hat it exists; for
the same eye does not see this and Timothy. He carefully gets the meadow
hay and the more nutritious grasses which grow next to that, but he
leaves this fine purple mist for the walker's harvest,--fodder for his
fancy stock. Higher up the hill, perchance, grow also Blackberries,
John's-Wort, and neglected, withered, and wiry June-Grass How fortunate
that it grows in such places, and not in the midst of the rank grasses
which are annually cut! Nature thus keeps use and beauty distinct. I
know many such localities, where it does not fail to present itself
annually, and paint the earth with its blush. It grows on the gentle
slopes, either in a continuous patch or in scattered and rounded tufts a
foot in diameter, and it lasts till it is killed by the first smart
frosts.

In most plants the corolla or calyx is the part which attains the
highest color, and is the most attractive; in many it is the seed-vessel
or fruit; in others, as the Red Maple, the leaves; and in others still
it is the very culm itself which is the principal flower or blooming
part.

The last is especially the case with the Poke or Garget (_Phytolacca
decandra_). Some which stand under our cliffs quite dazzle me with their
purple stems now and early in September. They are as interesting to me
as most flowers, and one of the most important fruits of our autumn.
Every part is flower, (or fruit,) such is its superfluity of
color,--stem, branch, peduncle, pedicel, petiole, and even the at length
yellowish purple-veined leaves. Its cylindrical racemes of berries of
various hues, from green to dark purple, six or seven inches long, are
gracefully drooping on all sides, offering repasts to the birds; and
even the sepals from which the birds have picked the berries are a
brilliant lake-red, with crimson flame-like reflections, equal to
anything of the kind,--all on fire with ripeness. Hence the _lacca_,
from _lac_, lake. There are at the same time flower-buds, flowers, green
berries, dark purple or ripe ones, and these flower-like sepals, all on
the same plant.

We love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It
is the color of colors. This plant speaks to blood. It asks a bright sun
on it to make it show to best advantage, and it must be seen at this
season of the year. On warm hill-sides its stems are ripe by the
twenty-third of August. At that date I walked through a beautiful grove
of them, six or seven feet high, on