534 THE MAGAZINE OF HORTICULTURE. 



STUDIES IN THE FIELD AND FOREST. 



BY WILSON FLAGG. 



NOVEMBER. 



The autumnal hues have faded in the woods : 



The birds have left their flowerless solitudes : 



The leaves are falling fast, and from the sky, 



The chilly breezes may be heard to sigh, 



As often, in their now deserted bowers, 



The north wind eddies o'er the graves of flowers. 



Our rural haunts are desolate and drear, 



And all the wild domain is brown and sere. 



The many-tinted grove ; the cool recess — 



The summer shelter for our weariness — 



Are opened rudely to the glare of day. 



And wintry winds within their arbors play. 



Some late born asters linger on the plains, 



That come not out till summer's beauty wanes ; 



And gentians, with their eyelids tipt with blue, 



Still glitter in the morning's frosty dew. 



Some pale gerardias in our woodland walk 



Are hardly faded on their withered stalk ; 



But few will trust their flowers, now summer's past, 



To blighting winds and rude November's blast. 



No. IX. The Flowers of Autumn. 



The student of nature, who is accustomed to general ob- 

 servation, cannot fail to have noticed the different character 

 of the flowers of spring, summer and autumn. Each sea- 

 son, as well as every climate, has a description of vegetation 

 peculiar to itself: for as spring is not destitute of fruits, 

 neither is autumn of flowers, though they have in general 

 but little resemblance to one another. Those of sjiring, as 

 I have already remarked, are delicate and herbaceous, pale 

 in their tints, and fragraut in their odors. The summer 

 flowers are larger, more brilliant in their colors and not so 

 highly perfumed as those of spring. Lastly, the flowers of 

 autumn appear in unlimited profusion, neither so brilliant as 

 the former, nor so delicate as the latter. They are produced 

 on woody stalks, often in crowded clusters, and nearly des- 

 titute of fragrance. The differences in the general charac- 



