2 3 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In the present paper the reader's attention is invited to some 

 of the plants that continue to bloom after the fingers of Jack 

 Frost have silently pulled down the dark curtain of the waning 

 autumn and shut out the warmth of vitality from all the tender 

 sorts of vegetation. The first day of October opened upon a land- 

 scape of varied hues, some of a most somber character, for late 

 in September the leaves of the box-elder, for example, had been 

 blasted by freezing and the vineyards were prematurely brown 

 with the curled and dying foliage rustling in the breeze. Corn 

 and other plants of a like subtropical nature, not previously har- 

 vested, were stricken lifeless by the low temperature, and house 

 plants carelessly left out of doors melted away into a mass of 

 rapid decay. As one looked about him the scene could but remind 

 the observer of the Scripture injunction concerning the two 

 women grinding at the mill. Two plants side by side had been 

 growing with equal vigor, and both bespoke an equally long life, 

 but one was taken and the other left. The reason for this is not 

 easy to find. 



Many mysteries flood the mind in contemplating the world of 

 vegetable life, but none more thoroughly baffles the keenest ob- 

 server as well as the most penetrating microscopist than that of 

 hardiness. We freely use the word in ignorance, or worse, to 

 conceal our ignorance, as physicians may employ longer terms 

 among their admiring, awe-struck, ignorant patients, but when 

 the thoughtful pause comes it brings us face to face with a half- 

 clothed skeleton that nearly frightens all save the brazen-faced. 

 We may attempt to explain the real meaning of hardiness in a 

 dozen ways, and in the very offering of so many reasons we exhibit 

 the weakness of all the arguments. If we say that it is due to 

 denser structure, the statement is met with the bald-faced fact that 

 the hardiest plants do not have necessarily the denser tissues. A 

 box-elder, which is considered a type of hardiness, yields a wood 

 less than half as heavy as the hickory. Of the sixteen sorts of 

 trees in the United States with wood heavier than water, all are 

 in the warmer portions of the country, where no winter tests their 

 hold upon vitality. Perhaps it is as much the plan of one spe- 

 cies to have its twigs killed back as it is for another to withstand 

 the sudden changes of temperature and the severe cold. It de- 

 mands a more than human penetration to decide that the horse- 

 chestnut, with its large and well - protected terminal buds in 

 autumn, is better adapted to its conditions than the raspberry, 

 with young, immature wood and imperfect buds, which die before 

 the spring-time comes. The two are working out the problem of 

 existence along widely diverging lines. The tree grows slowly 

 and builds for a century, while the bramble forms only transient 

 stems and runs its chances of making all it can out of a favor- 



