36 January — Oak-leafage, 



passed the autumn on the tree, and dried there, is always 

 sure to be well worth drawing, for the force and variety 

 of its curvature. Even in January oak-leafage is rich 

 upon the trees, and though its color is often too red 

 and coppery to be altogether agreeable to the eye, still 

 it breaks the monotony of the gray stems. Saplings 

 retain their leaves longest, and there are varieties of 

 oak which have a pale yellowish-brown that a painter 

 might accept with pleasure. The common hornbeam 

 also preserves its leaves far into the following year, and 

 the underwood of this forest is full of it. Hardly a 

 single leaf of hornbeam is missing in the month of 

 January, but every one of them is curled up with a 

 graceful twist, showing the lines of ribs under it quite 

 distinctly, even at a distance of several yards. There is 

 no material better than dried oak and hornbeam for the 

 study of natural curvature, because you can carry a sprig 

 home with you, and it will retain all its forms, day after 

 day, as if the leaves were made of metallic gold. The 

 hornbeam underwood is splendid in the slanting sun- 

 shine of a January afternoon. The beech, too, is impor- 

 tant for its winter foliage, which remains, almost all of it, 

 in situations sheltered from the winds. The color is a 

 beautiful light red brown, and the form of the leaf very 

 perfect indeed, with a good surface. The roads in the 

 forest about the Val Ste. Veronique are often bordered 

 on both sides with trunks of beech, and the effect in 

 January is rich in the extreme, on account of the splendid 

 freshness of the green mosses, which are in perfection 

 and give the best possible contrast to the beech-leaves. 



