AUTUMN 121 



over plants when a frosty night is threat- 

 ening. The papers are generally blown 

 about the premises before morning, and 

 probably in their flight they break as much 

 as they should have saved. Our calceo- 

 laria, having been pinched down, is bloom- 

 ing anew ; our buttercup is still at it ; the 

 roses have a few belated buds; while the 

 cosmos, with its honest, wholesome, daisy- 

 like flowers and its feathery foliage, is just 

 enjoying itself. One of our cosmos plants 

 freaked in November in a singular fashion: 

 one of its flower-stalks had thickened lat- 

 erally until it was perhaps three quarters 

 of an inch wide, obviously the union of 

 several stems, and at its crest it bore 

 a long comb of stamens and pistils, with a 

 fringe of petals. This comb, or oval flower, 

 must have consisted of at least five united 

 flowers, and was three inches long. A 

 potted dandelion sulks. I stripped the 

 seeds from a head in the summer, and 

 pressed them under the mold in the pot. 

 They all came up together, a score of tiny 

 green shoots ; but perhaps because they 

 crowded each other they stopped at an 



