250 AUTUMN WOODS. 



will scatter them to the ground. Yet the action of heat 

 differs materially from that of frost. Frost im browns and 

 crisps or sears the leaves, while heat only fades them to 

 lighter and more indefinite shades. Frost is destructive 

 of their colors, heat is only a bleaching agent. Cool 

 weather in autumn without frost is necessary for the pres- 

 ervation of its seasonal beauty. 



The most brilliant autumnal hues appear after a wet 

 summer, followed by a cool autumn, unattended with 

 frost. Cool weather preserves not only the purity of 

 the colors, but also the persistence of the foliage. If the 

 early frosts are delayed, the tints are brighter for this 

 delay while the weather remains cool. But a wet sum- 

 mer is so generally followed by premature cold, that the 

 finest displays of autumn scenery are often suddenly 

 ruined by a hard frost. Seldom are all the favorable cir- 

 cumstances for preserving the purity of the tints com- 

 bined in any one season. Not more than once in six or 

 eight years are both heat and frost kept away so as to 

 permit the leaves to pass, unseared and untarnished, 

 through all their beautiful gradations of color. 



There are several herbaceous plants that display 

 tints similar to those of the woods ; but they are not 

 very conspicuous. I must not fail to mention the sam- 

 phire, a plant of the salt marshes, possessing no beauty 

 of form, having neither leaves nor any very discernible 

 flowers, which every year contributes more beauty of color 

 to the grounds it occupies than any flower of summer. 

 Though I have seen no printed account of its magnificent 

 crimson spread interruptedly over miles of salt marsh, 

 my attention has often been called to it by ladies, who 

 are more sensitive than the other sex to such appearances, 

 and more careful observers of them. 



The tints of the forest in America are said greatly to 

 surpass those of the European woods. Having never 



