ioo AUTUMN AND WINTER 



tumble in a continuous downpour from noon to eve, till they 

 are heaped high over the gleaming fruit. The children 

 come and paddle gaily in the litter as if it were a sandy 

 pool and the chestnuts shrimps. The horse-chestnut for 

 the most part makes a good show of colour before the 

 frost comes. It had made preparation to lose its leaves, 

 as any one may tell who looks at the bare twig or the 

 leaf. Between the leaf and twig have formed little studs 

 of cork in a pattern always perfect to type. The scar 

 remains on the twigs, pencilling them with a quaint crescent 

 for the rest of the year. 



A worse sufferer from October frosts is the ash. The 

 tree is the last to come into leaf. Tennyson's ' more black 

 than ashbuds in the front of March 7 has bruited one fact 

 as widely as any little piece of botanical knowledge. He 

 might also have written : More black than ash leaves in 

 October frost. While still full of juice and green with 

 energy, they are cut in one night to as black a tint as the 

 tops of our early potatoes, and fall down in a lugubrious, a 

 most vicious circle about the tree. One wonders that the 

 tree recovers ; and it may be that the loss of vigour tends 

 to the late production of leaf in the spring. 



The reddest tree in the English scenery is the cherry, 

 which is frequent in Hertfordshire and many Midland 

 counties. Its pillar of flame stands out as distinctly in the 

 autumn as its bridal figure in the spring. Its nearest 

 parallel in what some Midland writer called remoter Eng- 

 land, is the mountain ash, which brings the very hues of 

 sunset into many a Welsh landscape. 



But the glory of the English autumn is not red, but what 

 we call brown. If any one were asked to recall a character- 

 istic English scene from October, his mind would first recur 

 to the beech-woods. One must perhaps call the leaves 



