44 England . * is studded and gemmed t as it were, with 

 castles and palaces, and embroidered with parks and 

 gardens." WASHINGTON IRVING. 



NOVEMBER 



T^ROM Phantasy to Pathos ! So the change in the garden 

 from the fair days of Spring to these dismal November 

 hours might be so named. In the first days of Spring, all 

 of a sudden, the white briony flings here and there over 

 the hedges its thin veil of tenderest green ; in many places, 

 too, the bitter-sweet entwines its verdant vine among the 

 lower branches of the unfolding hawthorns. All of a sudden, 

 when the frost is quite gone, the primrose stars light the 

 thicket, and sweet indeed is the magic of the Spring ! In the 

 new-born light the chestnuts are the first to unfold their baby 

 leaves; the sticky knobs tipping every twig let fall their 

 scales in the warm sunshine, freeing the green bloom-spike 

 which is set in the midst of downy leaves, and which spike is 

 to be fashioned anon into a pyramid of creamy flowers, and 

 the heart of each separate blossom to be splashed with pink 

 and gold. But Spring, with all its many fancies, has long 

 fled, and Summer also, whose ways were tricked out in the 

 gaudiest of colours with its bright flowers, the lovers and 

 friends of bees and butterflies. This great desire and vain- 

 glory of the flowers for bright colours plays a wonderful 

 part in their brief lives, for, if you notice, only insect-fertilised 

 flowers are gay-coloured ; wind-fertilised flowers are generally 

 insignificant, hence the blossoms of the clustering grasses 

 swaying in the meadows, the reeds and rushes and sedges 

 along the river banks, the catkins of many trees the 

 powdery pollen of all these is scattered by the wind. The 

 pollen within the deep lily-cup and within the shallow chalice 



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