NOVEMBER 
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain, 
As in revenge, have suck’d up from the sea 
Contagious fogs: which falling in the land 
Have every pelting river made so proud 
That they have overborne their continents. 
Midsummer-Night's Dream , II. i. 88. 
T HE last golden leaf has fallen or is about to fall, 
and the tall branches of the trees stand up 
dark and bare against the leaden sky, and later on 
rifts of snowflakes heap themselves on the masses 
of red-brown leaves which lie huddled together in 
sheltered nooks, into which the sportive currents 
of air have driven them. But in our woods and 
along our meadows flowers of another class take 
the place of those we have lost. They are little 
known, as a rule ; their delicate colouring, now as 
fiery as the setting sun, now as soft as silvery moon¬ 
light, pass unnoticed; the elegance and infinite 
variety of their shapes have, if we would but pause, 
much of delight, whether we be botanists, artists, 
nature-lovers, or only blase men and women of the 
world, trying to kill time till the next empty social 
function be due. I speak of toadstools first, since 
precedence is theirs for beauty, but the humbler 
mosses, vivid in their varied greens ; the gold and 
gray of the lichen; the texture of the liverworts ; 
the waving fern-fronds—all serve to impress upon 
us that cryptogamic botany deserves all the admira¬ 
tion we can give it, and in spite of its difficulties is a 
8 [ 113 ] 
