the northern evergreens. Each winter such forests shed their leaves.
Among the mountains where the frosts come suddenly, the blaze of glory
and brilliance of color which herald the shedding of the leaves are
surpassed in no other part of the world. Even the colors of the Painted
Desert in northern Arizona and the wonderful flowers of the California
plains are less pleasing. In the Painted Desert the patches of red,
yellow, gray-blue, white, pale green, and black have a garish, almost
repellent appearance. In California the flame-colored acres of poppies
in some places, of white or yellow daisylike flowers in others, or of
purple blossoms elsewhere have a softer expression than the bare soil
of the desert. Yet they lack the delicate blending and harmony of colors
which is the greatest charm of the autumn foliage in the deciduous
forests. Even where the forests consist of such trees as birches,
beeches, aspens, or sycamores, whose leaves merely turn yellow in the
fall, the contrast between this color and the green tint of summer or
the bare branches of winter adds a spice of variety which is lacking in
other and more monotonous forests.

From still other points of view the deciduous forest has an almost
unequaled degree of variety. In one place it consists of graceful little
birches whose white trunks shimmering in the twilight form just the
background for ghosts. Contrast them with the oak forest half a mile
away. There the sense of gracefulness gives place to a feeling of
strength. The lines are no longer vertical but horizontal. The knotted
elbows of the branches recall the keels of sturdy merchantmen of bygone
days. The acorns under foot suggest food for the herds of half-wild pigs
which roam among the trees in many a southern county. Of quite another
type are the stately forests of the Appalachians where splendid magnolia
and tulip trees spread their broad limbs aloft at heights of one hundred
feet or more.

Deciduous forests grow in the well-balanced regions where summer and
winter approach equality, where neither is unduly long, and where
neither is subject to prolonged drought. They extend southward from
central New England, the Great Lakes, and Minnesota, to Mississippi,
Arkansas, and eastern Texas. They predominate even in parts of such
prairie States as Michigan, Indiana, southern Illinois, and southeastern
Missouri. No part of the continent is more populous or more progressive
than the regions once covered b