Autumnal Heralds 
Even the modern camper’s delicacy, the roasting ear, is 
an inheritance from the Indian. An historian writing of 
Virginia in 1705, speaks of the natives as delighting “to 
feed on roasting ears—that is, the Indian corn gathered 
green and milky, before it is grown to its full bigness, and 
roasted before the fire in its ear. And indeed,” he adds 
naively, as from experimental knowledge, “it is a very 
sweet and pleasing food.” Probably no better way than 
this has been devised for preserving the full flavor. The 
husks are first pulled back to permit the drawing of the 
silk; then they are carefully replaced, and the juicy ear 
is laid in the hot ashes of a wood fire. The result is a 
steaming process, the protecting husks keeping every virtue 
imprisoned while the cooking goes on. 
August 19.—Country outings in latter August are re¬ 
plete with suggestions of the fall. In the tangled grass of 
the orchard, where the early apples are dropping, and in 
the stubble of the brown grain fields the quail cheerfully 
pipes “bob-white” and sets the gunner’s fingers tingling, 
while the rabbits that bound across the road are now so 
plump that to see them is to think of autumnal rabbit pie. 
Every day or two a new aster or golden-rod blinks its 
bright new-opened flowers at us, and already in the swamps 
the hand of autumn is seen in the dashes of scarlet upon the 
rich glossy green leaves of the sour gums—the first of the 
trees to change color. One of the most charming of our 
native trees is the sour gum and deserves a more poetic 
appellation, as, indeed, it gets in New England, where the 
pretty Indian name tupelo is given it. The little blue 
berries which it bears will be ripening in a couple of weeks, 
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