AUTUMN LEAVES. 
“ After October’s biting frost it seems 
That summer clays return. The partridge whirs 
A noisy wing to ambush in the firs; 
And for a while the sun retricks his beams. 
It is an autumn that of spring-time dreams. 
The warm breeze comes again, and softly stirs 
The silent tree-tops, and the empty burrs 
Which, loosened, drop into the leaf-clogged streams.” 
Now is the time to protect Roses and other half-hardy 
plants, as winter will soon be upon us. All beds of 
herbaceous plants and bulbs should be carefully guarded 
against frost. No matter if the catalogues say that an 
Iris, Hyacinth, Rose or Lily is hardy, protect it just 
the same. Our forest trees are hardy, but Nature 
protects them by a coating of leaves beneath which the 
frost rarely enters. The idea of raking every leaf from 
the garden and lawn as winter approaches is, to state it 
mildly, simply absurd. Let the leaves stay and add 
more to them, for there cannot be found a better 
mulching than newly fallen leaves. As we have often 
said it is very difficult to improve on Nature’s work. 
Cover all flower-beds and tender shrubs with six inches 
of newly-fallen leaves; keep them in place with some 
brush, and protection is complete. 
In regard to the “ falling of the leaf,” Shirly Hibbard 
says: “The occurrence is so familiar, that we rarely 
think of asking Nature what she means by it, and how 
it is done.»Compare the Beech with the Elm: the Beech 
will, perhaps hold its leaves like an Evergreen, although 
they be dead and the color of brown paper, but the Elm 
will shed every one, after they have glittered like mil¬ 
lions of gold pieces in the soft autumnal sunshine, 
Artemus heard his daughter sing, ‘Why do summer 
Roses fade ? ’ and he said, ‘ I don’t know, and I don’t 
care.’ That frame of mind is almost universal; and 
the worst of it is, there must be a lot of observing and 
thinking done before one can arrive at any definite con¬ 
clusion as to any natural phenomenon, however com¬ 
mon of the commonplace it may be. Why do leaves 
fall? Because they are dead. Then why and how does 
the Beech (especially the clipped Beech) hold its leaves, 
while the Elm and the Birch are decisive in shaking 
down their leaves as soon as they are done with them. 
One good reason the leaf should fall is that it is dead, 
and its attachment or articulation is dead with it. But 
the leaf of the Beech that still clings so tight is dead 
also, and the question will arise—Why the difference ? 
Now there can be no doubt that the swelling of the bud 
that is to produce the leaf next year helps to push away 
the leaf of this year. And in separating there must 
take place a process of healing over the scar or joint 
where the contact was vital, and the highway of the 
circulation between branch and leaf; for in casting off 
the leaf there results, hypothetically, a wound, but 
practically, there is no wound, because the process of 
sloughing is accompanied by a process of healing, and 
thus between the living and the dead, between the living 
twig and the dead leaf, a proper cuticle or barrier is 
provided, and we have a hint thus far that the shedding 
of the leaf is a complicated vital process, primarily pro¬ 
vided for in the scheme of the organization of the tree, 
and in no respect whatever to be regarded as an acci 
dent. Now, it must depend wholly, or in part, on the 
simultaneity of the death of the leaf, the swelling of 
the bud, and the cicatrization of the point of separation 
whether the dead leaf is pushed off at once or holds in 
its original place for a time, until the conditions requi¬ 
site to its removal are completed. The curious inquirer 
into such matters may therefore with advantage com¬ 
pare the several sorts of deciduous trees as to the state 
of their buds now. The Beech, which holds its leaves, 
should have buds less swollen than the Horse-chestnut, 
which cast off its leaves long ago. Such, indeed, is the 
fact, but one comparison is not enough to satisfy a 
philosopher, and he who would attain to the philosophy 
of the subject must make many comparisons, and must 
found all his reasoning on observation. 
But there is another and not less interesting question 
deserving to take precedence of the fall of the leaf. By 
what property, or what life conditions, or by what com¬ 
pliance with outward conditions, do leaves so strangely 
change in color ere they fall ? The change of color is 
obviously an outward sign that they are dying or dead, 
their term of existence is completed, and their chemical 
constitution is changing. So we go back another stage 
and ask—What is a leaf, and what does it do for its liv¬ 
ing? for as everything has in some way to earn its 
bread, a leaf must justify itself by doing something use¬ 
ful. It is the breathing machine; it brings the crude 
sap of the tree into contact with the atmosphere just as, 
in the lungs of an animal, the dark stale blood con¬ 
stantly pumped from the heart is exposed to the influ¬ 
ence of oxygen, and made scarlet and vital. The leaf 
exhales superfluous water, inhales requisite gases, and 
so helps to manufacture the fibre, the gum, the sugar, 
the starch—in fact, it contributes to convert the fluids 
taken up by the roots into the vital substance of the 
tree, adding to its bulk and perfecting its secretions. It 
not only absorbs gases from the atmosphere, but it ab¬ 
sorbs light, and converts the imponderable into the pon¬ 
derable. Out of the red rays of light it manufactures 
acids; out of the blue rays it produces gums and sugars 
It may be that the carbon, which constitutes the main 
bulk of the tree, is all derived from the atmosphere by 
the action of the leaves, and that the common daylight 
affords the necessary stimulus of motive powder. Thus 
we get into further complications, but they lead 
us distinctly to a proper goal. When the leaf de¬ 
clines in health, its constituent secretions change. 
The acid of the red ray which should change into 
sugar is arrested in its organic history, and it throws 
the red ray out on the surface of the leaf itself, 
and so the chemical condition of the leaf is made known 
by its color. The change of color, whether to yellow, 
scarlet, brown, or purple, represents chemical condi¬ 
tions, and in a certain sense the colors correspond with 
the rays of the spectrum, that are by the laws of 
actinism connected with the constituents and the 
changes that ensue when the processes of l.fe give place 
to the dissolutions of death. The changing leaf is in a 
morbid state, and it must be cut off from the healthy 
