eive that it is the unusual heat which, more than anything, causes
the leaves to fall, there having been, perhaps, no frost nor rain for
some time. The intense heat suddenly ripens and wilts them, just as it
softens and ripens peaches and other fruits, and causes them to drop.

The leaves of late Red Maples, still bright, strew the earth, often
crimson-spotted on a yellow ground, like some wild apples,--though they
preserve these bright colors on the ground but a day or two, especially
if it rains. On causeways I go by trees here and there all bare and
smoke-like, having lost their brilliant clothing; but there it lies,
nearly as bright as ever, on the ground on one side, and making nearly
as regular a figure as lately on the tree. I would rather say that I
first observe the trees thus flat on the ground like a permanent colored
shadow, and they suggest to look for the boughs that bore them. A queen
might be proud to walk where these gallant trees have spread their
bright cloaks in the mud. I see wagons roll over them as a shadow or a
reflection, and the drivers heed them just as little as they did their
shadows before.

Birds'-nests, in the Huckleberry and other shrubs, and in trees, are
already being filled with the withered leaves. So many have fallen in
the woods, that a squirrel cannot run after a falling nut without being
heard. Boys are raking them in the streets, if only for the pleasure of
dealing with such clean crisp substances. Some sweep the paths
scrupulously neat, and then stand to see the next breath strew them with
new trophies. The swamp-floor is thickly covered, and the _Lycopodium
lucidulum_ looks suddenly greener amid them. In dense woods they
half-cover pools that are three or four rods long. The other day I could
hardly find a well-known spring, and even suspected that it had dried
up, for it was completely concealed by freshly fallen leaves; and when I
swept them aside and revealed it, it was like striking the earth, with
Aaron's rod, for a new spring. Wet grounds about the edges of swamps
look dry with them. At one swamp, where I was surveying, thinking to
step on a leafy shore from a rail, I got into the water more than a foot
deep.

When I go to the river the day after the principal fall of leaves, the
sixteenth, I find my boat all covered, bottom and seats, with the leaves
of the Golden Willow under which it is moored, and I set sail with a
cargo of them rustling under my feet. If I empty i