NUTTY AUTUMN. 143 



brambles, and in waste places a little St. John's 

 wort remains open, but the seed vessels are for the 

 most part forming. St. John's wort is the flower 

 of the harvest ; the yellow petals appear as the wheat 

 ripens, and there are some to be found till the sheaves 

 are carted. Once now and then a blue and slender 

 bell-flower is lighted on; in Sussex the larger varieties 

 bloom till much later. 



By still ponds, to which the moorhens have now 

 returned, tall spikes of purple loosestrife rise in 

 bunches. In the furze there is still much yellow, 

 and wherever heath grows it spreads in shimmering 

 gleams of purple between the birches ; for these three, 

 furze, heath, and birch, are usually together. The 

 fields, therefore, are not yet flowerless, nor yet with- 

 out colour here and there, and the leaves, which stay 

 on the trees till late in the autumn, are more interest- 

 ing now than they have been since they lost their first 

 fresh green. 



Oak, elm, beech, and birch, all have yellow spots, 

 while retaining their groundwork of green. Oaks are 

 often much browner, but the moisture in the atmo- 

 sphere keeps the sap in the leaves. Even the birches 

 are only tinted in a few places, the elms very little, 

 and the beeches not much more : so it would seem 

 that their hues will not be gone altogether till 

 November. Frosts have not yet bronzed the dogwood 

 in the hedges, and the hazel leaves are fairly firm. 

 The hazel generally drops its leaves at a touch about 

 this time, and while you are nutting, if you shake 

 a bough, they come down all around. 



The rushes are but faintly yellow, and the slender 



