Like these trees in the formation of symmetrical, rounded heads are the chestnuts, which are still green when the other deciduous trees of the wood have been caught in the conflagration of autumn coloring. Now, the first week in October being past, they show a certain yellowness of foliage which is enhanced by the yellow-brown of the ripe burs which throng the tips of their upper branches.
Twice during the year does the rich green of the chestnut leafage bloom with a richer tinting,--first in June, when the long staminate blossoms seem to pour in cascades from their billowed tops, and again at this time of year, when the ripened nuts push open the green burs of September and the failing sap leaves them at first a yellow-green and later a golden tan-brown. Walking beneath the trees to-day you are likely to get a rap on the head from a solid seal-brown chestnut, or even find your neck full of prickers where the fretful porcupine of a descending bur has jabbed you.
Already the ash trees, whose foliage has passed with much rapidity through olive-green and olive-yellow to tan-brown, which still holds a little of the olive tint, stand bare and gray against the sky, like the red maples, sure prophets of winter. The ash is never profuse of leaves. It drops them first of all in the autumn and is among the latest to put them forth in the spring. Even in the height of summer you cannot say that its foliage is dense; and when the slender brown leaves lie upon the ground they do not make a thick carpet. They merely crisp under foot instead of rustling.
Under a Norway maple the ground will later be half-leg deep in dense curled leaves that rustle and swish under your stride. You plough through them and they leap up and dance away from your progress, a splashing, undulating brown tide. Under oaks, much later, you find a similar sea, though its flood does not rise so high and there is a crisper rustle that is yet a large-hearted and generous sound. Under willows there is a silky crispness that is quite different from either.
So, blindfolded and led from one part of the forest to another, you might tell every tree under which you passed by the sound of its dead leaves under foot. So, too, knowing your tree, you might tell with accuracy the time of the year, the definite week of autumn in which your pilgrimage was taking place. Under the oaks to-day, though but a few leaves are yet on the ground, you would feel the round acorns under foot, and you would know that these were not chestnuts because of the lack of burs; so, too, you might know that you were under the white oak instead of the black by the different shape of the acorn.