OCTOBER 111 



now excluded from the British flora, but it has been 

 naturalised for many years in the Steep Holmes in the 

 British Channel ; and its beauty consists in the two 

 sorts of seeds, red and black, which are respectively 

 the fertile and unfertile seeds : — 



' The round black shining seeds, which are the true seed, 

 being full and good, and many red or crimson grains which 

 are lanck and idle, intermixed among the black, as if they 

 were good seed, whereby it maketh a very pretty show.' — 

 Parkinson. 



With a simple mention of the fruits of the thorn 

 apple, both the common white {Datura Stramonium) 

 and the purple {D. Tatula), not so handsome in flower, 

 but more handsome in fruit, and both very old inhabi- 

 tants of English gardens, I will leave the fruits and 

 seeds of October, to say something about the flowers. 



The swallows have quite left us, and we have had 

 some sharp frosts, which have cleared away some of 

 the tender summer flowers (begonias, heliotropes, 

 dahlias, etc.), and, which I much more regi'et, have 

 stripped the leaves from many of the trees while they 

 were still green, and so have robbed us of much of 

 our best autumnal-tinted foliage. The mulberry, the 

 catalpa, the salisburia, and many others, are in their 

 bare winter form, and the brightness of the St. Luke's 

 summer was sadly marred. Still we have plenty of 



