X'lBLRNlM MaCRoCEPHALLM 

 (.A Chinese Piani, but not of recent introduction, photogi 



The Fading Leaf. 



By A. E. MoERAN, Portumna. 



HOW am I to find adjectives to describe 

 the glories of the autumn colours and 

 tints that this year have blushed and 

 blazed and flared and glowed before our e3es, 

 and that, even now in this third week in 

 Xovember, are beautiful beyond expression, 

 though slowly fading Into the tracery of bare 

 branches against the sky ? 



In many ways it was a late spring, and, 

 perhaps, for that reason, among trees it has 

 been a wonderful seed year. On the first of 

 June the ash were standing as grey and bare as 

 in midwinter, though the elms were laden with 

 such masses of their curious, brown, scaly 

 flowers as to look at a distance as though 

 already their leaves were withered and old. 



This autumn the small boys have revelled in 

 a selection of the largest, and roundest, and 

 most chestnuttj' chestnuts, and the flocks of 

 wood pigeons have puffed out their burnished 

 breasts with a profusion of beech nuts and 

 acorns greater than the oldest wood pigeon can 

 remember. On the bare blackthorn branches 

 the sloes still hang in great, purple clusters, 

 and under the roadside crab-apple trees the 



phed at (Uasnevin) 



wheels of passing carts crunch through a green 

 carpet of that forbidden fruit. 



But of the leaves and their colours who shall 

 say? One thing is certain, pride of place goes 

 to the beech tree. The unfortunate lack of 

 adjectives in the English, or in any language, 

 prohibit any adequate description of its 

 splendours, so we must e'er let it be. It 

 supplies most of the richness and gorgeousness 

 of our autumn landscapes, but other trees 

 supply a hundred hundred other shades, and 

 tones, and mixtures, and blends of colour, each 

 so marvellously distinct, and yet so blended 

 that no one can tell where green and olive give 

 way to gold and yellow, or where gold and 

 yellow merge into copper and bronze, and 

 crimson and scarlet. And through all the blaze 

 of colour how grandly our staunch, foulweather 

 friends, the evergreens, bear themselves. How- 

 well the towering, dark-green, silver firs and the 

 softer-foliaged spruces look, and that brave old 

 Scots fir with the frosty sun glistening on its 

 silver-green needles, and on its rugged, red- 

 brown stem. What a contrast is the gold and 

 silver tinsel of the birch beside it, and yet what 

 harmony. 



I wonder how many of us realize and are 

 thankful for the wonderful fact that this great, 



