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Xife in 2)eatb, ne fiDanifcet in JFalling Xeavee. 



By Rev. F. Ballard, M.A., B.Sc, F.R.M.S., Etc. 



Plate XV. 



HE falling leaf has been from time immemorial a 

 f/ieme de luxe of the poet and sentimentalist. Nor 

 can any, save the colour-blind, be coldly callous to 

 the warm tints of beauty which diffuse themselves 

 in autumn through the vegetable world. Nature's 

 ^^^^i^^j^ blush, as she puts off her robe of living green 

 to doff her winter garb of poverty, merits our 

 most respectful regard. 



Yet the notion that autumn is a time of general 

 decay adds but another to the myriad popular fallacies which it 

 is the function of science to dispel. The fall of the leaf, in 

 fact, despite all the tender moods of poetry and the sighs of the 

 love-lorn, is a token and a result, not of death, but of life. The 

 vital processes involved in the forming of the reddish-brown 

 heaps that rustle and crackle around our feet in an October 

 walk, are as definite and wonderful as they are oft entirely 

 overlooked. 



To appreciate these we must learn, as science would ever 

 teach us, to look beneath the surface of mere seeming into the 

 heart of nature's realities. Nor does the beauty of the distant 

 landscape suffer any loss at all from our knowledge of the biologi- 

 cal history of leaves and flowers close at hand, or of the grass 

 beneath our feet. 



The case before us is one especially concerned with that 

 constant struggle for existence, which our eyes are now opened to 

 see going on wherever life is known. The acknowledged 

 uncertainty of our climate detracts nothing from the genera^ 

 certainty of a definite and abiding difference in temperature 

 between summer and winter. We who live in these " temperate " 

 zones, must accustom ourselves to variations and extremes of 

 season-changes which are wholly unknown in tropical regions. 

 And the vegetable world, no less than the animal, has to learn to 



Journal of Microscopy and Natural Science. 



New Series. Vol. III. 1890. R 



