12 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



1 7th. This strange variety, which, however, has seldom 

 very much of winter in it, makes an English autumn like no 

 other season in any other land. Canada, thanks chiefly to 

 her red maple, has a wilder riot of autumnal colour. We 

 have no colouring in England to compare with the low 

 ground bushes whose leaves and berries spread a turkey 

 carpet over the peaty spaces between Newfoundland woods. 

 But in Newfoundland in autumn * no birds sing.' Nor is 

 any seed put into the ground trustfully until the ' azure 

 sister of the spring shall blow her clarion o'er the dreaming 

 earth.' The glory of an English autumn is that in a very real 

 sense it is also spring. In many ways there is no difference 

 at all, so far as the energy of growth goes, and this is usually 

 taken as the supreme mark of spring. We prefer to sow our 

 wheats in autumn, and they spring up into fresh and lush 

 growth in the 'happy, prompt, instinctive way of youth.' 

 The wise gardener sows his new lawn in September : and 

 sweetpeas, the queen of annuals, will live many weeks 

 longer into the coming year, if they are already plants before 

 winter comes. Sometimes even forest trees, which are most 

 regular in their ways, will put out new leaves in autumn, if 

 any accident has befallen the first leaves. The sap that 

 should fall has the power to rise again. If fruit and berries 

 fall, they fall to sow themselves, and for the most part they 

 begin to sprout. What a yeasty, a lusty spring-time it 

 seems, when we turn up a horse-chestnut from the decayed 

 leaves, and see curling round the polished grain of the case 

 a plump green shoot ready to greet a new year. The very 

 ground itself partakes of an activity that suggests the year's 

 beginning. Those who, faithful to the English games, 

 pursue cricket till it is out of season will find the fields 

 rough with worm-casts. Even Lord's cricket ground, though 

 it is immured by walls, is sometimes almost too rough for 



