116 AUTUMN TIDES. 



closed room here it will hardly rest in my open palm. 

 A feather is a clod beside it. Only a spider's web 

 will hold it ; coarser objects have no power over it. 

 Caught in the upper currents of the air and rising 

 above the clouds, it might sail perpetually. Indeed, 

 one fancies it might almost traverse the interstellar 

 ether and drive against the stars. And every thistle- 

 head by the road-side holds hundreds of these sky- 

 rovers imprisoned Ariels unable to set themselves 

 free. Their liberation may be by the shock of the wind, 

 or the rude contact of cattle, but it is oftener the 

 work of the goldfinch with its complaining brood. 

 The seed of the thistle is the proper food of this bird, 

 and in obtaining it, myriads of these winged creatures 

 are scattered to the breeze. Each one is fraught 

 with a seed which it exists to sow, but its wild ca- 

 reering and soaring does not fairly begin till its bur- 

 den is dropped, and its spheral form is complete. 

 The seeds of many plants and trees are disseminated 

 through the agency of birds ; but the thistle furnishes 

 its own birds, flocks of them, with wings more 

 ethereal and tireless than were ever given to mortal 

 Creature. From the pains Nature thus takes to sow 

 the thistle broadcast over the land, it might be ex- 

 pected to be one of the most troublesome and abun- 

 dant of weeds. But such is not the case ; the more 

 pernicious and baffling weeds, like snapdragon or 

 blind-nettles, being more local and restricted in their 

 habits, and unable to fly at all. 

 In the fall, the battles of the spring are fought 



