Year: 1872

RFery<tnsiy Don't Know l5rfIEEans B.f


q serinoaixinE. ss.s,.- ~.
|. While the lustrous. relics of summer
still Simmer on every tree and the
walks and the ways are strewn with
the purple and fine linen of the sum-
mer foliage, the following general ex-
animation of the causes of the chang
ing color of the leaf must be of more
than casual interest. Says the philos-
opher of the springfield Republican
The leaf is tea-kettle, A tree may
be considered in the grotesque attitude
of having its branches hung, with
thousands of tea-kettIes, or more cor
rectly, perhaps, of being one immense
tea-kettle with thousands OF Tiny
spouts, from which steam is continu-
ally pouring. The steam, like that
from the human body, is invisible, it
is so light, but it is there; and If u
thrifty plant, or tree, or man is put
under a glass receiver the inside of
the receiver will soon moist over and
drip with the eXhaled vapor. This is
what becomes Of all the water with
which plants are Watered; il is alb
sorbed into the roots, passes iup
through the mysterious cooking pro-
cesses by which the plant extracts nu-
triment- from it, sfhd passes out
through the leaves. But this water is
loaded with mineral substances, after
having soaked in the earth, or is "hard"
as the housewives say. Over the
kitchen fire it sometimes leaves
thick deposit in the iron. tea kettles.
and after being boiled in the tree, it
leaves thick deposit on the leaves
The pores of the leaves are not very
large, of course, being quite invisible
to the nakedseye, and finally fill up
with this deposit from the water.
This filling up renders them quite use
less as leaves, and changes their color
ing matter to the brilliant dyes of the
autnmn time. But here there remains
p (. still unexplained qmystery-the
-strangeness OF these changes, how it
is that the3 ordinary beech leaves
change TO "a rich, brown, while the
leaves of the brown beech, reversing
the order, change to green, and the
maple TO red, and despite our wis
dom we wouldn't dare to be asked
how it was that the eVergreens don't
change at all But. there is another
singular and particularly moral point
in the economy of the falling leaf.
The leaf doesn't drop off, until it has,
so to speak, made its will and provi-
sled for its heirs. The leaf is there
fore, an example of the most world
ly prudence rather than of vanity.
Lest its separation form the bough
should wound the parent support, it
goes to work and carefully cuts the
line, all but few shreds of
tough, dead skin, and heals the sore
before it is made. After this scar is
we'll bandaged over by the healing
medicainents of nature, the work of
the leaf is done, its mission accom-
plished. From that day on it aban-
dons itself TO the bright coquetries of
being at leisure, and tosses merrily in
the breeze, with the consciousness of
a duty done and play day earDed.-
And when at length it flutters to the
earth and resigns itself to the burial
of winter, it is with no vain longings
after a past life, but, we doubt not,
with a secret pride and self-satisfac-
ton, tnat it it cannot be leaf it can
at least be manure, and that 1t has ex-
changed a mission OF useful beauty
for one of beautiful utility.