XXXV. 



THE PEAK HAEVEST. 



THE orchard does not show by any means such a 

 pretty sight now as it promised to do in the early prime 

 of a splendid flowering season. Then, the apple-trees 

 were draped from head to foot in a mass of rich pinky 

 blossom, and the bees that hovered over them all day 

 long seemed to presage a good setting of the fruit against 

 the autumn picking. But something or other has gone 

 wrong with the development of the fruit ; the great 

 cyclone in early summer caught the leaf -buds in the very 

 act of unfolding, and nipped them so severely that the 

 trees now hardly show any foliage at all on their naked 

 straggling branches. Leaves, of course, are the mouths 

 by which the plant drinks in fresh material from the 

 surrounding air ; for it is a great mistake to suppose that 

 its chief nutriment is derived from the buried roots. 

 The soil supplies water and mineral constituents to be 

 sure ; but the true food of the tree, the vegetable matter 

 which it builds up into wood and leaf and flower and 

 fruit, comes to it from the floating carbon and hydrogen 

 in the air alone. So without a fair supply of foliage to 

 assimilate this aerial nourishment it is impossible for the 

 plant to produce large and healthy fruit ; though, on the 

 other hand, when it uses up all its vigor in putting forth 

 a rich crop of leaves, it has little material left for flowers 

 or apples. The pears, however, escaped with compara- 

 tively little damage ; they are earlier by ten or fifteen 

 days than the apple-trees, and they seem to have gained 



