STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. I33 



of the plant life is on and the ring that girdles the year of 

 vegetable life has its thickest part set with the floral display of 

 the spring blazing like a rich jewel set in a golden rim. And 

 then it reaches its height and we have the composite flowers of 

 summer, we have the asters, and the golden rods of the early 

 fall and the fringed gentians, and then the witch-hazel blossoms 

 and the forerunners of the spring, and the winter seems to shut 

 in the scene and close it all. And yet there is not a day in the 

 year when the botanist may not go into the woods and find 

 abundant material for study. He may take his snowshoes and 

 let the drifts lead him nearer and nearer even. He may watch 

 the way the birds are being fed by the kind Providence watch- 

 ing over them, even in the dead of winter. Does God take care 

 of the birds ? Yes, because I have seen him in the very act of 

 doing it. After a severe snow storm I went down to a little 

 brook in the rear of the house where I was living then, and 

 looked across the stream and saw a flock of birds flying about 

 from place to place and feeding upon the tops of little weeds 

 that stood up just above the snow. The wind had blown the 

 snow away from the place where these herbs were and had 

 piled it up around the roots of the bushes where it was needed 

 to protect the roots of the bushes from the cold. And it left 

 bare the stems of these weeds and from weed to weed and plant 

 to plant the birds were flying and eating their fill as they lighted 

 upon each one and then going to the next one. God had swept 

 the snow away, — otherwise it would have buried these weeds, — 

 and given the birds a chance at his table. 



The life that seems dead through the winter springs quickly 

 again into activity in the spring, and what a beautiful type that 

 is of resurrection. The life remains apparently dead, and into 

 quick new life it springs at the call of the sun each spring. 



Plants gird the year with perpetual life. Fruits come very 

 near making a complete belt — complete, golden, beautiful belt 

 around the year. If we speak of fruits as they are stored up, 

 they do. **\Ve always have fresh apples in our home," said an 

 •intelligent farmer, "the late apples keep until the early apples 

 are ripe in the summer, so we always have a supply of fresh 

 apples in our home." Any one who will intelligently cultivate 

 apples may reach the same result. There may always be a 

 supply of these beautiful specimens of fruit, of such fruit as we 



