10 TIMES AND SEASONS. 



Yet a forest country in autumn presents a glorious 

 spectacle, and nowhere more magnificent than in North 

 America, where the decaying foliage of the hardwood 

 forests puts on in October the most splendid colours. 

 Every part of the woods is then glowing in an endless 

 variety of shades ; brilliant crimson, purple, scarlet, lake, 

 orange, yellow, brown, and green : if we look from some 

 cliff or mountain-top over a breadth of forest, the rich 

 hues are seen to spread as far as the eye can reach ; the 

 shadows of the passing clouds, playing over the vast 

 surface, now dimming the tints, now suffering them to 

 flash out in the full light of the sun ; here and there a 

 large group of sombre evergreens, — hemlock or spruce, 

 — giving the shadows of the picture, and acting as a foil 

 to the brightness ; — the whole forest seems to have be- 

 come a gigantic parterre of the richest flowers.* 



" Ere, in the northern gale, 



The summer tresses of the trees are gone. 



The woods of autumn, all around our vale, 



Have put their glory on. 



*' The mountains that infold, 

 In their wide sweep, the colour 'd landscape round. 

 Seem groups of giant kings, in purple and gold, 



That guard th' enchanted ground." — Bryant. 



* In examining the details of this mass of glowing colour, I have 

 found that by far the greatest proportion is produced by the sugar- 

 maple, and other species of the same genus. The leaves of these display 

 all shades of red, from deepest crimson to bright orange ; which gene- 

 rally occurring in large masses, not in individual detached leaves, pre- 

 vents anything tawdry or little in the effect ; on the contrary, when 

 the full beams of the sun shine on them, the warm and glowing colours 



