248 THE MOUNTAIN. 



hurry on to the full publication of their lives, and especially 

 to render glorious a short and brilliant career, with ex- 

 travagant demonstration of ornament and show. 



The scythe of the first frost finds a rich and abundant harvest. 

 The summer plants bloom on and mingle with the autumnal 

 flowers, which seem smiling and unconscious of their coming 

 doom. Of the autumnal flowers the Composite, or com- 

 pound flowers, are the most numerous. Rough and hardy, 

 they appear at the close of the flower season, proud 

 and defiant, as if they braved the hour of dissolution. A 

 number of this class, after slumbering in the soil nearly 

 through the summer, suddenly start and bloom, to be as 

 quickly nipped and destroyed. These plants seem to defy 

 the seasons and to have resolved that they will, at all 

 hazards, bloom. This immense order has numerous genera* 

 and species on the Alleghany as elsewhere. Many of them 

 are large, showy plants, and strike the most careless ob- 

 server by the brilliancy of the tints of their flowers, and janti- 

 ness of their style of growth. Some of them are the largest 

 and most conspicuous of annual plants, and are considered 

 rough and intrusive weeds, possessing, however, rare and 

 real beauties, as the Helianthus, Eupatorium, Actinomeris, 

 Heliopsis, Yernonia, Lactuca, Hieracium, etc. Others of 

 the order are more delicate and attractive in the style of 

 their beauty, as the Asters, or star-flowers, which present 

 a flashing array of shining faces, radiant as jewels, and 

 of every dimension and tint of color, from white specks, 

 minute and sparkling as snow-flakes, to broad dark-red and 

 azure rays, until the far-famed star-flower of the celestial 

 empire is rivaled in its perfections. 



Imperial and proud, the sun-flower (Helianthus) flaunts 

 his colors, as if he were veritably " a son of the sun," and 

 would shine as long as his sire. The Golden-rod, (solidago) 

 its delicate wands studded with flowers, contributes to 

 the "mute music," and makes gay the forest and mountain's 



* See catalogue of genera at end of chapter " Flora." 



