VII. 



TREES IN UNDRESS. 



Although the winds and rains have suddenly 

 extinguished the flaming maples, the gold-illu- 

 mined elms, and hickories, birches and beeches, 

 the glowing sumachs and tupeloes, and left all the 

 hard-wood trees bare of leaves early in November, 

 still there is a charm in the woodlands, which the 

 lover of Nature will not lose sight of. The 

 boughs, now dismantled of foliage, describe a 

 thousand varieties of curves and angles, and each 

 species of tree has its ingrained habit of throwing 

 up its signal mark, and writing on the cerulean 

 page, in many figures, fine lines and dashes, its 

 own peculiar autograph. 



What a graceful flourisher is the elm ! How 

 many sweeping strokes, deflections and cranes'- 

 necks among its boughs, and how regularly dimin- 

 ished the branch lines, curving outward from 

 the trunk to the smallest twig, as if they were 



145 



