94 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



consequence few flowers set deep behind the billowy green. 

 They might be the peep-holes of a furnace, and at a distance 

 it will be quite hard not to feel that you see a red light 

 glowing from somewhere on the far side of the tree. 



Many countries outflame England in the autumn. 

 Above the Danube rise banks of wood so over-gorgeous 

 as to seem upholstered in gorgeous and fantastic colour. 

 The Philistine who compared them with a Turkey carpet 

 had full excuse. We achieve the effect in some of our 

 English gardens. Banks of acer or maple in every tint are 

 in fashion. The sumach, which outdoes the maple in riot 

 of colour, is a popular exotic. But the crowning colour in 

 rough gardens, which in many places now disappear into 

 the rougher grounds about them, is the berberis in several 

 varieties. There is a famous Westmorland rough garden, 

 compounded as part of a wood rising abruptly from the river, 

 which in its measure outdoes the Canadian autumn. The 

 river Lune at that point cuts through some strata of very 

 red red sandstone, which shows its boulders here and there 

 in the wood and garden. Almost in the centre, as it 

 happens, of the garden grows luxuriantly the reddest of all 

 the varieties of berberis. It looks as if it had sucked its 

 colour from the stone and from the sunset. You might 

 think that it would light up the garden when dusk falls. 

 But our gardens, and the Canadian and Danubian woods, 

 excel our countryside more in glory than in grace. 



The continental transformation scene is well described by 

 Kerner, that great and most lively of European botanists. 

 ' The first frosts are the signal for the beginning of the 

 vintage ; all is busy in the vine-planted districts, and the 

 call of the vine-dresser resounds from hill to hill. But it is 

 also the signal for the forests on the mountain slopes, and 

 in the meadows, to change their hues. What an abundance 





