AND

THE FOUR SEASONS,

LITTLE ABOUT THEIR

JULY AND AUGUST. — MIDSUMMER.

FLORA.

IDSUMMER comes at last! The warm days and the early wild-flowers are capricious, spring after spring, and cannot be bound to make their appearance on a special day. The anemones sometimes will take a start before the dog's-tooth violets, and some springs all the wild-flowers insist upon coming out together; and if a cold northeast wind or rain has kept us in for some days, we find that the little, fleeting things have taken upon themselves to blossom all at once, and send their white flowers off on the wind, without waiting for us to look upon them. Then, too, we who are nearer the sea-shore are later with our wild-flowers than those who live a hundred miles away from our east wind; and a little farther south all the flowers can venture out a week or two sooner than with us. But the 15th of June brings us all up even, -everybody and everything. The grass by that time must needs be full and green everywhere, if it ever means to be; and the latest of forest-trees has its leaves out. Even the Catalpa in the grounds shows that it is not quite dead, but has sent out its new leaves, to cover the old pods of last year.

It was quite time to prepare for midsummer. Until now, everything has been growing and growing, preparing for these days of its climax, when everything will have reached its fulness and its greenness, to linger for a time, perhaps for a few days, in this rich culmination of its beauty, before it shall begin to ripen into decay, or show one dead leaf or drooping twig. They say there is such a day of complete beauty in the summer, when the leaves hang still and thoughtful on the large trees. I have often thought that I had found this day. It is before the farmers have cut their first crop of hay, or, if they have mowed some of the meadows, it is where the grass is already renewing itself greener and thicker than before. In some fields, the grass is in blossom, and then tall spikes wave about with the long blades in great billows before a wind. It is a gentle wind. It comes to lift up the branches of the trees, and show, underneath, what a full, soft growth of foliage each tree is bearing. Not one leaf has fallen yet, not one shows a yellow tinge. The chestnuts have put on their cream-white blossoms, as though the Summer had been holding them back till she could throw over them this scattered foam, as a crown of beauty. It is a day of a blue, cloudless sky, when the sun rests on the broad meadows, still green, — when all the world of nature seems to be waiting, as if loath to begin upon its new form of growth, its time of ripening, waiting for the full fruit, waiting in midsum

mer, for the leaves to begin to call in again the fresh-flowing sap, to prepare for midwinter. Yes, as early as this, the plants and trees must begin to think of preparing for winter! Their life is "always beginning, never ending." In the midsummer, the buds begin to prepare themselves for the next spring. The leaves dance and play awhile in the happy, soft summer breeze, as if conscious that they had reached the fulness of their beauty.

The office of the leaf has been to spread out to the light and air the green matter upon which the plant feeds. During its rapid summer growth, it has been drawing up, through the roots and fibres, the sap that has fed the whole plant. The water that comes up in the sap evaporates through the pores of the leaves. I hope to find some time to tell you of the forms and structure of these vessels; but, this midsummer day, we will wait with the leaves. In the water that the leaves drew up from the ground, there came too a small portion of earthy matter. A part of this has been left in the stem, increasing its hardness; but a larger portion is carried to the leaves. The water is exhaled, and the earthy matter is left behind in the cells of the leaf. This gradually chokes its tissue, and obstructs its vessels, and unfits it for its duty. So, as autumn approaches, the leaf languishes. The stem on which it rests continues to grow, and the feeble leaf, with all its breathing obstructed, cannot keep pace with this growth. A separation must take place : the petiole breaks away, and the leaf falls, leaving the scar which we have noticed. Here the new buds are to form themselves for the new leaves that the tree or plant will need for its growth another year. In most Endogenous plants, the leaf is not in this way attached to the stem by a joint, and it is not thrown off from the stem, but withers and decays there, the dead petioles remaining for a long time.

