252 Life in Autumn Storm 



islands, owes its elastic richness to the dissolving 

 mists and rains ; and in the isles and hills of the 

 west, where autumnal moisture and mildness pre- 

 vail through most of the year, it reaches its most 

 bountiful development in the growth and renewal 

 of the peat. 



Besides the quiet work of decay, the land is 

 cleared for next year's seed-bed by the rain-fed 

 autumn streams. The floods of autumn help to 

 rid the land of the year's wreckage, just as the 

 gardener and farmer have learnt to clean their 

 ground in preparation for the winter frosts. When 

 the rivers fill with the first autumn rains they bear 

 down in their clouded waters the litter of a hundred 

 copses and hillsides, and bring back the picture of 

 many bygone weeks of summer to the eye that 

 watches the shallows where they strike the light. 

 Besides wisps of stained reeds and seed-heads of 

 sedge from their own banks, the travelling waters 

 roll fragments of blossom and autumnal vegetation 

 from remote and contrasted tributaries. Yellow 

 bracken fronds and light-cut rowan leaves come 

 drifting from distant moors, with purple bubbles 

 of the heather-bloom. When we see, far down the 

 valleys, these waifs from other scenes, it is easy 

 to understand how the autumn floods become the 

 distributors of strange seeds to distant places, and 

 how quickly a plant which once establishes itself 

 by the water-side, like the American mimulus, will 

 colonize the whole length of a stream. The dis- 

 tribution of plants by a river may often be very 

 noticeable when it passes through distinct types of 



