flowers are still in bloom-late fellows, that seem to take pride in exhibiting their staying powers. Next Wednesday, only three days off, it will be, as I say, the first of November; and yet one would be astonished to see what a bouquet of wild flowers one could gather within the radius of a mile or more from where I am sitting. Such a bunch would contain black-eyed Susans, summer daisies, joint weed, self-heal, lobelia, purple asters, golden-rod and not a few others. In some localities a poke-berrybush, five feet or more in height, may appear almost as fine as the one I here show in Figure 2, barring the loss of nearly all of its leaves.

It is delightful to live in a region where one can go into the fields during the early part of November and find blue boneset (Eupatorium cœlestinum) in bloom in some protected corner of an old, overgrown pasture, where the eye may catch the gay lilac color of its dense corymb of flowers, as it peeps over the bunch of dry grasses which nearly hides its withering foliage below. Perhaps even at this season there may be a belated Monarch butterfly resting upon the flower; if so, my Figure 3 will give a fair idea of the combination, after the surrounding growth of autumn plants and grasses have been removed.

As we ramble through the woods; as we pass through the meadows and brakes, or tramp into the marshes and wet places during these fall days, we will soon appreciate the fact that one of the most fascinating, perhaps one of the most profitable things to study, are the various ways in which various plants go to seed. Such studies are not only of value to the nature student, but they are very materially so to the practical botanist, to the wild flower culturist, and to the testers of seeds, who work with the economic researcher in that line of general agriculture.

Recently I have made many fine negatives of wild flowers as they go to seed, and I intend to publish these in various avenues from time to time. The present article can touch but lightly upon this question owing to space limitations; but my aim will be largely met through the presentation of one good example chosen to demonstrate what I have in view. I have selected a beautiful example of the common Velvet Leaf, also called "Indian Mallow" and "American Jute," a plant that has escaped from cultivation and now grows wild. It is the Abutilon avicenne of Gray, and I present here in Figure 4 a lovely picture of its seed pods, which, as any one will admit, are truly artistic-looking little structures. My nega

tive gives them exactly natural size; but of a necessity they are here reproduced somewhat under that, though not very much so. Note the elegant little green caterpillar on the stem. This plant has very handsome, deep yellow flowers that may sometimes be seen quite late in the season-even as late as the end of October in the South. The leaves are of a velvety feel, hence its name.

Leaves from a January Note Book

Notes taken at a window commanding a bird-feeding station: Jan. 13. The male Downy remarks "tsip" quite frequently. He and his wife were here together all the morning. The weather has a rather thawy feeling and there are flurries of snow. The sky is thick and gray-white to the horizon and the distant woods are brownish-gray.

A

there is red in it. The

snow, while the pines

quite a difference in the

snow storm of great soft

cold color, even though hemlocks are coated with hold very little of it, two in that respect. A flakes has just begun and

many perfect crystals of this type are to be seen.

Jan 14. "The snow that began in the gloaming" has heaped everything in sight with a silence deep and white. Even the telegraph wires were cables three inches in diameter, and on the limbs of the tree in front of the window the snow is heaped five inches high. In just a few places the wind has blown it off so that the tree looks as if it were decorated with wads of cotton wool. Under this heavy snowfall the pines are more weighted than the hemlocks. Harriet (the female hairy woodpecker), has just come with a "tsip-tsip" and has hunted out the suet under the snow. She tried to get it from above, failed, and then tried it from below successfully. The little Madam (the female downy) came afterwards and did the same, then came the chickadees and had their breakfast, bottom side up.

Jan 15. It is a cold windy morning with now and then a cold flurry of hard snow. Madam Downy has been hanging on the leeward side of the tree, drawn up into a little bunch and her feathers fluffed out. Occasionally she cleaned a feather or scratched herself with her beak quite at ease. Heard a chickadee singing his little high note, "teedle-chk-teeledle." It is a sort of chickadee yodle.