But of this time of decay we need not think yet. When it does come, we shall find that the leaves are the last to wish us to feel mournful or sad about it; they will take this very time to put on their gayest and brightest hues, as if to show that they feel it is their time of ripening, and that they must wear their most brilliant colors, as the fruits do.

Now, especially, is the time for rejoicing; and we have seen how the Chestnut has waited till now with its blossoms to give us a glad surprise. For they always do surprise us. Are not you glad that flowers and plants do not have the methodical way that some people do, of putting away their furs on a particular day, and building their furnace-fires on another? How tiresome it would be if all the flowers came out regularly on the first day of May! Not tiresome exactly; —I do not suppose there would be so much confusion as in New York, where everybody does his moving on the same day. Each tree would have its own furniture-cart, and would spread out its own leaves without interfering with anybody else. But we should be bewildered with so much flowering, and we are sufficiently so now. Botanists are much puzzled to know how to rank the flowers, each one is formed so differently, each wearing its own shape, after its own fashion.

Here are the Chestnut-blossoms. Showy as they are, they cannot come under the type of perfect flowers. Yet they are of the First Series, as they

have the principal parts of a flower. They are of the first class, of wooded plants, and of the first sub-class. They fall into the third division, and they are Apetalous; that is, the corolla is wanting. You remember the anemones and hepaticas were in this division. They belong to the Oak Family. The sterile or staminate flowers are clustered in long catkins, with a calyx 5-6 parted; the fertile or pistillate flowers are two or three together in prickly burrs, which, when ripe, bear the nuts. The beautiful cream-colored blossoms are the long staminate catkins that spread out near the end of the branches; the pistillate are at the base of the stalks of the staminate flowers, and are surrounded with crowded leaves and prickles.

Along the hedges, we can still find some of the wild roses, and still, in the beginning of July, some lingering strawberries. The roses and strawberries belong to the same family; so it will not be out of place to sit down under the shade of our Chestnut, and examine before eating. Let us look first at the rose.

Such a large family as is the Rose Family, - did you know it?-and our little single wild rose stands modestly near the end of the list. This family embraces "plants with regular flowers, numerous (rarely few) distinct stamens inserted on the calyx, and one or many pistils, quite distinct, or united and combined with the calyx-tube. Calyx of usually five sepals, united at the base, often appearing double by a row of bractlets outside. Petals as many as the sepals, rarely wanting, mostly imbricated in the bud, and inserted with the stamens on the edge of a disk that lines the calyx-tube. Trees, shrubs, or herbs."

The Rose genus is described as having its calyx-tube urn-shaped, contracted at the mouth, becoming fleshy in fruit. Petals five, inserted, with the many stamens, into the edge of the hollow thin disk that lines the calyx-tube and bears the numerous pistils over its whole inner surface.

I want to show you how exactly we find this description that I have Italicized carried out when we cut open one of these rose-buds, and see the

position of the pistils and stamens with our own eyes. And the examination of this rose-bud will show us its relationship with the strawberry. If we could place by the side of this section of the rose-bud that of a strawberry flower,

we should see how this same receptacle, that in the rose held the pistils, has enlarged to form the pulpy, edible fruit, holding the pistils that are to form the real fruit. But we will slice our strawberry, which will show the same thing in a more advanced stage. You see it is the receptacle of the straw

BURN SO

berry now enlarged, bearing the small seed-like pistils on its surface. The seeds are borne differently in the rose: the receptacle, instead of being convex or conical, is concave, or urn-shaped, as you can see in a section of the rose-hip. It is like the finger of a glove reversed, like a strawberry turned inside out, the whole covered by the adherent tube of the calyx, which remains beneath in the strawberry.

