The Fall of the Leaf 229 



when once the weaklings have been thus disposed 

 of, the greater number of the elms, as well as the 

 beeches, oaks, and ashes in the surrounding wood- 

 land landscape, keep their foliage untouched by 

 autumn reds and golds for eight or nine weeks 

 longer, and still preserve the deep green of the 

 August boughs under October and November 

 skies. By an unforeseen turn in nature's mood, 

 the cooler temperatures of September give their 

 foliage a new lease of life. 



As little is accurately known of the causes which 

 govern the date of the leaf's fall in autumn as 

 of the precise interaction of the forces of sunshine, 

 moisture, and frost which make the autumn 

 splendours of some woodlands or isolated clumps 

 of trees so much more brilliant in certain years. 

 In some autumns the elm- crowns which face 

 our windows from the garden's edge merely seem 

 to be clothed one week and bare the next, without 

 our noticing more of the change than we usually 

 see of the departure of the cuckoo or the nightingale. 

 But in another year, the same high crowns will 

 delight the eye day after day through almost the 

 whole of November, burning out their life-blood, 

 as it seems, under the pale blue of the skies of 

 St. Martin's summer, in a splendour of amber and 

 orange and soot- flecked gold. Yet we are still 

 as little able to foretell either the moment or the 

 manner of the stripping of the autumn elms as we 

 could predict the oncoming or the intensity of an 

 Atlantic cyclone in the youth of meteorology. 

 It is not, as might perhaps be expected, the foreign 



