Dwarf Apple 



!|^ II E brow of the hill would be a dreary place in summer 

 without the dwarf apple. In the winter and spring it is 

 gay with a hundred blossoms wattles, heaths, boronia, spider- 

 flowers, and bottle-brushes; but the summer flowers the 

 Christmas bells, Christmas bush, and flannel flowers love the 

 more sheltered spots, and it is only a stray blossom that creeps 

 to the brow of the hill. Here and there you may see the 

 orange of a lonely Christmas bell against the sand ; a few red 

 honey-flowers shine out from their sombre leaves; a solitary 

 pink orchid the wild hyacinth shelters beneath the bushes; 

 but these stray blooms are not enough to lighten the melan- 

 choly of the sad-hued banksias, with their dry dead cones, 

 which do their utmost to turn the landscape into that dreary 

 wilderness it is so often accused of being. 



The banksias almost succeed in making the scene a desolate 

 one, but and there is always a " but " in the Australian bush 

 the dwarf apples are there to save the situation. It seems 

 that wind-swept country is their special care, for as soon as the 

 spring blooms begin to disappear and they make an earlier 

 departure from the brow of the hill than from the sheltered 

 gullies the dwarf apple begins to tinge the country with a 

 rosy glow. It is the deep blush of the young buds, which 

 grow in warm and woolly clusters that are as beautiful as any 



