134 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



have these beautiful specimens here before us, in our homes, 

 with proper selection and proper care. Of course taking this 

 into account, the way in which fruits can be kept, they girdle 

 the year. But even without that, the break in the year's con- 

 tinuity is but very slight. Into the late fall fruits remain still 

 upon the trees, a variety of fruits, a variety of nuts, which are 

 only another form of fruit, until the snow buries them, and in 

 the spring when the snow melts away again, under the oak tree 

 3'ou may pick up and eat, if you choose, the acorns that have 

 lain there, kept snugly under snow all the winter long. The 

 squirrels lay up their supply of nuts not because they need to 

 do it, because they cannot find them in nature but simply because 

 the snow would otherwise bury them beyond their reach, it 

 would be too hard a task for them to dig them from the snow 

 and the ice. If the snow were not there they would have no 

 need of storing up their supply of nuts. And indeed, in mild 

 winters they get the greater part of their food by running about 

 from tree to tree, from the cones of the evergreen trees and the 

 nuts which they find here and there upon the ground. Our 

 winter birds find abundant supply of food. They come down 

 from further north and spend their winters with us. They do 

 not starve. Those beautiful birds wdiich you sometimes call 

 robins, they tell you "The robins are here, I saw them in the 

 apple tree" — well, they saw something there that looks some- 

 thing like a robin, the pine grosbeak, that come in flocks. They 

 spend the winter along the streets of our villages and cities and 

 eat the apples hanging on the trees. They find plenty of food 

 here and there elsewhere, in diflferent ways they find plenty of 

 food. They do not starve. And so the chickadee in our woods 

 sings his little song cheerily all winter long and finds no 

 trouble ; nature provides bountifully at her table for all the life 

 that must depend upon her supply, and it is only because of the 

 snow burying it so frequently that there is any distress at all. 

 Of course man could not live without the forethought and pro- 

 vision of laying up for himself in this climate, but even here the 

 year is girded with its circle of fruit as well as with its circle of 

 flowers. 



As the spring comes on the activities begin again in nature 

 and the first flowers come, the flowers that you all look for as 

 among the very first, the skunk cabbage, the hepatica, the bluets, 



