HOME AND CANADIAN ORCHARDS 



In Queensland the pineapple is grown in big fields, and 

 about ten thousand fruits (worth about one penny each) 

 can be got from a single acre. It is also grown in the 

 West Indies, in India, and in other tropical countries. If 

 you examine the horny outside skin of the fruit with a sharp 

 penknife, you will find that each little piece of the mosaic is 

 a flower in itself; with a little care the bracts, three sepals, 

 three petals, and six stamens can be distinguished. The 

 whole stem and all its flowers unite to make a compound 

 fruit. Most varieties have no seeds. It is a native of South 

 America. 



It is, however, our home fruits. Apples, Pears, Goose- 

 berries, Strawberries, Raspberries, and Currants, that are 

 most important to us in Britain. The Wild Crab Apple is 

 found from Drontheim, in Norway, to the Caucasus, and 

 grows over the whole of Europe. Apples were known to 

 the Greeks and Romans. 



Unfortunately, in our own climate there are great dangers 

 in the orchard. A touch of frost when the flowers are ripe 

 will very likely kill the tender, green, baby apple. It is 

 perhaps in Canada and North America that the growing of 

 apples and pears is most carefully looked after. Our beauti- 

 ful old orchards in Devonshire and other places, with com- 

 fortable grass below the trees, and moss-covered, picturesque, 

 ancient trunks, are not found in the New World. The 

 regular lines of young trees in bare, carefully-kept earth, 

 with every stem whitewashed and treated with the most 

 scientific monotony, produce a most valuable return. But 

 in this country those who are careful and scientific some- 

 times obtain extraordinary results. It is on record that a 

 man with a holding of twenty-nine acres near Birmingham 



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