172 IValks in New England 



colour unnoted in the general effect. But the 

 glories of autumn are yet beginning, and still the 

 general aspect of the forests is verdant. 



Not so the fields. These are never so varied 

 as now, where the tilth is upturned brown over 

 many an acre, and the meadows are green with 

 second growth or third, and the roadsides are so 

 full of bloom ; the buckwheat fields, reaped or 

 unreaped, enrich the slopes with wine-brown 

 stretches, and the dead bents of the June grass 

 make the pastures all a dusky white, except where 

 the cinnamon fern is leather-brown or the dick- 

 sonia s gold-green masses command the steep 

 sidehill. The earth is green, is the common no 

 tion ; but when one looks upon the earth in early 

 autumn he sees it is many other colours besides, 

 even before the forests have fairly begun to blos 

 som. The infinite variety of notes in the colour 

 scheme of earth requires a lifetime to learn, and 

 the special vocabulary of the artist to nominate. 



The lesser flowers of the region which we dwell 

 in are changing with the days. The orchis family 

 is now known by scarcely any other members than 

 those of the spiranthes class, which spring up 

 along the roadsides and in the meadows where 

 there is moisture enough, the ladies tresses, they 

 are called, not very happily. The cardinal flower 

 is now almost at the end of its brilliant life, where 



