AUTUMN. 



25) 



low degree of transparency, inferior hardness, and 

 greater specific gravity. 



AUTUMN. The third in order of the four sea- 

 eons into which, in the temperate regions of the world, 

 the natural year is divided ; and in the kalendar, 

 including the months of August, September, and 

 October, or nearly equal times on each side of the 

 autumnal equinox, or the time when, about the 22nd 

 of September, the day and night are equal to each 

 other. But nature is not regulated by the kalendar, 

 either as to the time or the duration of autumn, or of 

 any other season. Much depends upon the latitude, 

 not a little upon the surface and the proximate sur- 

 faces, and on the currents of the atmosphere and the 

 sea something depends upon the character of the 

 previous season and even the culture which man 

 bestows upon the soil has no inconsiderable influence 

 upon this season. Where, by skill and industry, he 

 subdues the wildness of nature, clears the wild, drains 

 the marsh, enriches the sterile field by manure, shel- 

 ters the exposed one by trees, and, generally speak- 

 ing, obtains a rich and abundant crop, the elements 

 work in concert with him, and send him a delightful 

 autumn in which to gather it in, and also to take his 

 eport in the cleared fields after it is under the thatch, 

 or to prepare for another year that portion of the crop 

 which is to abide the winter in the fields. And it is 

 not for his crop and his immediate comfort alone that 

 the season co-operates with his skill and industry. 

 The tree consolidates that portion of wood which the 

 year has produced ; brings forward its buds, whether 

 for fruit or for an increase of twigs, full and round ; 

 and wraps them up in their safe hybernacula, until a 

 new year shall call them into action. The flocking 

 birds are upon the cleared fields betimes, consuming 

 the seeds of the annual weeds before they have be 

 gun to germinate. The air is free, dry, and repel- 

 lent of the premature inroads of winter; and all nature 

 is gradually prepared for that healthy repose which 

 is the surest pledge of vigorous and useful action 

 in the year which is to come. 



Ou the other hand, if man neglects his duty, the 

 neglect is felt by all nature, though the punishment, 

 as in justice it ought, falls most heavily upon the 

 wrong-doer. If the water is allowed to stagnate, the 

 banks of the stream to become marshes or quagmires, 

 and the surface of the earth to run wild, there will 

 not only be poor crops on the few cultivated patches, 

 from the constant warfare they must maintain with 

 the invading weeds, but the very seasons will appear 

 to rebel. Autumn, deprived of its proper accompani- 

 ment, will deluge with rains and blight with hoar- 

 frosts ; for it seems to be a law of nature, that, if man 

 will not improve the bounty which she sets before 

 him the talent which she offers for his use, she with- 

 draws what he is too indolent for improving, and 

 strikes in vengeance against that which he abuses by 

 want of industry and skill. 



Thus, in thickly inhabited countries, autumn is in 

 some respects a season of " man's making, " at least 

 in so far that, if he would have it good and pleasant, he 

 must conduct himself so as to deserve it. 



But besides thus being a season, in some sort, of 

 an artificial nature, or at least, in peculiar places, hav- 

 ing its characters modified by artificial causes, autumn 

 is altogether a local season, known only in particular 

 latitudes. Summer or winter, or an alternation of the 

 two, is found over the whole earth, from the one pole 

 to the other ; but spring and autumn belong to parti- 



cular latitudes only, and iu these they must be, to a 

 certain extent, deserved and \von before they can be 

 obtained ; and it is worthy of remark, that where 

 these seasons exist, or can be obtained in their best 

 characters, they are always the most favourable for 

 the development of the human powers, physical and 

 intellectual, and the best suited for human enjoyment. 



At the equator, within the tropics generally, and 

 often without them, varying in range with surface and 

 situation, there is no autumn no season analogous 

 to that which we of temperate climates call by the 

 name, and in the abundance of which we all with so 

 much reason rejoice. It is true that, in those regions, 

 fruits ripen and leaves fall in the same manner as they 

 do with us, but not at the same times, or for the same 

 reasons. The fruit does not ripen in order to secure 

 a germ during that rigorous time when the plant may 

 perish. When one crop of the tropical fruit tree ripens, 

 there is generally another half grown, and a third in 

 the blossom. The pause in the growth of the tree, 

 too, is a pause from drought and heat, not from cold ; 

 and the leaf does riot fall then. Its polished epidermis 

 only concentrates to resist the evaporative action, 

 something in the same manner as the leaves of our 

 evergreens, which have a similar kind of epidermis, 

 consolidate in the winter ; and, as in these, the old 

 leaf does not fall till the season of growth has 

 returned, and the young leaf of that season is so far 

 advanced as to take its place, or supply its function. 

 The shrub often loses its leaf, and the herbaceous 

 stem, although in the course of one humid season it 

 grows as much as with us would be considered no 

 mean tree, withers, or is parched up ; and sometimes 

 the drought is so intense, that such stems take fire by 

 the collision of their hard and silicious bark against 

 each other, and the conflagration spreads wide, in- 

 vading the forest, and raging till the whole district is 

 a ruin. But in whatever manner and to whatever ex- 

 tent the power, the change, or the destruction of ve- 

 getation takes place, it is not an autumnal change in 

 our sense of the word. It cannot be said to be a 

 preparation for any season, so much as the direct and 

 marked effect of that change from humid to dry 

 which has already taken place. 



Then, in the time of its occurrence, it abides less 

 by the kalendar than the autumn of temperate re- 

 gions, and the action of the earth's surface has more 

 influence in bringing it about than the mere periodic 

 time by the sun. If solar heat regulated the sea- 

 sons, without the action of the different surfaces upon 

 each other, the two equinoxes would be midsummer 

 days under the equator, because there the sun on 

 them passes directly over head at noon ; and, within 

 the tropics, two midsummer days would be carried 

 into each hemisphere every half year alternately, gra- 

 dually coming nearer to each other, till they met in 

 our longest day, when the sun was over the northern 

 tropic, and in our shortest day, when he was over the 

 southern. But the solar action is so powerful, that 

 it revives the energies of the earth to the utmost, and 

 a new action between surface and surface is produced, 

 regulating the time, the duration, and the intensity of 

 the seasons of vegetable action and repose. 



The direction varies, as well as the intensity and 

 duration. At times it is an action between hemisphere 

 and hemisphere, nearly in the direction of the meri- 

 dian, as in the case of the Indian monsoons ; at other 

 times it is between the parched district and the fertile, 

 as between the African desert and the valley of the 



