COUNTRY LIFE
WHIcn season of the year have we been enjoying, spring or autumn ? That we "scatter the good seed on the land" is a true version of the activity of the date ; and the seed already begins to germinate, a proper spring function. Already the fruit-buds for next year's apple crop begin to form. The long bending brambles have reached the ground with their tips, and have converted the buds into roots with speed and vigour. We dig up, say, a herbaceous plant in the border and find it to be a mass of growing root, and we plant out bulbs that they may enjoy an early start. The sun is at its April height, conveying like suggestions. There is an old, a very old, controversy as to whether it is better to transplant hollies in October or April ; and, in fact, one is pretty well as good as the other. In some climates, Newfoundland or Eastern Canada, for example, autumn is much the most pleasant season of the year, especially if compared with the spring ; and from the American continent we get our phrase, an Indian summer. The season is actual spring under the water, at least in regard to some of the finer fishes, whose close season begins with October. One may carry on the comparison almost mystically. After all, the fall of the leaf is not so much a collapse as a vigorous thrusting off of the old by a new propulsive growth ; and the catkins of the hazels arc already beyond the embryo stage; indeed, almost as obvious as the ffowers that have just come out on the choisya. One may say as Donne said of his lady: " No Spring, nor Summer beauty hath such grace As I have seen in one Autumnal face."
What lovely days!
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