332 BOTANY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
and violent contrasts as even Nature herself, the source of all that is 
truly chaste and harmonious, here indulges in. It would seem requi- 
site for the production of the autumnal colouring in all its brilliancy 
that it should be the sudden result of severe frost upon the leaves, 
not of their gradual prolonged decay; and I particularly remember 
that on my return southwards into the middle section of the United 
States, I saw nothing in the fading foliage around Philadelphia at all 
comparable to the splendour of its colouring farther north in Canada 
and New England. The weather throughout November, in Pennsyl- 
vania, was remarkably wet and mild, with little or no frost at night, 
and the leaves were in consequence late in falling, and very slow in 
fading away into their respective autumnal tints. We see precisely 
the same thing take place in England, where the beauty of the autumn 
landscape is heightened or diminished as the season is dry and frosty, 
or wet and warm. The splendid colouring of the Canadian woods 
was mainly derived from the Sugar and Red Maple (Acer saccharinum 
and 4. rubrum), and from the Red Oaks (Quercus coccinea), the crimson 
and scarlet of whose dying Jeaves it was almost painful to the eye to 
look upon close at hand. 
The ligneous vegetation here was composed of the following species :— 
Red and Sugar Maple; Moose-wood (Acer Pennsylvanicum),—the two 
former most abundant, the last frequent as a shrub, its huge leaves now 
of a fine pale yellow ; Beech (Fagus ferruginea), plentiful, but not of any 
great size, still preserving in this northern climate the chestnut-like 
character of leaf so distinctive of the American from the European 
species ; American Mountain-Ash (Pyrus Americana), a mere variety, 
as it seems to me, of P. Aucuparia, and the Pines before mentioned, 
make up the bulk of these woods. As under-growth I remarked the 
Hasel (Corylus Americana), Hobble-bush (Viburnum Lantanoides), 
common, and perfectly distinct from our V. Lantana, of which Loudon 
- (Arbor. Brit.) strangely thought it a variety. The English name is 
said to have been given it, from the tough procumbent branches, that, 
- lying in one's path, might cause one to stumble, or hobble. Viburnum 
 mudum was a frequent and neat under-shrub : its shining green leaves, 
i looking almost as if persistent, emit, like the Lawrustinus, an offensive 
odour in fading: it grows both in dry ground and in sphagnous bog. 
In the swampy parts I found abundance of Kalmia angustifolia, but 
failed in finding K. glauca ; Andromeda polifolia? and another, like a 
