THE CROIFN OF AUTUMN 267 



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Where is the glory of autumn colouring found in its 

 highest power ? This is one of the townsman s com 

 monest queries at one date, as &quot;when can we most 

 easily hear the nightingale &quot; at another date. The ques 

 tion suggests that we have quite escaped from the old 

 gloomy view that autumn is a time and a scene of melan 

 choly, when &quot; after many a summer dies the swan.&quot; The 

 yellow leaf (on the elm at any rate) is not in our view 

 sere. It is almost an apotheosis, when the spring and 

 the summer flame before they die or glow before they 

 grow ashy grey. Throughout Europe and North 

 America, autumn crowns the year. The phrase Indian 

 summer comes, of course, from North America, and in 

 some parts of that continent some weeks of the autumn 

 are quite supreme in the records of the year. In the 

 north-east the winter is hafd, the spring arrives slowly 

 and muddily, and the frost has still refused to leave the 

 ground in May. With summer come the sandflies and 

 mosquitoes, autumn alone has all the virtues ; every 

 conceivable tint of red clothes the ground. The golden 

 rod flowers among the coloured currants. The Canadian 

 maple is a pillar of fire by day. The air is warm and soft, 

 but clear. The most distinctive animal of the country, 

 the caribou, decides that it is spring, and a close time is 

 interpolated. The sumach is to the Near East what the 

 maple is to Canada, and its more brilliant reds are often 

 set in a background of the sober colours that we know 

 in England. 



We have in England no autumnal scenes quite so 

 brilliant as we should find if we travelled to Grand Falls 

 or to the Iron Gates. Our splendours of the fall are in 

 another manner. You would not compare a goldfinch 



