timber, without any attractions.  It is in the old States only that we see anything like a picturesque grouping of woods; and here, the absence of art and design, in the formation and relative disposition of these groups, gives them a peculiar interest to the lover of natural scenery.  There is a charm, therefore, in New-England landscape, existing nowhere else in equal degree; but this is rapidly giving place to those artificial improvements that are destined to ruin the face of the country, which owes its present attractions to the spontaneous efforts of Nature, modified only by the unartistic operations of a simple agriculture.

Travelling in a forest, though delightful as an occasional recreation, is, when continued many hours in succession, unless one be engaged in scientific researches, very monotonous and wearisome.  Even the productions of a forest are not so various as those of a tract in which all the different conditions of wildness and culture are intermingled.  A view of an unbroken wilderness from an elevation is equally monotonous.  Wood must be blended with other forms of landscape, with pasture and tillage, with roads, houses, and farms, to convey to the mind the most agreeable sensations.  The monotony of unbroken forest-scenery is partially relieved in the autumn by the mixed variety of tints belonging to the different trees; but this does not wholly subdue the prevailing expression of dreariness and gloom.

Nothing can surpass the splendor of this autumnal pageantry, as beheld in the Green Mountains of Vermont and Western Massachusetts, in the early part of October.  This region abounds in Sugar-Maples, which are very beautifully tinted, and in a sufficient variety of other trees to delight the eye with every specious hue.  A remarkable appearance may always be observed in Maples.  Some trees of this kind are entirely green, with the exception perhaps of a single bough, which is of a bright crimson or scarlet.  Sometimes the lower half of the foliage will be green, while the upper part is entirely crimsoned, resembling a spire of flame rising out of a mass of verdure.  In other cases this order is reversed, and the tree presents the appearance of a green spire rising out of flame.  We see no end to the variety of these apparently capricious phenomena, which some have explained by supposing the colored branches to be affected with partial disease that hastens their maturity:  but this can hardly be admitted as the true explanation, as such appearances exist when no other symptoms of malady can be discovered.

So much has been said and written of late in regard to the tints of autumn leaves, that the writer of this cannot be expected to advance anything new concerning them.  Let me remark, however, that these beautiful tintings are not due to the action of frost, which is, on the contrary, highly prejudicial to them, as we may observe on several different occasions.  If, for example, a frost should occur in September