noon in nature till about the first or second week in July. When the
chestnut-tree blooms, the meridian of the year is reached. By the first
of August it is fairly one o'clock. The lustre of the season begins to
dim, the foliage of the trees and woods to tarnish, the plumage of the
birds to fade, and their songs to cease. The hints of approaching fall
are on every hand. How suggestive this thistle-down, for instance,
which, as I sit by the open window, comes in and brushes softly across
my hand! The first snowflake tells of winter not more plainly than this
driving down heralds the approach of fall. Come here, my fairy, and
tell me whence you come and whither you go? What brings you to port
here, you gossamer ship sailing the great sea? How exquisitely frail
and delicate! One of the lightest things in nature; so light that in
the closed room here it will hardly rest in my open palm. A feather is
a clod beside it. Only a spider's web will hold it; coarser objects
have no power over it. Caught in the upper currents of the air and
rising above the clouds, it might sail perpetually. Indeed, one fancies
it might almost traverse the interstellar ether and drive against the
stars. And every thistle-head by the roadside holds hundreds of these
sky rovers,--imprisoned Ariels unable to set themselves free. Their
liberation may be by the shock of the wind, or the rude contact of
cattle, but it is oftener the work of the goldfinch with its
complaining brood. The seed of the thistle is the proper food of this
bird, and in obtaining it myriads of these winged creatures are
scattered to the breeze. Each one is fraught with a seed which it
exists to sow, but its wild careering and soaring does not fairly begin
till its burden is dropped, and its spheral form is complete. The seeds
of many plants and trees are disseminated through the agency of birds;
but the thistle furnishes its own birds,--flocks of them, with wings
more ethereal and tireless than were ever given to mortal creature.
From the pains Nature thus takes to sow the thistle broadcast over the