488 AUTUMNAL COLOURING. 



beeches in all gradations from yellowish to brownish -red, the mountain ashes, 

 cherries and barberry bushes scarlet, the bird cherry and wild service trees 

 purple, the cornel and spindle-tree violet, aspens orange, abeles and silver willows 

 white and grey, and alders a dull brownish-green. And all these colours are 

 distributed in the most varied and charming manner. Here are dark patches 

 traversed by broad light bands and narrow-twisted stripes; there the forest is 

 symmetrically patterned; there again the Chinese fire of an isolated cherry-tree 

 or the summit of a single birch, with its lustrous gold springing up among the 

 pines, illuminates the green background. To be sure this splendour of colour lasts 

 but a short time. At the end of October the first frosts set in, and when the 

 north wind rages over the mountain tops, all the red, violet, yellow, and brown 

 foliage is shaken from the branches, tossed in a gay whirl to the ground, and 

 drifted together along the banks and hedges. After a few days the mantle of 

 foliage on the ground takes on a uniform brown tint, and in a few more days is 

 buried under the winter coat of snow. 



The autumnal colouring of the foliage in those parts of the North American 

 forest regions, whose vegetation presents the greatest analogy to that of the Old 

 World just described {i.e. in the neighbourhood of the St. Lawrence and from the 

 Canadian lakes to the Alleghany Mountains), lasts much longer than in the forest 

 regions of Central Europe. There also evergreen conifers grow side by side with 

 deciduous trees, and there again a rich underwood flourishes in the forest regions. 

 To some extent we have exactly the same species composing the woods — pines 

 and firs, beeches and hornbeams, oaks, ashes, limes, birches, alders, poplars, maples, 

 elms, hawthorn, guelder-rose, and dogwood; but the wealth of forms is far greater 

 than in Central Europe. In the neighbourhood of the shores of Lake Erie, for 

 instance, a district pre-eminent in respect of the glow of its autumnal tints, 

 we have in addition to the trees enumerated the Rhiis Toxicodendron and 

 i?. Typhinum, the Tulip-tree, Western Plane, several walnuts, robinias, Gymno- 

 cladus, Liquidamber, and especially some Ampelidese which climb like lianes to the 

 highest tree-top. This greater variety of species produces an even richer play of 

 colour in autumn than in the central European districts. The change of colour of 

 the deciduous trees begins in some species always at the commencement of 

 September, and stretches over a whole month, so that the fall of the last leaves 

 usually does not occur until about the middle of October. The American beech 

 {Fagus ferruginea) changes colour exactly like the European; and the American 

 birches (Betula nigra and B. papyracea) exhibit in their autumn foliage the same 

 golden yellow as do their European allies; but the autumn foliage of oaks, which 

 flourish with an extraordinary number of species south of the Canadian lakes, 

 present every tint from yellow to orange and ruddy brown; the Red Maple (Acer 

 rubrum) shrouds itself in dark red, the Tulip-tree exhibits the lightest yellow, 

 the large-spined hawthorn bushes, the Sheep -berry {Viburnum Lentago) and 

 the Rhus Toxicodendron become violet, the Sumach {Rhus Typhinum), and the 

 wild vines {Vitis and Ampelopsis), climbing up the branches of the trees, clothe 



