IN LEAFLESS WOODS. 



greenest of things blue, the bluest of things 

 green," which now abound in plantations, 

 have done much to redeem the surviving 

 reproach of the glacial epoch. 



Not that any of these plants are really 

 evergreen in the stricter sense that most 

 people imagine. All our foliage alike is, 

 strictly speaking, annual, and all alike deci- 

 duous ; but while oaks and beeches shed 

 their dead leaves in our climate in autumn, 

 pines, firs, and hollies retain theirs on the 

 tree till the succeeding spring, and then let 

 them drop quietly off, unperceived amid the 

 pale glory of the fresh green foliage. The 

 larch is a well-known example of a conifer 

 which behaves in this respect like the oak 

 or the birch ; while its ally, the spruce fir, 

 keeps on the dead or dying leaves through 

 the winter months, and then shufBes them 

 off unobtrusively as the new foliage develops. 

 The evergreens get the advantage of utiliz- 

 ing any stray scrap of winter sunshine ; but 

 then they have to protect their living green 



63 



