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Andrewsii, Griseb.) and some of these slender, humble
hedge-hyssops (Gratiola aurea, Muhl.), with half a
dozen or more ferns, including the dainty maidenhair
(Adiantum pedatum, L.), our one New England repre-
sentative of a large tropical genus of more than sixty
species, many of which are among the choice treasures
of the horticulturist, and some of the spleenworts,
especially the delicate Asplenium Trichomanes, L., and
Asplenium ebeneum, Ait., two of my favorites among
the native ferns. August is so prolific in flowers that
time would fail us to tell at large of the hawkweeds,
the sunflowers, the St. John's-worts, the willow-herbs,
the bur-marigolds and others, many of which bloom
unseen and can endure to live unsung.

And the wild
And the common wayside weeds!
grasses! We must pass them by now unheeded, for we
see by this little brook the queen of the August flowers,
the bright, the beautiful, the far-seen, the cardinal
T. W. Higginson in
flower (Lobelia cardinalis, L.).
his "Out-door Papers" says of it: "The cardinal flower
is best seen by itself and, indeed, needs the surround-
ings of its native haunts to display its fullest beauty.
Its favorite abode is along the dank mossy stones of
some black and winding brook, shaded with overarch-
ing bushes, and running one long stream of scarlet
with these superb occupants. It seems amazing how
anything so brilliant can mature in such a darkness.

When a ray of sunlight strays in upon it, the wondrous. creature seems to hover on the stalk, ready to take flight, like some lost tropic bird. There is a spot whence I have in ten minutes brought away as many as I could hold in both arms, some bearing fifty blossoms on a single stalk; and I could not believe that there was such another mass of color in the world." It fills in the August landscape the place of the rhodora in May, the mountain laurel in June and the water lily in July. Among the pictures that hang on the walls of my memory are some of a little pool, around the margin of which was a thick fringe of the cardinal flower, while in the waters the bright reflection seemed to double its beauty. When the meadows have been deprived of their wealth of grasses, and the nymphs of the brooks have hidden their faces from the heat of the August sun, and the distant hills are clothed with a hazy light, then we look for its coming and not in vain.

SEPTEMBER FRUITS.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells.
-KEATS- To Autumn.

All the rare days of the year are not confined to June. Although that is the time of the summer solstice, when the tide of life is nearing its flood, September has one of the high days of the year, the autumnal equinox, the day when, by Nature's time-table, the northern hemisphere is, like a train of cars, set off on a side track to wait while the sun moves southward to bring the life of

the southern hemisphere from the siding where it has been waiting during its winter.

It is a time of fulness and content. Increase and multiply is Nature's motto. She has no sympathy with the slothful servant whose talent is hidden in a napkin. She believes in usury, in large per cents. To her a hundred per cent seems small; such per cents as two thousand, five thousand, ten thousand are more satisfactory. This September month is the time when she is busy paying her dividends; stock dividends they are, too, from her accumulated surplus of the year.

The time of fruits is at its prime, a happy season, sung by poets and praised by prose writers. In his seventh idyl Theocritus, writing more than two thousand years ago, describes a harvest feast on the island of

Cos, east of the fair gean sea. It is an idyllic picture: "There we reclined on deep beds of fragrant lentisk, lowly strown, and rejoicing we lay in new stript leaves of the vine. And high above our heads waved many a poplar, many an elm tree, while close at hand the sacred water from the nymphs' own cave welled forth with murmurs musical. On shadowy boughs the burnt cicalas kept their chattering toil, far off the little owl cried in the thick thorn brake, the larks and finches were singing, the ring-dove moaned, the yellow bees were flitting about the springs. All breathed the scent of the opulent summer, of the season of fruits; pears at

our feet and apples by our side were rolling plentiful, the tender branches with wild plums laden were earthward bowed, and the four-year-old pitch seal was loosened from the mouth of the wine-jars." And many a poet since Theocritus has touched upon the same theme.

On one of these fair September afternoons without a cloud, yet windless, with a gray haze shrouding the bright blue, neither burning overmuch, nor chill, let us yield to the instinctive love which urges us to leave behind for a little

"The vain low strife

That makes men mad-the tug for wealth and power-
The passions and the cares that wither life,

And waste its little hour;"

and while no promise of the fruitful year seems unfulfilled in this fair autumn tide, let us

"Roam the woods that crown

The uplands, where the mingled splendors glow,
Where the gay company of trees look down
On the green fields below."

But as one must come with an appetite to a feast in order to get the greatest enjoyment from it, so one must come to scenes of natural beauty with some taste for them or appreciation of them in order to enjoy them