hours amid the banks and hedge-rows, examining the many-coloured berries and curiously-formed seedvessels with which they now abound-albeit, we shall not limit our attention to November fruits, and seeds, and seed-cups only; but may indulge in retrospective glances at some of the more interesting forms of fruitage which have come and gone during the months of Summer, while we have been giving our eyes and thoughts solely to the gay blossoms. Autumn, doubtless, is the time of fruits; but all summer through, since the feathered seeds of the early coltsfoot were wafted abroad by the breezes of May, has the flower-harvest been going on; blossom after blossom has appeared and bloomed and withered, and has been succeeded by its seeds, and these have been scattered over the earth by the means of dispersion appointed to each by the Creator of all. All this has been going on, and only now we notice it, not because these processes of seed formation and spreading are less interesting than those of the budding and blossoming of the bright-coloured corolla, but from the simple inability to compass all things in a limited space. Neither do we pretend here to give a detailed account of seeds or their nature, sufficient if we offer a guide to their examination and investigation in summers yet to come. Fain would we hope that our "Wild Flowers" have raised in some minds an interest that will not subside with the termination of our year, an interest that will look forward to the time of flowers, to the time when "Nature in Spring's best charms Shall rise revived from Winter's grave, And bid the flower re-bloom." However, that interest, if it be real and true, will seek to extend its acquaintance beyond the buds and bells which attracted its first botanical gaze, and the recognition of these as old and familiar acquaintances, will afford leisure for the enlargement of plant lore generally. Here we may premise, that botanists do not use the term fruit in its simple conventional sense, but extend it in full meaning to the perfected seed apparatus generally. Do not therefore, we pray you, reader, let the word fruit conjure up in your mind ideas of the pulpy berry, or juice-filled flesh of pear or of peach, for many a dry little seed falls within the category of the botanist's "fruit.” One thing, however, we will answer for-there is not a seed, be it ever so dry or apparently insignificant, that will not repay your attentive examination, especially if made with the aid of the magnifying lens. The outer covering of some kinds of seeds presents us with the most exquisitely carved markings upon its surface, exquisite in the beauty of its very minuteness. Some seeds, generally so called, are not actually seeds, but are a combination of seed and seed-vessel in one; this nature are the seeds of our old friends the umbelliferous plants, such as caraway and dill; likewise the seeds of the ranunculus tribes, and also those of the composite flowers-Fig. 156. of Enough of technicalities. Let us choose some bright November day—and there are at times bright days in November-and let our walk be one of those hedge-row lanes which in summer are so green, and then so gay with the blossoms of the hawthorn, wild rose and honeysuckle, but which are now bright with |