MIDSUMMER 



that anyone who chances upon the plant can wit- 

 ness speedily the whole performance. 



Here are raspberry bushes covered thickly with 

 fruit, so thickly that one could live for days on 

 the rocky hill-side without other food than this Raspberries 

 most subtly flavored of all berries. Overhead its 

 purple-flowered sister betrays its kinship with the 

 now abundant wild-rose, whose delicate beauty it 

 fails utterly to rival. In the low thicket are tiny, 

 rose-veined bells of dogbane, and, beyond, the 

 bright if somewhat ragged yellow flowers and 

 dotted leaves of the irrepressible St. John's-wort 

 jut up everywhere. 



The umbrella-like clusters of the water-hemlock 

 fill the moist ditches and suggest the wild-carrot 

 of the later year ; close by, the coarse stems and 

 flat, yellow tops of its relative, the meadow pars- 

 nip, crowd one upon another. Farther on are soft 

 plumes of the later yellow loosestrife, with little 

 flowers similar to those of the four-leaved loose- Yellow 

 strife, which is now on the wane. loosestrife 



One looks down upon a wood from whose edges 

 gleam silvery birches, whose tops are soft with 

 the tassels of the chestnut. Below it slopes a 

 meadow turned yellow with the pale flowers of 

 the wild-radish. Above it surges a field of grain Wild- 

 which grows dark and cool with the shadow of a 

 scurrying cloud. If one were nearer he would see 



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