TIMES AND SEASONS. 



Yet a forest country in autumn presents a 

 glorious spectacle, and nowhere more magnificent 

 than in North America, where the decaying foliage 

 of the hardwood forests puts on in October the 

 most splendid colours. Every part of the woods 

 is then glowing in an endless variety of shades; 

 brilliant crimson, purple, scarlet, lake, orange, 

 yellow, brown, and green : if we look from some 

 cliff or mountain-top over a breadth of forest, the 

 rich hues are seen to spread as far as the eye can 

 reach ; the shadows of the passing clouds, playing 

 over the vast surface, now dimming the tints, 

 now suffering them to flash out in the full light of 

 the sun ; here and there a large group of sombre 

 evergreens, — hemlock or spruce, — giving the shad- 

 ows of the picture, and acting as a foil to the 

 brightness; — the whole forest seems to have be- 

 come a gigantic parterre of the richest flowers.* 



" Ere, in the northern gale, 

 The summer tresses of the trees are gone, 

 The woods of autumn, all around our vale, 

 Have put their glory on. 



M The mountains that infold. 

 In their wide sweep, the colour'd landscape round. 

 Seem groups of giant kings, in purple and gold. 



That guard th' enchanted ground."— Bryant. 



* In examining the details of this mass of glowing colour, I 

 have found that by far the greatest proportion is produced by 

 the sugar-maple, and other species of the same genus. The 

 leaves of these display all shades of red, from deepest crimson to 

 bright orange ; which generally occurring in large masses, not 

 in individual detached leaves, prevents anything tawdry or little 

 in the effect ; on the contrary, when the full beams of the sun 

 shine on them, the warm and glowing colours possess a great 

 deal of grandeur. The poplar leaves often assume a crimson 

 hue ; the elm, a bright and golden yellow ; birch and beech, a 

 pale, sober, yellow-ochre ; ash and basswood, different shades of 

 brown ; the tamarack, a buff-yellow. The beech, the ash, and 

 the tamarack do not, in general, bear much part in this glitter- 

 ing pageant ; the ash is mostly leafless at the time, and the glory 

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