126 



SUMMER 



nocturnal signal that this border of infertile blossoms seems 

 to have been devised. The dead flowers for organically 

 they are lifeless draw insects to the living by their white- 

 ness ; and thus a comparatively small cluster of vital blossom 

 is enabled to compete with more conspicuous plants of 

 June. The garden box-rose or snowball-tree is the water- 

 guelder with fertility banished from the blossoms, and the 

 barren corollas thickened into a globe. Even in the dusty 

 fringes of towns the outbreak of large circles of creamy 

 blossom on the sparse rods of the elder brings a fugitive 

 luxuriance to the spot ; and over the first-shorn hay-fields in 

 the midsummer twilight the elders hang in the calm evenings 

 like constellated planets, or toss like lamps in the wind. 

 We see no such show of white blossom again, once the elders 

 have faded. 



