zo8 AUGUST 



extreme as that, but it is as surely, if less dramatically, 

 acknowledged. Wherever gorse bushes are found the 

 delicate ear hears a sound, continuous for many minutes, 

 over the surface; and it quite definitely suggests the 

 crackle of flame. The likeness at once leapt to the mind, 

 even of those so used to the experience as hardly to heed 

 it. It is of August Augustan, in every district where 

 furze flourishes, for the seed-pods are as sensitive to the 

 sun as the dead thorns and leaves to the chance burning- 

 glass or spark from a camp fire* At particular hours the 

 hard though woolly shells crack and twist and catapult 

 the little brown seeds into friendly ground beyond the 

 dead area of the parent bush ; and at a crowded hour the 

 note is just that of a tiny foot crackling over dead twigs. 

 I heard it wonderfully in a Norfolk garden in which 

 flowers are surrendered for the sake of gorse and pines 

 and other wild growths native to the East Anglian sea 

 board. The blackberries find in the gorse a congenial 

 support, and now cover much of it with pink flowers, 

 often bombarded by the shrapnel of the gorse seeds. 

 The two plants seem to enjoy the mutual association, and 

 give the gardener that succession of flower in the same 

 place that is the ideal of his art. Seed distribution is the 

 mark of autumn, though here and now it is also a tune 

 accompanying the opening of blossom. Yet to-day it 

 is not so much the seasonal as the diurnal event that 

 prompts our wonder. The seedcases shoot at particular 

 hours, just as mayfly or caddisfly or black gnat will 

 emerge from the waters in multitude for a quarter, a 

 half-hour, when the sun has a more than commonly 

 seductive ray, and then wholly cease. They seem to be 

 able to time their birth their second and more glorious 

 birth to the most golden moment of the day, as well as 

 the proper date of the season. 



