Martinmas Summer 381 



mental and spiritual loneliness, foresaw the coming 

 of fuller life, light, and liberty. 



How many there have been! From heavenly- 

 minded Job, harshly criticised by his more material 

 companions in the dawn of time, to Savonafola 

 and Latimer, Columbus and Galileo, Andreas 

 Hofer and John Brown, and thence on, through 

 the years, to the " crank" or " dreamer " or " un- 

 practical sentimentalist " who is the newspaper butt 

 of our own day. But they have all been, like the 

 Sommer Gowk, prophets of the spring. 



The same Indian-summer weather which throws 

 the violets out of their reckoning brings into bloom 

 our very last wild flower, the witch- or wych-hazel. 



Its popular name is due to a double mistake in 

 nomenclature, which has mixed things up in con- 

 fusion worse confounded. The early American 

 settlers saw somthing in its foliage or habit of 

 growth suggestive of the English witch-hazel, to 

 which it is in nowise related. So they transferred 

 the old English name to the newly-discovered 

 American shrub, being influenced probably by the 

 same love for the home-words which prompted them 

 to call the red-breasted American thrush a robin 

 and the marsh marigold a cowslip. But the Eng- 

 lish witch-hazel is not a hazel at all, but an elm 