I spoke just now of real fruit, meaning the term that botanists use for the seed-vessel, and the seeds contained in it. The seed-vessel is called the Pericarp. The principal kinds of fruits are divided into three,— Fleshy Fruits, Stone Fruits, and Dry Fruits. You might hardly think to find the strawberry among these last. But you must remember that its seed-vessels, its real fruits, are on the outside of the pulpy receptacle that you are eating. If you examine each one of these little seed-vessels, you will find the remains of its style on the place from which it has fallen. It is called an Achenium or Akene, which is the name given to such small, oneseeded, dry fruit. In one strawberry, you swallow a great many of these. After this "dry fruit," we will rob our luncheon-basket for something more luscious, a bunch of cherries, the last of the season. For it will give an example of the stone fruit, or drupe. In the drupe the outer part of the thickness of the pericarp, or seed-vessel, becomes fleshy, and softens; while the inner has hardened like a nut. We will look for some more of these drupes in the hedge around us. Here are some unripe blackberries and raspberries that will serve us, though you would not think it! Each one of these grains on the berry is a drupe, as though a bunch of cherries had grown together directly from the receptacle. In the strawberry, we eat the receptacle, or end of the flower-stalk; in the raspberry, a cluster of stone fruits, like cherries on a very small scale; and in the blackberry, both a juicy receptacle and a cluster of stone fruits covering it.

So these are not berries in the strict, botanical sense. A true berry comes under the first division of fleshy fruits. With these, the whole pericarp, or wall of the ovary, thickens and becomes soft (fleshy, juicy, or pulpy) as it

grows ripe. They include berries, gourd fruit, and pomes, meaning apples, pears, and quinces. So, while strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries cannot come into this division, in spite of their name, we can go "berry-ing" for whortleberries, blueberries, and cranberries with a clear conscience. The orange answers, too, the description of a berry, with a leathery rind. And the pumpkin, squash, cucumber, and melon are examples of gourds. A gourd is a "sort of berry" with a hard rind and soft interior.

ness.

We must not be too busy with these fruits in midsummer, to overlook the flowers or the full summer growth. Not only the trees are crowded with leaves, but every shrub and bush, every vine and weed, has been luxuriating in greenThe paths along which we passed in spring are now all grown over with briers and brambles. It is hard work to make our way into the woods; and we should no longer find there the little delicate flowers that ventured to appear in the early spring. But July and August have their myriads of flowers. We should never be able to read or write of them all. They are showy ones, too, and each one seems to call for special notice, and make us want to cry out, "Ah, was there ever anything so beautiful?”

Filling in all the undergrowth of the woods is the Kalmia. The glossy green of its leaves has made the woods beautiful all winter long, and through the spring; and now it lights them up into more gorgeous beauty with its brilliant flowers. I have told you how it was related with the Epigæa, or Mayflower, and, with the Rhodora and another relation, the Azalia, has just passed or is passing away from the swamps. What a beautiful family, indeed! All with such exquisite or brilliant colors, and so much variety in their forms! The Kalmia, or American Laurel, has its own salver-shaped flower, "between wheel-shaped and bell-shaped," difficult to describe, white or pink, "five-lobed, furnished with ten depressions, in which the ten anthers are severally lodged until they begin to shed their pollen; filaments threadform; calyx five-parted." Its brilliant clusters light up each side of the road, as we pass through it, for miles and miles. And, away from the road, we find it thick in the woods, or scattered down some hilly slope, every summer exciting us to fresh amazement.

In August, among the brambles and the blackberry-vines at the foot of the hedges, by the side of some very quiet roads or lanes, can be found a pretty wild bean, sometimes called the Ground-Nut. Its flowers are of a purplish chocolate-color, or a "brown purple," and are fragrant. It twines and climbs around the bushes, bearing clusters of flowers; and their shape leads me to speak of the differing forms of flowers.

It is hard enough to put all their different shapes into classes. Yet the wiser and wiser men grow, the more they try to describe and to classify all the flowers of the earth. The more they find out their differences, the more anxious they are to find out the points that make them alike, that they may know how to recognize them again, and how to make others recognize them. It is only the savage, says a wise man, that gives the name of "flower" to one and all.

Let us, then, take a heap of our summer flowers in our lap, and see how