196 :fiSotani5 



Turn, on a November day, to the fire in the grate. 

 The red flames wave and curl al)out great lumps of 

 l)lackness that were ferns, mosses, cycads many ages 

 i:)ast. Floods of mud have buried them, earth's 

 inner fires have charred them, yet in many the 

 leaf impression, or the stem structure, remained 

 as the " broad arrow " of the plant-world stamp- 

 ing ownership, and now and here these long dead 

 children of the sun live again in light and heat. 



We have gone surely far afield on this chilly No- 

 vember day ! We leave the fire in the grate and go 

 out by wood and roadside. Color comes now across 

 the landscape, not from squadrons of jDarti-colored 

 bloom, but from great red spires of sumac rising in 

 the waste corners of the bird and plant-beloved rail 

 fences. Oh, wretched day when wire fences took 

 their places ! The blackberry vines show brilliant 

 strands and whips of red and purple, with clusters 

 of dull red leaves clinging to them ; the rose hips 

 glow red as sunlit carbuncles on the swaying vines, 

 where bronze and green leaves still linger, and here 

 in a corner is a dandelion peeping out, and one last 

 lingering purple aster. Yonder Jaek-in-the-pulpit 

 holds high a thick spike of glowing coral berries, and 

 here is the last little Benjamin of the 3^ear— the low, 

 velvet-tufted gray balls of the " life everlasting," 

 with a faint aromatic odor which reminds one of 



