CHAPTER VIII 



IN OUR ORCHARDS 



WORDS grow as well as things. The word 

 orchard was originally hortyard, that is 

 horticulture yard, and at first it only re- 

 ferred to herbs, for our early Saxon ancestors knew 

 no more about apple yards than they did about 

 orange yards. The garden yard has gradually be- 

 come a tree yard, including apples, pears, plums, 

 and cherries, and similar fruits, in the North; in the 

 South oranges, grapefruit, figs, loquats, and many 

 other new sorts. 



What the orchard will be five hundred or a thou- 

 sand years hence who can tell? We are almost cer- 

 tain to get the orange, by selection, hardy enough to 

 fruit in Massachusetts, while we are already getting 

 apples pretty well down toward the tropics. This 

 does not cover the whole story, for we are surely go- 

 ing to have a lot of new fruits, some of them hunted 

 up from the wilds of Nature and others created by 

 the Burbanks and Munsons. 



It took Nature thousands of years to get the glori- 

 ous apple tree made up from a little potentilla origin, 

 swinging with pippins and greenings, and a free 

 gift to every country home. Sweetest memories of 



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