RAGWORT 



THE LAST OF THE FLOWERS 



THE calm and sunny weather which often fills September 

 seems to add to the richness of summer a new sense of 

 autumn peace. Day after day the golden sunshine lies so 

 deep and still upon the landscape that all strife in Nature 

 seems forgotten, and all change far away. The dews of the 

 longer nights only add new freshness to the lawns and 

 pastures ; the glowworms still light their summer lamps in 

 the herbage above the warm dust of the roadside ; and the 

 heavier morning mists and the yellow boughs that start out 

 singly in the elm-crowns are such distant warnings of winter 

 that they speak less of decay than of rest. The general 

 colour of the foliage is still the bronzed green of July ; and 

 only a slight deepening and tarnishing of the hues of the 

 prevalent flowers mark the change from late summer into 

 early autumn. The white or almost white blossoms which 

 were so conspicuous in spring and early summer have almost 

 vanished. The last of a long succession were the blackberry 

 blossoms in July, which have now turned into the berries 

 ripening from green through crimson to black. Here and 

 there the rank herbage by the watersides still hides straggling 

 plumes of midsummer meadowsweet ; but even the meadow- 

 sweet is of a soiled whiteness compared with the water 



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