CHAPTER XI.

AUTUMN LIGHTS AND SHADES.

THE fading foliage of the various trees in our woods shows tones of maroon, crimson, orange, bright yellow, russet, and that pale-greenish grey, so hard -one might say impossible-to place rightly on canvas or to give an idea of with the pen. For, as the leaf-tissues get worn with the wear and tear of the season, they become semi-transparent, and the light shines through.

I have never seen a picture that seemed to me to do full justice to what might be called this humming-bird scale of colouring. After most careful mixing of the richest and most transparent colours for those wonderful shadows that have a bloom like that of grapes in their inmost depths, and after

finding the clearest tones with which to touch in the bright high lights crisply and lightly, so that the colours may not be worked in the least degree, it proves all to no purpose.

One look at the canvas, one more look at the woodlands, with their living glorious colours, and the palette-knife scrapes off all that has been so carefully placed on. Easel and canvas are strapped up, and the would-be painter departs, muttering something about another time.

That time is still far away: no artist, dead or living, has ever adequately represented the glow of the fall.

The trunks of the giant beeches, flashing silvergrey in the sunlight, as it falls now here and now there, are spangled from their mighty roots, for some distance up the smooth stems, with the richest golden green moss; and the dead leaves on the ground beneath, madder-brown in tone, throw the whole up in fine relief.

There is a depth of three feet and more, in some places, of pure leaf-mould; generation after generation of dead leaves lies there. Where some great tree, after living his life, has crashed down, huge

branches from other beeches have swept over. Trees, like humanity, must have elbow-room. The sun shines in wherever the foliage is open enough. That giant limb that springs from the main trunk some thirty feet from the roots of the tree, bends downwards until the branches touch the dead leaves beneath. Then it sweeps up again in the full light of the sun, the gold, crimson, and russet tones of the foliage awaking a fancy that some splendid piece of tapestry of the richest hues has been stretched out in the woods to air it.

If the woods do not give all this variety of form and colour, you have only to turn round at the next break, and to look at the hills that rise directly above you in all their various shades of green. The colouring is very different there, but it is in perfect keeping with the glowing woodlands. You will find no jarring tone in Nature. The short velvet turf that covers the chalk is very different in hue from the junipers that stud the hillsides; holly and thorns help to vary the scale still more. The final touches are given by the white breaks of the chalk showing through, and the winding sheep-tracks that lead hither and thither over the hillsides. There

are little patches of mottled gold and crimson scattered at intervals over the barest portions of the turf. These are caused by the dying leaves of the trailing brambles. It is very quiet here; no footstep of ours can be heard on these soft, elastic, dead leaves.

So still is it that the brown owl sits motionless, asleep, close to the trunk of a Scotch fir which is near to us. One look at him through the fieldglass, and we pass on. Bird-life is very scanty in these woods in late autumn; even the great green woodpecker-the yaffle-leaves his stronghold of the beeches for a season. He gives, however, proof positive that he has not quite deserted them yet, for as we slip quietly along, he catches sight of us as he is busy on the stem of a decayed beech. After scuttling round, we can hear the tick of his claws on the bark distinctly; he just pokes his crimson - patched poll round the other side, his quick eye gives one glance at the intruder, then he yells his loudest, making the woods ring with his maniacal yikes! I do not know any two birds that can make more noise when startled than the yaffle and the blackbird. You may occasionally

N

hear both together, then the row is terrible. It is wise, when out observing Nature, to do one's utmost to avoid alarming either of these birds, for the effect of doing so is most disastrous.

As you pass through these old beech-woods you might almost fancy you were walking down the aisles of some great cathedral. Not even a faint rustle can be heard above or below; but walking on, you chance to step on a dead branch which had been concealed by the leaves-it snaps, and what a transformation that simple act of yours. has created! From some cover in the undergrowth, where his bright eyes have been watching you as you passed, out dashes the blackbird, and shriek after shriek peals forth as he flies. Misfortunes never come alone, and when the frightened yells of the yaffle-not his yikeing laugh-join issue with shrieks from the flute-player of the woods, the observer of Nature may as well "make tracks" at once; that rotten stick has proved a marplot.

The wood, which had appeared deserted, becomes instantly full of life; wood-pigeons shoot up from the tree-tops with loud claps of their wings as they dash hither and thither, crossing