48 SUMMER 



develops strange protective devices. The leaves are green, 

 one might say, in order to be seen. The fruit is green to 

 escape detection. It is imbued with strange acids that warn 

 off enemies. The shucks of the marvellously invisible nuts 

 and walnuts are acutely bitter, and the hop surpasses them. 

 Green apples are a byword, and only ants or very thirsty 

 birds will attack green pears. But the sun begins to play 

 its part again when the fruit is plump ; and the acids 

 must be baked to sugars, the green rinds split, and the 

 green skins reddened. But in this little history the most 

 crucial work of the sun has not been told. Trees in 

 dark places bear only leaves. They grow but are fruitless. 

 The great seed places are only the sunny places. But more 

 than this fruit is made in the sunny summers, though it 

 may come to maturity in a dark summer. When a summer 

 is over the buds for the next year are made. How many 

 flower-buds, how many leaf-buds will open next year is pre- 

 ordained. By what alchemy and by what courses the stuff 

 that the leaves manufacture from the sun are turned into 

 new buds we cannot trace. The thing is too near the central 

 mystery of light and growth. But it is tolerably well estab- 

 lished, at any rate it is a strong and credible belief, that 

 when the sun is hot the making of fruit-buds flourishes. It 

 depends on other causes too. There is a sort of exuberant 

 vitality in trees which tends solely to leaves, to growth not 

 to produce ; and there is a want of vitality which encourages 

 fruit. A dying tree will often bear a heavy crop, and young 

 trees are sparing of flowers. But apart from other causes 

 we may feel with some confidence, as we bask in the hot 

 summer or in shade watch the green leaves ' clap their little 

 hands in glee,' that the agent of present pleasure is also the 

 earnest of fruit in the year that follows. The twigs and 

 boughs as well as the leaves are taking profit of the sun. 



