66 THE BEECH. 



only the carbon of the atmosphere during the per- 

 formance of the process of assimilation. They become, 

 in consequence, super-oxygenised, and the oxygen, 

 as in other cases, manifests its presence by giving an 

 unaccustomed brightness of tint. We are apt to 

 speak of the fading of the leaves in autumn ; it would 

 be more truthful to speak of it as the autumnal 

 painting. Very prone are we also to connect the 

 idea of " autumnal foliage " with trees only, over- 

 looking the fact that multitudes of herbaceous plants, 

 including many of the most inconsiderable weeds of 

 the wayside, are gifted with an equal beauty in the 

 decline of life. No tint in nature excels the roseate 

 amber of the October foliage of the silver-weed, 

 Potentilla Anserina; docks and sorrels glow with 

 vivid crimson, and the hedge-parsley turns its fern- 

 like leaves to the colour of a king's mantle. Nature 

 delights here, as everywhere else, to echo her great- 

 est things in her least ones. No blind heart was 

 that which in old time said that Pan, the god of 

 material nature, took for his wife the nymph Echo, 

 he playing on his sevenfold pipe, wrought from the 

 reeds by the river, while she gave response to every 

 harmony. 



Lastly should we note the fruit of the beech. In 

 May, soon after the young leaves are open, the tree 

 is ornamented with ten thousand globular clusters, 

 downy, and containing all the essentials of a flower ; 

 by the time that the Hlac stars of the Michaelmas- 



