Article #21 - Why do the leaves of trees change their color in Autumn?

 

    I shall endeavour to answer this question by comparing it with animal life which I consider to be analigous [sic]. It is in the order of Nature for many of them to change their appearance.

 

[The writer gives geese, horses, and cattle as examples and goes on to compare sap in trees with blood in the human body.]

 

So it is with the forest trees they grow and expand in this healthy universe and are clothed with green verdure whilst abounding in sap the vivifying influence life and health, but as this returns to the root in the winter season in conjunction with the action of the frost on the branches, a change

of course comes over the leaves and turns them to the red orange and various other tints which make the forest look so sublime in Autumn

            I love and cherish the Autumn time

            For its teaching high and love sublime

 

            In harmony with a Poets description of Autumn

 

            The Scythe has lain the field low,

                        The Syckle low the corn,

            The axe compells the oak to bow,

                        The lark hails not the morn.

 

           

            The daisies’ root the plow has torn,

                        The honeysuckle’s dead,

            The roseleaf, on the blast is born,

                        All summer sweets are fled.