AUTUMN LEAVES 219 



scientific description of the plants. It is now a canon 

 in scientific botany that the entire structure of a plant 

 has reference only to the forming and perfecting of the 

 seed, and when that work is done, the dififerent offices 

 of roots, stems, branches, leaves, and flowers are at an 

 end. Mr. Ruskin will not even go so far as that, but 

 limits all the viseful life of a plant to the formation of 

 beautiful flowers. Yet surely the tinting and the fall 

 of the leaves must have their uses in the life of a plant, 

 and the autumnal tints of our trees and shrubs are so 

 distinct, one from another, that many of them are more 

 easily distinguished in autumn than in summer. And 

 we may remark that many trees which can show no 

 beauty in flowers, show a beauty in autumn surpassing 

 the flowers of many flowering shrubs, of which the elm 

 and the beech are good examples; and many of our 

 exotic trees which have become naturalised never bear 

 seed (the common elm never ripens seed in England), 

 and yet we cannot say that their life has been in vain. 

 And I like to think that the tree has not done its full 

 task till it has delighted us with the brilliancy of its 

 autumn leaves ; in other words, I think that the energy 

 of the plant has been all along directed to the per- 

 fection of its life in autumn, quite as much as to its life 

 in spring and summer, and that the autumn tint is as 

 specific a character as the colour of the flowers. One 



