any crown of bloom and the tall stalks do but rock a little as for
drowsiness, but look off across the field, and on the stillest days
there is always a trepidation in the purple patches.

From midsummer until frost the prevailing note of the field is
clear gold, passing into the rusty tone of bigelovia going into a
decline, a succession of color schemes more admirably managed than
the transformation scene at the theatre. Under my window a colony
of cleome made a soft web of bloom that drew me every morning for
a long still time; and one day I discovered that I was looking into
a rare fretwork of fawn and straw colored twigs from which both
bloom and leaf had gone, and I could not say if it had been for a
matter of weeks or days. The time to plant cucumbers and set out
cabbages may be set down in the almanac, but never seed-time nor
blossom in Naboth's field.

Certain winged and mailed denizens of the field seem to reach
their heyday along with the plants they most affect. In June the
leaning towers of the white milkweed are jeweled over with
red and gold beetles, climbing dizzily. This is that milkweed from
whose stems the Indians flayed fibre to make snares for small game,
but what use the beetles put it to except for a displaying ground
for their gay coats, I could never discover. The white butterfly
crop comes on with the bigelovia bloom, and on warm mornings makes
an airy twinkling all across the field. In September young linnets
grow out of the rabbit-brush in the night. All the nests
discoverable in the neighboring orchards will not account for the
numbers of them. Somewhere, by the same secret process by which
the field matures a million more seeds than it needs, it is
maturing red-hooded linnets for their devouring. All the purlieus