244 STUDIES IN THE FIELD AND FOEEST. 



ful but faded bowers, the emblems of contentment, 

 seeming perfectly happy, if they can but greet a few 

 beams of sunshine to temper the frosty gales. In wet 

 places I still behold the lovely neottia, with its small 

 white flowers, arranged in a spiral line about their stem, 

 and giving out the delicate incense of a fresh-blown 

 lily. The purple gerardia, too, has not yet forsaken us ; 

 and the gentians, and the golden coreopsis will wait to 

 welcome the next month before they wholly leave our 

 borders. 



If we quit the fields we find in the gardens a profu- 

 sion of lively exotics. Dahlias, china-asters, and nu- 

 merous other plants that were created for the embellish- 

 ment of other climes, are rewarding the hands that 

 cherished them with their fairest forms and hues. All 

 these are destined, not like the flowers of our own 

 clime, to bloom throughout their natural period, and 

 then sink quietly into decay ; but they are cut down by 

 frosts in the very summer of their loveliness. Already 

 are their leaves withered and blackened, while the 

 native plants, in defiance of the frost, grow brighter 

 and brighter with every new morning, until they are 

 finally seared by the icy breath of November. 



But to the forests we must look, to behold the fairest 

 spectacle of the season, now glowing with the infinitely 

 varied and constantly multiplying tints of a summer 

 sunset. The first changes appear in the low grounds, 

 where vegetation is exposed to the earliest blights, and 

 is prematurely ripened by the alternation of chill dews 

 and sunshine. Very early in the season, we behold 

 these tints scattered among the glossy green leaves of 

 the tupelo-tree, giving to those which have received the 

 tinge, the appearance of scarlet blossoms intermingled 

 with the foliage. But the maples assume a more rapid 



