directly to them?" And I replied, with a laugh, "Scotch second sight." Who knows? There are times when something seems to click in one's brain as if some charged current from without is turned on, and the resulting action hardly seems one's own volition. And it is a common enough feeling, with reference to any "inspiration," that it comes to one.'

But I am no dabbler in psychic concerns that way dangers lie for scientific methods. There was, of course, no mystery about finding hidden roses. It needs no diviner with a witch-hazel switch. Doubtless I found the stubs of mown roses on Shippigan Island because I had learned from experience that roses are likely to be planted by the same hands that cherish lilacs; those of the neighboring peninsula from the pure mathematical deduction based on the relative numbers of aphids in the different fields; and those of Black Rock-well, how else than by sheer accident?

At any rate, we saw no more roses like those of Shippigan during the rest of the trip, after we left the old French settlements and visited places settled long ago by the Irish. Not that here were, for all that, a dearth of roses, but they were of a different sort "wild Irish roses' we dubbed them, though I have a suspicion, based on their habit of growth, general appearance and one dried and crumpled blossom, that they may be what we call in New England "old-fashioned cinnamon roses."

As you see, there was this in common in the single "old-garden roses" of Chaleur Bay, the "wild Irish roses and the single "wild roses" neighboring potato fields of northern Maine-they grew in or near oldtime dooryards in large massed clumps betokening many years of age.

Surely the rose has nestled too close to the heart of man not to strike with its thorns the hand that is raised against it. Although on entomological evidence it could be sentenced to banishment by authority of crop-pest commissioners, government officials of neither the United States nor New Brunswick would probably care to undertake the unpopular task of exterminating a plant so rooted in human sentiment.

And yet, in the immediate vicinity of northern seed-potato fields, the rose will go. How otherwise? For the man from Bermuda will still come seeking "certified bliss," and the gold of southern states will demand healthy tubers. The northern growers will volun

tarily attend to a matter that bears so directly on their purses. They have troubles enough without those borne by the wings of migratory aphids.

These were a part of the composite reflections of ninety days that conversed with me as I took a solitary walk across Aroostook Farm the night before I left. The skies were rich with sunset radiance and the glory of rainbow. Under their beauty spread out for interminable miles the potato fields in which I had been marooned for three months by the calendar. As I looked across as much of the green-leaved sea as my gaze could cover, a shiver of revulsion swept over me-a feeling more nearly akin to weary hate than I would think possible to have for any growing plant. There was something hideously manufactured about the landscape, artificially colored with prescribed baptismal dopes; and I detested the whole sprawling amorphous brood of Solanum tuberosum.

Was I then at last cured of my attack of solanimania? Had I shaken off the delirious taint of the potato kingdom? Ah, no, no one ever recovers. And a day or so later, when sitting before my long deserted desk at Orono, I drew into place a blank sheet of paper and headed it:

Maine Agricultural Experiment Station

Bulletin No. 303

"Rose-bushes in Relation to Potato Culture"

And the things written under that caption brand the writer as a faithful servant of agriculture or, if you prefer, a servile slave of the spud.

THE REINDEER HERDS OF THE PRIBILOF

ISLANDS

By G. DALLAS HANNA

THE CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

HE domesticated reindeer of Siberia were first introduced into

THE

Alaska in 1892 through the efforts of the missionary, Rev. Sheldon Jackson. The total number brought across Bering Sea was but few more than a thousand when the Russian Government prohibited further exportation. This nucleus has grown enormously and has been divided into a large number of separate herds. The success of the enterprise is apparently assured for many generations and the native race of Eskimos was probably saved from extermination through this single stroke of philanthropy. The people not only derive food and clothing from the herds, but the meat has been sold in ports as distant as Seattle and San Francisco. Nothing but a brilliant future can be foreseen for the industry at this time.

Most of the Alaska herds have been divided and subdivided to such an extent, and the records are so scattered through govern