14 FAMILIAR TREES 



in the many chemical processes of plant-life which 

 have been carried on in the laboratory of the tree's 

 body— begin to get clearer in colour. The change 

 varies in date and order. As Mr. Ruskin has truly 

 said, "A group of trees changes the colour of its leafage 

 from week to week, and its position from day to day; 

 it is sometimes languid with heat, and sometimes heavy 

 with rain." If the weather be fine, the leaves will 

 generally turn to a lemon-yellow along the margins of 

 their leaflets, while the midrib, and some of the other 

 veins, remain edged with a band of green, clearer, paler, 

 and more beautiful than any that the tree has borne 

 during the three preceding months. If, however, the 

 weather be wet, the delicate yellow is blurred with rusty 

 stains, or the whole leaf becomes, before falling fr^om 

 the tree, of a rich ferruginous brown. Then, as separate 

 leaflets, or the great fans in their entirety, conie 

 tumbling down in the gale, every now and then a rush 

 is heard through the boughs, and a green or brownish 

 prickle studded sphere falls to earth, often bursting 

 with the . shock, and disclosing the polished and 

 mottled mahogany-like chestnut within. 



Many of the fruits are thus blown down when 

 green, fleshy, and unripe, and often they do not burst, 

 -but simply decay ; or, if they are broken, they show 

 immature seeds of an ivory whiteness, instead of the 

 harder brown ones that lie-loose within the chambers 

 of the drier, riper fruits. Then the ground, strewn 

 with leaves, green, yellow, or brown, with green cap- 

 sules, some displaying the pure white inner surfaces, 

 and with the bright glossy chestnuts still bearing a 

 white scar marking their former point of attachment. 



