The Fall of the Leaf 233 



and brilliance to the hues of all other trees within 

 sight, urging them, as it were, into an achievement 

 greater than their own. There is a characteristic 

 type of landscape on the slopes of many of the 

 chalk-down ranges, in which the white pits and 

 hollows of the soil make an austere and striking 

 contrast of colour with the dark foliage of yews and 

 junipers, and the cool, grey-backed leaves of the 

 guelder-rose and its kindred whitebeam, that love 

 this soil. This contrast of black, white, and grey 

 has always a great individuality and a Puritan 

 beauty ; but it needs just the final touch of colour 

 from the interspersed beech-boughs in October 

 to relieve its coldness and to vivify its strong, 

 clear tones. The splendour of autumn foliage is 

 never so complete and satisfying as when it is 

 set off in this way by some dark neighbouring 

 mass. 



Just as the beech finds its foil in the sylvan yews 

 or pines, the flame-topped elm makes one of the 

 most beautiful of all autumn pictures when its 

 boughs overshadow the spacious rickyard of some 

 Berkshire or Wiltshire farmstead, with its long 

 black wooden barns. The elm is always a less 

 sylvan tree than the beech ; it clings more closely 

 to the fields and homes of men, and is never seen 

 in finer or more stately growth than where the 

 cloud-like fullness of its vast upper boughs over- 

 shadows some hamlet or sheltered farm. Brittle 

 both in root and bough it inevitably involves some 

 slight risk to life or property when its boughs 

 stretch directly above the building or pathways 



