Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun, Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core. KEATS. Their varied plumes, and, watchful every way, THOMSON. A remarkable product of the earth collected in this month is saffron. This is cultivated in various parts of Europe; but none is superior to that grown in England, chiefly in the counties of Essex and Cambridge. The saffron-plant is a species of crocus, which is planted in July, and the flowers gathered in September. The part which alone is used, is the fine-branched filaments on the inside of the flower, called the chives. It is properly an expansion of the pistil, or part of fructification. These are picked off, dried, and pressed together into cakes. They are of a high orange-colour, and have a very strong aromatic odour. Saffron is used in medicine as a cordial; and its flavour was formerly much esteemed in cookery. The clown in the "Winter's Tale," reckoning up what he is to buy for the sheep-shearing feast, mentions "saffron to colour the warden-pies." It gives a fine deep yellow dye. The Autumnal crocus, or meadow saffron, is found wild in moist pastures, to which its delicate purple flowers give an appearance truly L beautiful. In such situations, however, it is a dangerous inhabitant, its leaves acting on cattle as a most virulent poison, and great numbers have been destroyed by eating it. At the time, however, when it lends its gay appearance to the meadows no danger is to be apprehended, as it has the remarkable property of putting forth its flower in the Autumn, while the leaf, which alone is injurious, and the fruit do not appear till the following Spring. Very few other flowers open in this month; and it is to the ripening fruits that we are chiefly indebted for variegation of colour in the landscape of Nature. "The oaks and the beeches," says Leigh Hunt," shed their nuts which, in the forests that still remain, particularly in the New Forest, in Hampshire, furnish a luxurious repast for the swine who feast of an evening, in as pompous a manner as any alderman, to the sound of the herdsman's horn. But the acorn must not be undervalued because it is food for swine, nor thought only robustly of because it furnishes our ships with timber. It is also one of the most beautiful objects of its species, protruding its glossy green nut from its rough and sober-coloured cup, and dropping it in a most elegant manner beside the sunny and jagged leaf. and jagged leaf. We have seen a few of them, with their stems in water, make a handsome ornament to a mantel-piece in this season of departing flowers." 66 "The few additional flowers this month," continues the same writer, are corn-flowers, Guernsey-lilies, and starwort. The fresh trees and shrubs in flower are bramble, chaste-tree, lauristinus, ivy, wild honeysuckle, spirea, and arbutus, or strawberry tree, a favourite of Virgil, which, like the garden of Alcinous, in Homer, produces flower and fruit at once. The stone-curlew clamours at the beginning of this month, woodowls hoot, the ring-ouzel re-appears, the saffron butterfly is seen, and hares congregate." The labours of the husbandman have but a very short intermission; for no sooner is the harvest gathered in, than the fields are again ploughed up and prepared for the winter corn, rye and wheat, which are sown during this month and the next. Early in September, a harvest of a peculiar kind is offered to the inhabitants of our seacoasts, in the immense shoals of herrings, which |