LITMIR.BIZ

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renders the injurious effects of frost apparent is later in the season, after the tints are very generally developed. Every severe frost that happens at this period impairs their lustre, as we may perceive on any day succeeding a frosty night, when the woods, which were previously in their gayest splendor, will be faded to a duller and more uniform shade,—as if the whole mass had been dipped into a brownish dye, leaving the peculiar tints of each species dimly conspicuous through this shading. The most brilliant and unsullied hues are displayed in a cool, but not frosty autumn, succeeding a moderate summer. Very warm weather in autumn hastens the coloring process, and renders the hues proportionally transient. I have known Maple woods, early in October, to be completely embrowned and stripped of their leaves by two days of summer heat. Cool days and nights, unattended with frost, are the favorable conditions for producing and preserving the beauty of autumnal wood-scenery.

      The effects of heat and frost are not so apparent in Oak woods, which have a more coriaceous and persistent foliage than other deciduous trees: but Oaks do not attain the perfection of their beauty, until the Ash, the Maple, and the Tupelo—the glory of the first period of autumn—have shed a great portion of their leaves. The last-named trees are in their splendor during a period of about three weeks after the middle of September, varying with the character of the season.

      Oaks are not generally tinted until October, and are brightest near the third week of this month, preserving their lustre, in great measure, until the hard frosts of November destroy the leaves. The colors of the different Oaks are neither so brilliant nor so variegated as those of Maples; but they are more enduring, and serve more than those of any other woods to give character to our autumnal landscapes.

      It would be difficult to convey to the mind of a person who had never witnessed this brilliant, but solemn pageantry of the dying year, a clear idea of its magnificence. Nothing else in Nature will compare with it: for, though flowers are more beautiful than tinted leaves, no assemblage of flowers, or of flowering trees and shrubs, can produce such a deeply affecting scene of beauty as the autumn woods. If we would behold them In their greatest brilliancy and variety, we must journey during the first period of the Fall of the Leaf in those parts of the country where the Maple, the Ash, and the Tupelo are the prevailing timber. If we stand, at this time, on a moderate elevation affording a view of a wooded swamp rising into upland and melting imperceptibly into mountain landscape, we obtain a fair sight of the different assemblages of species, as distinguished by their tints. The Oaks will be marked, at this early period, chiefly by their unaltered verdure. In the lowland the scarlet and crimson hues of the Maple and the Tupelo predominate, mingled with a superb variety of colors from the shrubbery, whose splendor is always the greatest on the borders of ponds and water-courses, and frequently surpasses that of the trees. As the plain rises into the hill-side, the Ash-trees may be distinguished by their peculiar shades of salmon, mulberry, and purple, and the Hickories by their invariable yellows. The Elm, the Lime, and the Buttonwood are always blemished and rusty: they add no brilliancy to the spectacle, serving only to sober and relieve other parts of the scenery.

      When the second period of the Fall of the Leaf has arrived, the woods that were first tinted have mostly become leafless. The grouping of different species is, therefore, very apparent at this time,—some assemblages presenting the denuded appearance of winter, some remaining still green, while the Oaks are the principal attraction, with an intermixture of a few other species, whose foliage has been protected and the development of their hues retarded by some peculiarity of situation. Green rows of Willows may also be seen by road-sides in damp places, and irregular groups of them near the water-courses. The foreign trees—seldom found in woods—are still unchanged, as we may observe wherever there is a row of European Elms, Weeping Willows, or a hedge-row of Privet.

      One might suppose that a Pine wood must look particularly sombre in this grand spectacle of beauty; but it cannot be denied that in those regions where there is a considerable proportion of Pines the perfection of this scenery is witnessed. Something is needful to relieve the eye as it wanders over such a profusion of brilliant colors. Pine woods provide this relief, and cause the tinted forest groups to stand out in greater prominence. In many districts where Pines were the original growth, they still constitute the larger sylvan assemblages, while the deciduous trees stand in scattered groups on the edge of the forest, and the contiguous plain. The verdurous Pine wood forms a picturesque groundwork to set off the various groups in front of it; and the effect of a scarlet Oak or Tupelo rising like a spire of flame in the midst of verdure is far more striking than if it stood where it was unaffected by contrast.

      The cause of the superior tinting of the American forest, compared with that of Europe, has never been satisfactorily explained, though it seems to be somewhat inexplicably connected with the brightness of the American climate. It is a subject that has not engaged the attention of scientific travellers, who seem to have regarded it as worthy only of the describer of scenery. It may, however, deserve more attention as a scientific fact than has been generally supposed,—particularly as one of the phenomena that perhaps distinguish the productions of the eastern from those of the western coasts of the two grand divisions of the earth. I have observed that the Smoke-tree, which is a Sumach from China, and the Cydonia Japonica, are as brightly colored in autumn as any of our indigenous shrubs; while the Silver-Maple, which, though indigenous in the Western States, probably originated on the western coast of America, shows none of the fine tinting so remarkable in the other American Maples. These facts have led me to conjecture that this superior tinting of the autumnal foliage may be peculiar to the eastern coasts both of the Old and the New Continent, in the northern hemisphere. May not this phenomenon bear some relation to the colder winters and the hotter summers of the eastern compared with the western coasts? I offer this suggestion as a query, not as a theory, and with the hope that it may induce travellers to make some particular observations in reference to it.

      The indigenous trees of America, or rather of the Atlantic side of this continent, are remarkable not only for their superior autumnal hues, but also for the shorter period during which the foliage remains on the trees and retains its verdure. Our fruit-trees, which are all exotics, retain their foliage long after our forest-trees are leafless; and if we visit an arboretum in the latter part of October, we may select the American from the foreign species, by observing that the latter are still green, while the others are either entirely denuded, or in that colored array which immediately precedes the fall of the leaf. The exotics may likewise be distinguished in the spring by their precocity,—their leaves being out a week or ten days earlier than the leaves of our trees. Hence, if we take both the spring and autumn into the account, the foreign, or rather the European species, show a period of verdure of three or four weeks' greater duration than the American species. Many of the former, like the Weeping Willow, do not lose their verdure, nor shed their leaves, until the first wintry blasts of November freeze them upon their branches and roll them into a crisp.

      In a natural forest there is a very small proportion of perfectly formed trees; and these occur only in such places as permit some individuals to stand isolated from the rest, and to spread out their branches to their full extent. When we walk in a forest, we observe several conditions which are favorable to this full expansion of their forms. On the borders of a pond or morass, or of an extensive quarry, the trees extend their branches into the opening, but, as they are cramped on the opposite side, they are only half developed. But this expansion takes place on the side that is exposed to view: hence the incomparable beauty of a wood on the borders of a pond, or on the banks of a river, as viewed from the water; also of a wood on the outside of an islet in a lake or river.

      Fissures or cavities sometimes occur in a large rock, allowing a solitary tree that has become rooted there to attain its full proportions. It is in such places, and on sudden eminences that rise above the forest-level, on a precipice, for example, that overlooks the surrounding wood, that the forest shows individual trees possessing the characters of standards, like those we see by the roadsides and in the open field. We must conclude, therefore, that a primitive forest must contain but a very small proportion of perfect trees: these are, for the most part, the occupants of land cleared by cultivation, and may be found also among the sparse growth of timber that has come up in pasture land, where the constant browsing of cattle prevents the formation of any dense assemblages.

      In the opinion of Whately, grandeur is the prevailing character of a forest, and beauty that of a grove. This distinction may

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