52 THE HUMAN SIDE OF TREES 



leaf -chlorophyll (green colouring matter) into xan- 

 thophyll and erythrophyll, but that is a bald and 

 prosaic way of putting it. We prefer to think 

 that the trees are tired of the heat and the indolence 

 of summer and wishing to celebrate the advent of 

 more tolerable weather, put on their gayest and 

 gaudiest costumes. Gaudiest? Well, that is hardly 

 the word. While an individual leaf often looks 

 very garish when viewed by itself, it becomes emi- 

 nently proper and sedate when put back in the 

 general scheme from which it was taken. A group 

 of the most brilliant autumn trees imaginable looks 

 very quiet and respectable as seen from a little dis- 

 tance. Despite all the reds and yellows, the pre- 

 vailing autumn note is brown. Man has recognised 

 this in his adoption of brown as the colour-symbol 

 of fall, just as green forever typifies the spring. 



The individual colours are there, if you pick them 

 out. Who can adequately reproduce on canvas 

 the crimson and bronze of the oak, the champagne 

 of the ash, the amber of the chestnut, the scarlet 

 of the swamp-maple or the bright chrome of the 

 beech? These shades are all laid on the dark green 

 background of those trees which are slow to yield 

 to frosty influences, as well as the pines, spruces 

 and hemlocks which wear blue-green coats all the 

 year. It is interesting to note that in the matter 



