96 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



creepers as we term Virginian will wrap trunk and boughs to 

 the very summit in parasitic flames. In our gardens we may 

 claim some of the great and glorious splendour. The lovely 

 liquid-amber flourishes in England. We may grow the 

 creepers about our trees. Already here and there several 

 of the finest Canadian oaks have grown to great sizes even 

 in the English fields. The tulip-tree is the glory of New 



College garden, Oxford, the 

 Judas-tree of old Dulwich, 

 the flowering Tree of Heaven 

 of Battersea Park, and a 



^I'l & ^*~ ;r;' ^W* ? hundred sorts of flowering 

 Tf^ ^f-^^f- *M*V4T A.- t. 



f &*,? ^jstotif* exotics of Kew. 



But in spite of all the 

 autumnal wonder round Lake 

 Erie, it is not easy to find a 

 superior to the English hedge- 

 row in autumn or the long- 

 drawn turning of the trees. 

 Nature, one may say, is so 

 natural in England. Yet 

 here, too, the splendour of 

 autumn is sudden beyond other changes and so prompts 

 inquiry into the inner causes of this yearly explosion of 

 colour coming strangely when summer dies, and we might 

 expect from nature a drab and melancholy scene. 



The clear yellow which gives the waning elms a sunlit 

 appearance, as if some partial shaft had caught this and that 

 bough, is not only different in quality of colour, but also in 

 causation, from the reds and purples that run in streaks 

 down the leaves of the spindle-tree or the jolly red of the 

 cherry. Among the chemical properties with which a plant 

 is endowed is a store of colouring matter which may dis- 



THE TULIP-TREE 





