NATURE IN AUTUMN 
163 
and wasps their funeral banquet from the yellow clusters. This 
creeper produces globes of ripe and black berries in the following 
spring. 
In another fortnight the squirrel’s winter store-house is full 
of hazels and beechnuts, and the snake is coiled asleep in the 
bank. As we walk along the tinted hedge, a touching silence 
prevails in absence of the insect brood ; for there no longer 
hums the bee, the grasshopper chirps not, and the brigand wasp 
lies in an unhonoured grave. But the eye does not find all 
strange. Here is the cuckoopint once more. It first appeared 
as a herald of spring, summer changed its whitish-green flower 
into a cluster of green berries resembling an ear of Indian maize, 
and now autumn enlists it as one of her heralds, turning its 
berries red. Although by the river-side the stately reeds are 
“ broken by the wind,” the remains of lilies rot loeneath the 
water, and the dragon-fly has long lain a dim and lifeless shard, 
giving birth to no further dazzling “ wonder,” even here the iris 
leaves rows of brilliant berries seen through the bursting pod. 
Autumn’s uniform is like the British soldier’s. Witness the red 
and crimson of the Virginian creeper, briar, and thorn leaves. 
Witness the red bullet- and slug-shaped hips, the mountain-ash 
clusters and the glossy clusters of the wild guelder-rose. There 
are also black clusters of shot-like elderberries, also black sloes 
suffused with purple bloom, and black cornelberries. Spindle- 
berries are pink, or rather, a fleshy pink pod dividing, shows 
small round orange berries. 
Here is a tuft of moss variegated with red, yellow and green, 
attached to a branch of the dog-rose. Little maggots, cradled 
in cavities in the swollen wood, cause the wondrous growth. 
Here again is a branch which summer garlanded with green 
bryony. The branch has now lost its leaves, and autumn turns 
the wreath into a necklace of red coral beads. 
This season produces many kinds of fruit, not usually 
garnered ; golden crabs which Atalanta might have picked up, 
splendidly polished ; dusky-grained horse-chestnuts, set in pulpy 
caskets with prickly exteriors, and indigestible eating chestnuts 
packed in bristly nest-like cases. Fir-spires, like sombre priests 
holding out their arms to bless the wood, are decked with 
fragrant yellow cones. Observe Nature’s skill in cupping the 
acorn and winging the thistle-seed. Let us admire those trees 
and flowers which, when luxuriant foresee a bleaker season and 
leave tokens which cheer us then ! 
But the herbage looks more dreary than arboreal growths ; 
the bracken shakes dry and auburn in the wind, the poppy and 
campion are changed into pepper-boxes, the pink cone-shaped 
teasel stands grey and sapless, but the willow herb wears a 
champion’s feathers. 
The fungus tribe also displays its unhallowed and unsound 
glories. The mushroom is snowy above, pink beneath, fragrant, 
but often baneful. There are small toadstools tinted green and 
