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lent their robes to keep them warm. The oysters that have gasped and yielded shells to make them buttons. The skins taken form the backs of kids, lambs, and other subservient animals, to furnish gloves and boots; and the silken thread spun from the entrails of a little grub, dyed with the product of gas tar, or the galls produced by a minute Cynips.

Rather let us say that we are dependent upon the whole of creation, and that much depends upon us; that there is a mutual dependence one upon the other, and all have their duties to perform "in that station of life unto which it has pleased God to call them." To talk of independence, in this sense, is but to lay bare our ignorance, and to deny the great fact upon which all the operations of nature are based, of mutual dependence for the good of all. "All the parts incessantly work into each other's hands for the profit of man. The wind sows the seed; the sun evaporates the sea; the wind blows the vapour to the field; the ice on the other side of the planet, condenses rain on this; the rain feeds the plant; the plant feeds the animal; and thus the endless circulations of the Divine charity nourish man."

The Hoary Marmot (Arctomysokanaganus), or, as styled by the trappers and fur-traders, the "Rock Whistler," lives on the very summit of the Rocky Mountains.

If there is a spot, on the face of the globe, more dismal, solitary, inhospitable, and uninviting than another, that spot is where this most accomplished siffleur resides; and it is not by any means a matter to be wondered at, that so very little is to be found, in works on natural history, relating to this little anchorite's habits.

Years have rolled by since I first heard, and then saw, the Rock Whistler at home, but the scene, in its every detail, is still vividly impressed on my memory; and the story may be worth relating.

Our camp—the camp of the Boundary Commission—was placed in a snug gap, a little distance from the Kootanir Pass, on the west side of the Rocky Mountains; altitude, 8,000 feet above the sea-level. About a mile from the camp was terminal point of the Boundary line (as far as our Commission were concerned), the Lake of the Woods being its real termination—a line not yet marked and defined.

It was near midsummer, yet the mornings were cold and chilly, though the midday was scorching hot. I started soon after sunrise, to have the benefit of the cool, fresh morning air, my purpose being the climb the craggy ascent that led up to the actual summit, or watershed.

It was not by any means a dangerous thing to do,—"clinging to beetling cliffs, overhanging giddy heights, a single false step, and the daring adventurer plunges into unfathomable space,"—nothing half so sensational or romantic in my case. It was simply leg-aching, tiresome, scrambling work. The grass, being dry, it polished the soles of my mocassins, until they become like burnished metal, so that progression, up the long green slopes, was much the same as it would be, up an ice slant, at an angle of 45° with skates on. I got up at last, and, feeling somewhat fagged, seated myself on a flat rock, unslung my rifle, lighted my pipe, and had a good look at everything round about me.

The sun had crept steadily up into the clear sky, unflecked by a single cloud; the mists that in early morning hung about the ravines, and partially veiled the peaks and angles of the vast piles of rocks, had vanished, revealing them in all their naked immensity. Below me was a lake, smooth as a mirror, but the dark, green, cold look of the water hinted at unfathomable depth. To my left, and almost hanging over me, was an immense glacier, and as the glowing sun-rays slanted down on its crystal surface, each ray seemed at once reduced to its prismatic colours, giving the entire mass the appearance of being a heap of broken rainbows. Tiny rivulets, fed by its drip, wound their way, like threads of silver, between the rocks and through the grass, to reach the lake; the outflow of which eventually found its way into the Atlantic Ocean. Behind me rose a sharp ridge of rocks, clothed in snow, which, as it thawed, grew into mountain streams; these into rivers, that, mingling eventually into one great whole, become the mighty Columbia, that finds it home in the blue Pacific.

I was not so much impressed with the beauty of the landscape, as awed by its solemn, substantial massive magnificence. It seemed to absorb me; I felt as a minute marine zoophyte might be supposed to feel if engulphed in the capacious mouth of a Greenland whale. Few living things were to be seen, save a group of Ptarmigan, sunning themselves on a ledge of rock; a couple of Mountain Goats (Antilocapra Americana), browsing by the lake; and few Grey-crowned Linnets,—birds seldom seen but at great altitudes. There were also the recent traces of a Grizzly or Black Bear, that had been munching down the wild Angelica. A solemn stillness, that appeared almost tangible, intensified the slightest sound to a supernatural loudness: even a loosened stone rattling down the hill-side made me start; there was no buzz and hum of busy insects, or chirp of birds, or splash of torrents to break the silence; the very wind seemed afraid to moan: it was death-like silence to the very letter.

As I puffed away, silent as all about me, suddenly a sharp, ringing, clear, piercing whistle that awoke