14 
NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 
Beauty of 
the noon- 
light. 
The fall of 
light. 
light beating at midday upon a field of ripened 
grain where the fiery red of the poppy gleams 
in between the yellow stalks; or again this 
sane light falling upon fields of golden-rod or 
upon great masses of variegated autumn foliage. 
Blinding, too, as is the noon-light upon desert 
sands or prairie uplands or flat smooth seas, 
yet its breadth and intensity make it one of 
nature’s great glories. And how invisibly it 
euts through the air! On yonder mountain 
we should notice falling rain or snow or even 
a slight thickening of the atmosphere; yet 
all day long the sunbeams fall upon it and 
we cannot see them. We see the mark they 
make on crag and tree, we feel their absence 
when a cloud shuts out the sun; but that is 
all. 
As the day wears on, the heat increases. The 
leaves of the trees and the flowers curl and 
shrivel, the air rises quivering from the dusty 
road, the sky grows more rosy—eyen iridescent. 
The ascending air-currents are active and the 
atmospheric particles more numerous. Hour 
after hour the aérial envelope grows denser and 
heavier, the shadows fainter, the light more 
diffused. At last, when the sun has fallen to 
the western horizon and throws its rays along 
