THE BURNING BUSH 95 



of colour is then unfolded ; the crowns of the pines, bluish- 

 green ; the slender summits of the firs, dark green ; the 

 foliage of hornbeams, maples, and white-stemmed birches, 

 pale yellow ; the oaks, brownish-yellow ; the broad tracks of 

 forest stocked with beeches in all gradations, from yellowish 

 to brownish-red ; the mountain ashes, cherries and barberry 

 bushes, scarlet ; the bird-cherry and wild service trees, 

 purple ; the cornel and spindle-tree, violet ; aspens, orange ; 

 abeles and silver willows, white and grey ; and alders a dull 

 brownish-green. And all these colours are distributed in the 

 most varied and charming manner. Here are dark patches 

 traversed by broad light bands and narrow twisted stripes ; 

 there the forest is symmetrically patterned : there again the 

 Chinese fire of an isolated cherry-tree, or the summit of a 

 single birch, with its lustrous gold springing up among the 

 pines, illuminates the green background. To be sure, this 

 splendour of colours lasts but a short time. At the end of 

 October the first frosts set in, and when the north wind rages 

 over the mountain tops, all the red, violet, yellow and brown 

 foliage is shaken from the branches, tossed in a gay whirl to 

 the ground, and drifted together along the hedges. After 

 a few days the mantle of foliage on the ground takes on 

 a uniform brown tint, and in a few more days is buried under 

 the winter coat of snow.' 



The colours are even more splendid in Canada, and the 

 variety is greater. In a good year the duration is much 

 longer. The tree of trees, as it seems to many English 

 visitors in Canada, and now indeed in South Africa, is the 

 oak. The varieties are very numerous. Some have almost 

 smooth leaves which change, as the green departs, into 

 blades of a tawny red, more like the deep colour of an 

 amaryllis than any leaf. In addition to the rhus and tulip- 

 tree and sumach, and many others not less gorgeous, such 



