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     The annual General Meeting of the Canadian Nature Federation 
     
     held at Charlottetown and hosted by our club during August 1978 
     
     was a huge success. There were many enthusiastic comments from 
     
     the 256 persons who were registered. Later came letters 
     
     congratulating the relatively small group of active workers who 
     
     organized the program and attended to the multitude of details 
     
     that made it run smoothly. Final reports show that the P.E.I. 
     
     N.H.S. gained financially as well. 
     
    
   
   
    
     After various reports and items of business, the meeting 
     
    
   
   
    
     arrived at the "piece de resistance" — a slide talk by Kathy 
     
     Martin on the "Natural History of the Dunk and Wilmot River 
     
     Watersheds"——- an area covering about 75,000 acres. Kathy spent 
     
    
   
   
    
     much of 1974—1976 working there on a project for the University 
     
    

    
     of Prince Edward Island. The diversity of her slides showed that 
     
     she did not miss much of what was taking place in nature. She 
     
     stated that Canada Geese are the most striking and familiar wild- 
     
     life of the area and use the locality as a staging area where they 
     
     rest and feed during their spring and fall migration to and from 
     
     Labrador and Hudson Bay areas. As many as 6000 geese have been 
     
     seen there in the spring and 2500 in the fall, during the peak of 
     
     the migratory period. Smaller numbers in fall are accounted for 
     
     by the fact that some geese return south by other flyway routes. 
     
    
   
   
    
     Black Ducks, shore birds,'Hungarian Partridge, Ospreys, 
     
     American Bitterns were described as well as some of the common 
     
     species of mammals which inhabit the system. 
     
    
   
   
    
     The rivers are noteworthy, especially the Dunk whose headwaters 
     
     rise near Fredericton and Springton. As many as eleven ponds occur 
     
     on the Dunk River system. Many of these are mill ponds and their 
     
     mills ground grain and sawed lumber for earlier generations of 
     
     Islanders. In the not so distant past, Scales' Pond at West Newton 
     
     produced electrical power for the surrounding communities. 
     
    
   
   
    
     Margaret Mallett 
     
     Secretary, N.H.S. 
     
     Charlottetown,_P.E.I. 
     
    
   
   
    
       
     
    
   
   
    
     Water Lilies at the Experimental Farm 
     
    
   
   
    
     Water lilies are among the most attractive and beautiful flowers 
     
     that we have in Eastern Canada. Our visitors look upon them as rare 
     
     flowers, as they very seldom see them growing under natural conditions 
     
     as those seen in the pond near the Experimental Station buildings at 
     
     Charlottetown. This flower-decked pond when covered with its large, 
     
     heart-shaped, lily leaves, interspaced with many hundreds of pink and 
     
     white blooms, that are matchless in their perfection, gives a good 
     
     illustration of what has been done and can be done with a great 
     
     number of water holes or ponds throughout this Province. 
     
    
   
   
    
     There are hundreds of named varieties among the eight most 
     
     important species that can be used in the improvement of home beau- 
     
     tification plans and for ponds in landscape development projects. 
     
    
   
   
    
     There were three ponds, or water holes on the height of land 
     
     from near where the old barn stood at the Experimental Station, when 
     
     it was first leased by the Canadian Government. Two of these were 
     
     filled in, they were in line with one another to the north, the 
     
     largest being near the Pottery Lane. Originally they had been dug 
     
     to secure brick clay for pottery and brick making. 
     
    
   
   
    
     When Dr. William Saunders, the first Director of the Dominion 
     
     Experimental Farms saw these ponds, he immediately said he would get 
     
     up hardy water lilies for the pond near the barn. He made the 
     
     selection of sorts he believed would do well and ordered them from 
     
     Kentucky for delivery in the spring of 1910. He asked the firm to 
     
     include a few plants with blue blooms if they had any they considered 
     
     would be hardy in Prince Edward Island, Canada. The word "Canada" 
     
     must have created in the minds of the firm, visions of icebergs, 
     
     ski slides, ice palaces and lakes frozen to the bottom for we never 
     
     received plants that produce blue blooms. 
     
    
   
   
    
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