XX Signals of Autumn 



THE windfalls of stormy August weather on the 

 garden walks show us how quickly the year matures 

 towards harvest and decline. Only three weeks 

 earlier, the lime-blossom poured its scent across 

 the lawn, and the hum of the bees dwelt all day in 

 the upper boughs ; but now the lime-boughs are 

 silent when the wind is still, and the little green 

 pellets of the unripe seed-vessels come pattering 

 down singly in the gusts, or float to leeward on their 

 protecting shards. Lime-blossoms need the traffic 

 of the bees to mate the anthers of one flower with 

 the stigmas of another at the right time, since they 

 are not ripe in the same blossom together. But 

 the flowers are of one sex ; and the lime therefore 

 sheds no such shower of overblown male blossom 

 as often lies in a thick carpet beneath the beeches 

 in May, and falls from the Spanish chestnut in the 

 August wind. The catkins that covered the crowns 

 of the chestnuts with a silky lustre are strewn in 

 faded ropes about the pathways, still exhaling a 

 faint perfume which we seldom catch from the 

 flowering tree among the many scents of July. 

 The sweet chestnut is the last of the forest trees to 

 flower ; and when its boughs resume the deep 

 green proper to late summer, after the blossom has 

 fallen, it is not long before even in the coolest 



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