8 THE STORY OF PLANT LIFE 
wonderful, as it is all the more pleasing to us, than 
if every flower were in bloom at once. 
Following the opening of the flowers in summer, 
and the mowing of the hay, the cutting of the clover, 
comes the ripening of the seed, the months of 
fruition, of autumn. Then all the fruits that have 
not ripened earlier, which are not numerous, save 
the Gooseberry, Currant, Cherry, Strawberry, etc., 
come to maturity, and the golden grain is swollen 
in the ear. Now is the time when blackberries are 
ripe, when the apple and the pear, the hazel, the 
plum, and all those numerous fruits that are so 
valuable to the orchard owner, the gardener, and 
the farmer, are at their highest state of perfection. 
Nature adorns herself in gorgeous tints of leaf and 
bloom to celebrate these gifts to Ceres. 
This season of wealth, of the attainment of 
maturity, of success, is for us perhaps the most 
attractive, the most encouraging. There is little to 
wonder at in this. Man in his prime is then the 
most successful, and as we say, ‘‘ Nothing succeeds 
like success.” 
But everything has its day, and lovely, comely 
autumn leads on to winter, not the “‘ winter of our 
discontent,’’as Shakespeare somewhat pessimistically 
puts it, but the winter of our quietude. « 
For after autumn comes rest. The annuals and 
the biennials die down, the first to be perpetuated in 
the spring or summer by fresh plants, the second by 
a second year of growth and flowering. In the case 
