CHAPTER XIX 



autumn 



Maples Salisburia Tulip-trees Medlars Creepe 

 Value of autumn tints. 



PLANT-LIFE is full of mysteries, and none greater than 

 the changing and falling leaves in the autumn. We 

 know many facts about it, and we can mark many of 

 the changes which come before and after, but there 

 still remains a vast amount of mystery which we can- 

 not solve. I cannot even attempt to write on the 

 general physiology of these great changes, but I can 

 say something of the great pleasure that every gardener 

 can (and, as I think, should) take in the wonderful 

 beauties of autumnal foliage. American writers tell us 

 that we in England are not qualified to speak of the 

 beauty of trees in autumn, that we must go to their 

 great forests if we want to see the fulness of beauty 

 that autumn can show. They tell us that, while in 

 England * a soft pale yellow is all one sees in the way 

 of tints along the borders of the autumn woods,' in 



213 



