September Sunshine 201 



tinual going and coming of butterflies and breezes, 

 voices and clouds and birds, the entry of any new 

 wanderer or waif of the air is an event in the garden 

 day. Rarely a flock of titmice, gathered already 

 for their restless autumn wanderings, are heard 

 to pass from the outer fields into some belt of trees 

 or shrubbery, and chirp and twitch their passage 

 across the garden, till they are seen no more, and 

 the silence falls again. A clot of pearly thistledown 

 floats in on an unfelt tide of air, and drifts slowly 

 across, like a medusa through a garden of the sea. 

 In the high days of summer there is never this 

 sense of utter stillness, so long as full daylight is in 

 the sky. It is only in the early midsummer dawn, 

 in those grey moments just before all the birds 

 strike up together the amazing babel of their first 

 brief spell of song, that the garden flowers wear 

 this strange expression of silent expectancy. But 

 in June it is expectancy of the living day, and now 

 only of the deeper sleep to come. Even if we 

 cannot actually see the June flowers grow, the 

 whole poise of stem and leaf and tendril shows 

 clearly that they are growing. In September the 

 lines of every plant show with equal clearness that 

 it is standing at the full limit of increase. The 

 cessation of vegetative vigour is also indicated 

 plainly by the infrequency and heaviness of the 

 scents of flowers which are wafted in a September 

 night. At midsummer the night-air is drenched 

 and intoxicated with the conflict of pressing per- 

 fumes ; now, the odour of such flowers of autumn 

 as the white tobacco-bloom does not seem to pass 



