its time of flowering.

It well repays cultivation by the increase in the size and the number of its flowers.

What more fitting leader could this list have than one of the golden-rods! It may be dusty from growing by the roadside, and may be despised as a weed, but its kindred will yet brighten all the late summer fields with their abundance of yellow.

Five species of Hypericum have already come and gone, or are still lingering as if waiting for their youngest species, Canadense. Close behind is a Lobelia, the species inflata, the last of its genus, the delicate spicata and the bold cardinalis having just preceded it. The little skull cap is seen where marsh plants abound, and is easily recognized by its small blue flowers arranged in pairs along the stem. Where the pond has retreated from the shore, leaving to the sun to warm and vivify the muddy margin, the little hedge-hyssop may often be found lifting its golden-yellow head among the grasses and sedges there disputing the supremacy.

The orchid family has been well represented hitherto, and sends three representatives to the present list. They are of no mean rank, the delicate ladies' tresses, the more showy Goodyera with its white-streaked leaves nestling in clusters close to the ground yet raising a spike of white flowers to please the eyes of the finder, and the smaller purple-fringed orchis, which, when once seen, is not easily forgotten.

Those arrow-headed leaves in the pool suggest the Sagittaria very plainly, and close by it I may expect to find the stone-crop. In the pasture I must have unwittingly trodden upon the pennyroyal, for its odor fills the air. That-bush I had almost called it-plant covered with large yellow flowers and buds, with cut leaves, is a Gerardia, and this little plant in the moist roadside or low-lying meadow, with rose-purple flowers of the same somewhat tubular shape, is another of the family. I shall not have to travel far along the railroad embankment at this season to find blue-curls and, probably that outcast among the grasses, Cenchrus tribuloides. In the untrimmed vegetation of the roadside I look now for the last Aralia. Early in May I found A. trifolia; at the end of the month came A. nudicaulis, extending its presence into June; as it passed away A. hispida appeared, followed closely by A. quinquefolia; now A. racemosa comes, the last of its family.

A quarter of the plants of this list belong to the great order Composite. The leaders of the aster family are at hand. Their broad banner of purple and white will be fully unfolded by and by. The snake-head or turtle-head lifts up into the sunlight its spike of white flowers, from among the grasses and sedges and goldenrods of the swamps. The twining stems of the Amphicarpea, with its purplish nodding racemes, help to fill

up any gaps in the foliage along the margin of the woodland. This plant has many showy flowers but they seldom ripen any fruit, and some rudimentary and inconspicuous flowers, which are generally fruitful. this respect it resembles the violets.

In

The ferns, too, are now very abundant; none of them is more attractive to me than the graceful Asplenium ebeneum. I must often examine under the compound microscope these brown spots upon the back of the frond and try to realize, if only imperfectly, the marvelous contrivances and inexhaustible variety shown in the vegetable world. Who knows but that there are other worlds of vegetable forms as far beyond the power of the microscope to discover as that which it discovers to us is beyond the power of our unaided vision? Here, in the Onoclea, we find at first only sterile fronds with no sign of fruitage on the back in the shape of either rounded or oblong spots, or coiled up under the margin But if we push these sterile as in the maiden-hair. fronds aside we shall find here and there among them the shorter stems, surmounted by greenish clusters resembling small berries, which are the fertile fronds and do not suggest ferns.

The order Lycopodiacea, like the ferns, stands near the head of the flowerless plants. Like them, too, it has a remote ancestry. In the forests of the Carboniferous Age gigantic members of this family flourished, whose

remains are found in great abundance in the coal strata. In the changed conditions of life they now play an unimportant part. My earliest recollection of them is associated with Christmas festivities, where in festoon and wreath they formed the larger part of the decoration of the village church, a service which, in New England at least, they seem destined for some time to fulfil. Persistent survivors of a declining family, they tell an interesting chapter of the earth's history.

How imperceptibly the late summer glides into the early autumn as if to lessen our feeling of regret at its passing with all the pleasures of rambles through mead and glade! As the flame often flashes with unusual brilliancy just before expiring, so the earth clothes itself with gayest robes before preparing for its winter sleep. There are no gloomy hues in the late summer flowers. The season is one of brightness, of calm, of halcyon days. There is no sense of hurry; rather a feeling that there will be time for every little duty to be accomplished.

There is a myth quite prevalent in New England, almost coeval with the early settlement of the country,