The Sycamore Samara. 47 



when favourable winds are stirring. They dry into a 

 very light-veined brown skeleton wing, and may be 

 seen in certain spots in thousands in the later autumn 

 and early winter. The late Laureate, in the " In 

 Memoriam," wonders why it is that 



" Often out of fifty seeds 

 Great Nature brings but one to bear." 



Multitudes of these seeds of sycamore perish ; many 

 are eaten by cattle ; many are trodden and destroyed. 

 Doubtless, thousands on thousands perish for one that 

 grows in spite of nature's wonderful device to spread 

 them. And yet the sycamore asserts how well nature 

 can cherish her children. Wherever there is a syca- 

 more, sycamore seedlings will spring up in profusion 

 within a wide area, if any spaces whatever are left to 

 nature ; it intrudes into all manner of hedges and takes 

 root, particularly liking the gravel. Nature's economy 

 and care of the type is hardly in anything better illus- 

 trated than in the sycamore samara. 



Do you wonder that I love to sit and read and muse 

 and brood and dream and observe in this sheltered 

 garden-seat, with my wild-flowers close around me, a 

 screen of cultivated garden further off, and all manner 

 of birds and insects continuously sounding soft accom- 

 paniment ? Yes, even in days when I feel it chilly. I 

 am surprised to see the bees bumming away at their 

 work, and the birds singing! The peculiar manner 

 in which, at certain times, all the various sounds blend 

 into a sort of harmony in the warm summer afternoons 

 has often surprised me, till I doubted whether it was 

 not possible that, after all, the harmony was not an 

 illusion that dwelt in my own sense and soul alone. Any 

 way, the effect is the same ; and if the soul is so attuned 



