ii 4 .AUTUMN AND WINTER 



clusters of soft berries soon break and decay under October 

 winds and frost. They are all stripped, as a rule, before the 

 leaves of their trees have changed from green to amber and 

 orange. Equally juicy and attractive are the translucent 

 scarlet clusters that make such an exquisite contrast with the 

 deep crimson leaves of the wild guelder-rose, which is the 

 original stock of the round-blossomed ' box-rose ' of gardens. 



The clusters of the mealy guelder, 

 or wayfaring - tree, are stiffer in 

 growth, and turn from scarlet to 

 black as they ripen. All these softer 

 berries, including those of the elder 

 and the bilberries of August moor- 

 lands, are specially attractive to the 

 same fruit-eating birds which raid 

 strawberry and gooseberry beds 

 earlier in the season. Flocks of 

 ring-ousels and missel-thrushes begin 

 to roam the Westmorland mountain- 

 tops for bilberries as early as July; 

 and when the bilberries are over, 

 they are ready for the mountain- 

 ashes, or rowan-trees. In lowland 

 districts the ring-ousel is replaced 

 by the blackbird ; and two or three cock blackbirds raiding 

 an elder-bush at a dangerous corner make almost as noisy a 

 party as a flight of missel-thrushes. The soft twigs of the 

 elder are often bent almost to breaking as the disks of black 

 berries swell and ripen ; and they are so abundant that some 

 are still usually left when the early-falling leaves have 

 burned themselves out in their tints of flame, and the ground 

 beneath is strewn with their pallid drift. 



Black and scarlet are the chief tints of ripe autumn 



BLACK NIGHTSHADE 



