One of the most noticeable things about the principal trees of our temperate climate is that they "shed" their leaves every year, being covered with foliage during the growing season and bare during the winter. This is known as the "deciduous" habit, and such trees are called deciduous trees, in distinction from "evergreen" trees. This is really a habit, brought about by the conditions in which trees of temperate climates must live. The leaves of such trees are broad and thin, fitted for very active work. When the winter comes, they would be entirely unable to endure it. The tree might protect them by giving them narrow forms and thick walls (as in pines), but it would be at the expense of activity during the growing season. It is more economical for the tree to make an entirely new set of leaves each year than to protect the old ones. Perhaps the most noticeable feature in connection with the fall of the leaves is that so many of them take on a rich coloration. Our mixed American forest is the most brilliantly colored autumnal forest in the world, and there can be no landscapes richer in color than those which include such a forest. While all this should appeal to our sense of the beautiful, it should raise the question as to what it means in the life of the trees. We are not at all sure that we know, for we cannot as yet explain the conditions which cause the colors to be produced. We observe that they occur towards the end of the activity of the leaf, but that they are necessarily associated with cold, or drought, or certain outside conditions, is not at all clear. The colors are various shades of red and yellow, sometimes pure, sometimes mixed. It has been recently suggested that the red color is to serve as a protection. It is known that before the fall of the leaf the living substances are gradually withdrawn into the permanent parts of the tree, and that when these living parts cease to work they are peculiarly helpless. At this unprotected period the red appears, and this color absorbs enough heat from the light to raise the temperature, and so the needed protection against chill is afforded. This seems reasonable, but the whole subject of the meaning of plant colors is very obscure. * * * * * Gen. Robert E. Lee was a great lover of forest trees. He owned a large and beautiful forest in northern Virginia at the time of the War of the Rebellion. While the army of Virginia was encamped near Fredericksburg, he was gazing at the great forest trees that beautified a homestead near by, the property of his companion. This companion quotes him as saying on this occasion: "There is nothing in vegetable nature so grand as a tree. Grappling with its roots the granite foundations of the everlasting hills, it reaches its sturdy and gnarled trunk on high, spreads its branches to the heavens, casts its shadow on the sward; and the birds build their nests and sing amid its umbrageous branches." THE BRAVE OLD OAK.