THE YELLOW WOOD 



on the pathway, yellow rustling or spinning through 

 the air as each breeze played through the trees. By 

 now, no doubt, the oaks have gone mainly into 

 plain brown, and the chestnuts cast most of those 

 noble leaves ; the season, which in such a wood, with 

 favouring weather, passes almost everything through 

 a mint of gold, is soon done. But it is a scene 

 strong in the memory once enjoyed on the right day 

 in October. 



With trees and underwoods stripped bare in 

 November, rain and a heavy frost or two usually 

 ending the work, what we think of as autumn 

 colouring is over. But there are lesser wood scenes 

 of much beauty during the next few weeks, particu- 

 larly one of brake ferns and spruce firs, where these 

 together make the undergrowth. Spruce firs have 

 not the stern nobility of the Scotch pines, or the 

 exquisite green of the larches in spring, but as 

 young trees, scattered through a wood in autumn 

 and winter, they surpass both, perhaps all other 

 firs that flourish in England. Masses of the sober 

 brown fern among the bushy, fresh green spruce firs 

 in November form a delightful wood scene. 



The spruce fir is the cosiest of evergreens, with 

 kind quarters for squirrel and bird on bitter nights. 

 It is not a native, like the pine, whose remains, 

 black as bog oak, we find deep in the peat ; but it 

 does not offend the eye even in the wildest spots by 

 a look of the artificial. After yew and pine, spruce 

 has come to be the most English of evergreens, and 

 both for the look and the reality of warmth and 



265 



