We can prove this fact for ourselves if we notice how often, while all the rest of a tree is green, the leaves and small branches which are partly broken, and have, therefore, lost a great part of their vitality, lose their green colour, and become yellow or red.
Not only are the broad effects of a landscape made beautiful in autumn by the rich colouring of large masses of trees, but the close observer will find every hedge, bottom, and wild common flaming with colour. Heath tell us "it is the commonest plants whose colours are the most beautiful and striking." Amongst those which produce the most brilliant autumnal tints, the following are found almost everywhere in the hedges in England: Bramble, hawthorn, wild strawberry, dock, spindle-tree, herb robert, cranes-bill, silver weed, hedge maple, dogwood, black bryony, ivy; while in the kitchen gardens nothing can exceed the beauty of the asparagus and the common carrot.
Many birds come to England from the north to spend the winter. Wild ducks, woodcocks, fieldfares, and curlews are coming now, besides thrushes, larks, and other small birds. Some of these live with us all through the year, and are only joined by relatives from colder climates. In very cold winters many birds who do not usually migrate, are driven south in search of food; but the reception they meet with is hardly calculated to attract great numbers of strangers to our shores; for the notice one usually reads in the newspapers is that such and such a rare bird "has been seen and shot."
"It is as hot as we have it in India, or, at any rate, I feel the heat as much." One often hears this statement on a hot summer's day from an Indian visitor; while, on the other hand, our Canadian cousins assure us that their bright, clear winter, though so intensely cold, is not so trying as ours. This is to a great extent caused by the unusual moisture of the air in England. John Burroughs tells us that "the average rainfall in London is less than in New York, and yet it doubtless rains ten days in the former to one in the latter," which he explains by the fact that in England "it rains easily, but slowly."
That we can bear greater dry than damp heat is easily proved by holding one's hand before a fire, and then plunging it into hot water, using a thermometer in both cases to test the heat. The same fact with regard to cold can be tried by holding both hands in a draught of cold air, the one hand being wet, the other dry.
Lovers of natural history are not all aware what advantages the first sharp frost offers them for the study of animal and vegetable life in ponds. Thoreau, one of the most devoted admirers of nature, says in his "Walden," that, "The first ice is especially interesting, being hard, dark, and transparent, and affords the best opportunity that ever offers for examining the bottom, where it is shallow; for you can lie at your length on ice only an inch thick, like a skater insect on the surface of the water, and study the bottom at your leisure, only two or three inches distant, like a picture behind a glass."