122 AUTUMN TIDES. 



tively the last". It is a kind of birth in death, of 

 spring in fall, that impresses one as a little uncanny. 

 All trees and shrubs form their flower buds in the 

 fall, and keep the secret till spring. How comes the 

 witch-hazel to be the one exception and to celebrate 

 its floral nuptials on the funereal day of its foliage ? 

 No doubt it will be found that the spirit of some love- 

 lorn squaw has passed into this bush, and that this is 

 why it blooms in the Indian summer rather than in 

 the white man's spring. 



But it makes the floral series of the woods com- 

 plete. Between it and the shad-blow of earliest spring 

 lies the mountain of bloom; the latter at the base on 

 one side, this at the base on the other, with the chest- 

 nut blossoms at the top in midsummer. 



A peculiar feature of our fall may sometimes be 

 seen of a clear afternoon late in the season. Look- 

 ing athwart the fields under the sinking sun the 

 ground appears covered with a shining veil of gos- 

 samer. A fairy net, invisible at mid-day and which 

 the position of the sun now reveals, rests upon the 

 stubble and upon the spears of grass, covering acres 

 in extent, the work of innumerable little spiders. 

 The cattle walk through it but do not seem to 

 break it. Perhaps a fly would make his mark upon 

 it. At the same time, stretching from the tops of the 

 trees, or from the top of a stake in the fence, and 

 leading off toward the sky may be seen the cables of 

 the flying spider, a fairy bridge from the visible to 

 the invisible. Occasionally seen against a deep mass 

 of shadow, and perhaps enlarged by clinging particles 



