E-text prepared by Joshua Hutchinson, David Kline, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
VOL. X.—OCTOBER, 1862.—NO. LX.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by TICKNORAND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District ofMassachusetts.
AUTUMNAL TINTS.
Europeans coming to America are surprised by the brilliancyof our autumnal foliage. There is no account of such a phenomenon in Englishpoetry, because the trees acquire but few bright colors there. The most thatThomson says on this subject in his "Autumn" is contained in thelines,—
"But see the fading many-colored woods,
Shade deepening over shade, the country round
Imbrown; a crowded umbrage, dusk and dun,
Of every hue, from wan declining green to sooty dark":—
and in the line in which he speaks of
"Autumn beaming o'er the yellow woods."
The autumnal change of our woods has not made a deepimpression on our own literature yet. October has hardly tinged our poetry.
A great many, who have spent their lives in cities, and havenever chanced to come into the country at this season, have never seen this,the flower, or rather the ripe fruit, of the year. I remember riding with onesuch citizen, who, though a fortnight too late for the most brilliant tints,was taken by surprise, and would not believe that there had been any brighter.He had never heard of this phenomenon before. Not only many in our towns havenever witnessed it, but it is scarcely remembered by the majority from year toyear.
Most appear to confound changed leaves with withered ones,as if they were to confound ripe apples with rotten ones. I think that thechange to some higher color in a leaf is an evidence that it has arrived at alate and perfect maturity, answering to the maturity of fruits. It is generallythe lowest and oldest leaves which change first. But as the perfect winged andusually bright-colored insect is short-lived, so the leaves ripen but to fall.
Generally, every fruit, on ripening, and just before itfalls, when it commences a more independent and individual existence, requiringless nourishment from any source, and that not so much from the earth throughits stem as from the sun and air, acquires a bright tint. So do leaves. Thephysiologist says it is "due to an increased absorption of oxygen." Thatis the scientific account of the matter,—only a reassertion of the fact.But I am more interested in the rosy cheek than I am to know what particulardiet the maiden fed on. The very forest and herbage, the pellicle of the earth,must acquire a bright color, an evidence of its ripeness,—as if the globeitself were a fruit on its stem, with ever a cheek toward the sun.
Flowers are but colored leaves, fruits but ripe ones. Theedible part of most fruits is, as the physiologist says, "the parenchymaor fleshy tissue of the leaf" of which they are formed.
Our appetites have commonly confined our views of ripenessand its phenomena, color, mellowness, and perfectness, to the fruits which weeat, and we are wont to forget that an immense harvest which we do not eat,hardly use at all, is annually ripened by Nature. At our annual Cattle Showsand Horticultural Exhibitions, we make, as we think, a great show of fairfruits, destined, however, to a rather ignoble end, fruits not valued for theirbeauty chiefly. But round about and within our towns there