224 THE RING OF NATURE 



shaped hips are there to remind us. We can 

 count them in their roughly triple arrangement 

 and, in a measure, reconstruct the pink glories 

 of the tall hedge that we could not rob even if 

 we would. The hips of the field rose are rounder 

 and darker, and they stand in clusters of from 

 fifteen to twenty on the tops of round bushes out 

 in the field. This Rosa arvensis is obviously the 

 natural cluster-rose, and the parent of such garden 

 beauties as the weeping Ayrshires, the Dundee 

 rambler and Bennett's seedling. The queen genus 

 of the great rose order has been made to produce 

 for us something quite as useful as fruit. 



A fruit that becomes conspicuous in the copses 

 almost as soon as the elder berries have been 

 formed, and before they have been dyed, is that of 

 the mealy guelder or wayfaring tree. In a way, 

 this is a conspicuous bush all the year round. It 

 carries through the winter, on the stiff thick ends 

 of its twigs, knobs of tightly rolled flower-buds 

 clasped with protective sheaths. They brave 

 successfully all the assaults of frost, snow and 

 thaw, but do not open till the bush has covered 

 itself with downy leaves. Then the nights of May 

 are fragrant with the blossom which is so con- 

 spicuous by night as to seem to shine. It would 

 be a very dark night when we should be unable to 

 see the wayfaring tree in blossom, and it may be 

 this sightliness in the dark that has given it the 

 name. 



The blossoms pass and are forgotten. Then in 



