THE BURNING BUSH 



MAPLES, 'burning themselves away,' provide in Canada 

 almost a national festival, as well as a national emblem. 

 The cherry blossom, aesthetically if not mystically wor- 

 shipped in Japan, does not excel the cult of the burning 

 leaf in North America. This Canadian red maple, in which 

 the broad ample leaf is suffused over its whole surface by an 

 even crimson of the richest tint, is not found in England. 

 The common English maple of the hedgerows often turns 

 a level yellow ; and even in the redder form is excelled in 

 colours by a dozen other leaves, by cherry and beech and 

 spindle and briar. We have indeed nothing to compare 

 with the red maple. Its startling pillars of flame and hot 

 fires from the burning bush make the supreme glory of 

 autumn colour. In places where a red maple is isolated 

 from other maples, especially if it is seen against fir-trees, 

 the optical effect is as though a hole had been made in the 

 background, a sort of irregular casement cut in the wood, 

 through which a strange light shone. You seem to see far 

 away through a cleft at the back of which some glowing metal 

 is heated red. The impression, which is vivid and curious, 

 is not an idiosyncrasy. Very many people have felt this 

 illusion in looking at the red and rayless sun through the 

 copper-coloured mist. Others have had it in most 

 persuasive form looking at the few first flowers of a red 

 may. The tree perhaps had been pruned, and bears in 



