280 HOME AND GARDEN 



the one whose foliage has the strangest sound is the 

 Virginian Allspice {Calycantlms Jioridus), whose leaves 

 are of so dry and harsh a quality that they seem to 

 grate and clash as they come together. 



As for the matter of colour, what may be observed 

 is simply without end. Those who have had no train- 

 ing in the way to see colour nearly always deceive 

 themselves into thinking that they see it as they know 

 it is locally, whereas the trained eye sees colour in 

 due relation and as it truly appears to he. I remember 

 driving with a friend of more than ordinary in- 

 telligence, who stoutly maintained that he saw the 

 distant wooded hill quite as green as the near hedge. 

 He knew it was green and could not see it otherwise, 

 till I stopped at a place where a part of the face, but 

 none of the sky-bounded edge of the wooded distance, 

 showed through a tiny opening among the near green 

 branches, when, to his immense surprise, he saw it 

 was blue. A good way of showing the same thing 

 is to tear a roundish hole in any large bright-green 

 leaf, such as a Burdock, and to hold it at half-arm's 

 length so that a part of a distant landscape is seen 

 through the hole, and the eye sees also the whole 

 surface of the leaf. As long as the sight takes in 

 both, it will see the true relative colour of the dis- 

 tance. I constantly do this myself, first looking at 

 the distance without the leaf-frame in order to see 

 how nearly I can guess the truth of the far colour. 

 Even in the width of one ploughed field, especially 



