GOOD-BYE TO SUMMER 217 



tiple green leaves have kept the tender things of 

 the wood wrapped warm through the nights and 

 the frost has said no word. Yet there too the 

 messiage has penetrated, by what means I cannot 

 say. The ferns have heard it and have turned 

 pale. The tender, slender fronds of the hay- 

 scented Dicksonia are very wan and the odor 

 from them now as you tramp through is not so 

 much that of new-mown hay, as it was in June, 

 but rather that of the stack or the mow, always 

 with their own inimitable woodsy flavor added. 

 The brake whose woody stems have held its ter- 

 nate, palm-like fronds bravely aloft all summer 

 is now a sallow yellow, and the lovely Osmundas 

 and stately Struthiopteris are bowing their heads 

 in brown acquiescence with the inevitable. I 

 doubt if it is a message from the air. It is rather 

 a command from the nerve centres at the base 

 of the stalk, a message from the brain of the 

 heart-roots that gives the fronds warning that 

 their day is over. If it were in the air the poly- 

 podys, the Christmas ferns and the spinulose 

 wood ferns would have lost their color also. It 

 is different with these. There is a hardier qual- 

 ity in their nature and they seem to revel in the 



