XXI. 



CHERRIES ARE RIPE. 



THE big whitehearts on the first tree in the orchard 

 are just beginning to blush in ruddy streaks on the sunny 

 side, and the wasps are already finding their way to the 

 softer red pulp of the ripening bigaroons by the further 

 hedgerow. Altogether the little mixed cottage orchard 

 makes up a very pretty picture at the present moment. 

 The gnarled old apple-trees, their limbs thickly covered 

 with dry gray lichen, are now in full summer foliage ; 

 and the green and gray, seen from a little distance, melt 

 together into a beautiful mass of soft subdued color. 

 The late pink hawthorn is still in half -faded blossom ; 

 the elder is one sheet of white bloom ; while the cherries 

 are rapidly mellowing into pink and crimson. No fruit, 

 indeed, except perhaps the orange, is prettier- or more 

 tempting as it hangs on the tree than our English cherry. 

 Besides, it is a son of the soil, a native born ; and, in 

 spite of all that gardeners can do, our real indigenous 

 fruits thrive better to the last in English mould than 

 any imported aliens. The cherry-trees of our orchards 

 spring, in fact, from two separate wild British stocks. 

 The common dwarf cherry, whose large white blossoms 

 often hang out of thickets and copses in early spring, is 

 the ancestor of morellos, dukes, and the Kentish kind ; 

 the taller gean, found wild only in the southern counties, 

 is the strain from which we get our bigaroons and other 

 sweet table-fruit. Selection can do wonderful things ; 

 but it absolutely requires the positive basis of natural 



