NATURE IN ENGLAND. 33 



side of the Atlantic it keeps up its Old World habits. 

 I have for several years taken note of a few of them 

 growing in a park near my home. They have less 

 grace and delicacy of outline than our native maple, 

 but present a darker and more solid mass of foliage. 

 The leaves are larger and less feathery, and are 

 crowded to the periphery of the tree. Nearly every 

 summer one of the trees, which is most exposed, gets 

 the leaves on one side badly scorched. When the fo- 

 liage begins to turn in the fall, the trees appear as if 

 they had been lightly and hastily brushed with gold. 

 The outer edges of the branches become a light yel- 

 low, while, a little deeper, the body of the foliage is 

 still green. It is this solid and sculpturesque char- 

 acter of the English foliage that so fills the eye of 

 the artist. The feathery, formless, indefinite, not to 

 say thin, aspect of our leafage is much less easy to 

 paint, and much less pleasing when painted. 



The same is true of the turf in the fields and upon 

 the hills. The sward with us, even in the oldest mead- 

 ows, will wear more or less a ragged, uneven aspect. 

 The frost heaves it, the sun parches it ; it is thiu here 

 and thick there, crabbed in one spot and fine and soft 

 in another. Only by the frequent use of a heavy 

 roller, copious waterings and top-dressings, can we 

 produce sod that approaches in beauty even that of 

 the elevated sheep ranges in England and Scotland. 



The greater activity and abundance of the earth- 

 worm, as disclosed by Darwin, probably has much to 

 do with the smoothness and fatness of those fields 



