XLV. Tin- P( )PULATIOX OF AX OLD Al'PLi: TRKE 



'".l/v host 7L'(js (1 hountiful apple tree: 

 He utive me shelter and flourished we 

 With the best of fare, all fresh and free. 



And light-unnged guests came not a fetv. 

 To his leafy inn, and sipped the deu\ 

 And sang their best songs ere they fletv. 



I slept at night on a downy bed 



Of moss, and my host benignly spread 



His own cool shado-M over my head.'' 



— Thomas Westwood {Mine Host). 



There are few trees about the fann home so well beloved 

 in childhood as the old apple trees. The grass grows like a 

 car|3et under their S]:)reading crowTis. Their smooth hori- 

 zontal boughs seem to ha^-e been made to climb in. Their 

 fruit was certainly made to eat. Food and shade and 

 pleasant pastime — all these for us, and not for us alone, but 

 for many other creatures as well. 



The robin loves to build her plastered nest in the stout 

 crotch of the apple bough where we'll concealed by the leaves 

 on a few tliin "water-sprouts." The dove selects a horizontal 

 spray, and lays her thin platfonn of t\\ng3 across the level 

 branches. Catbird and thrush and many other song-birds 

 search the thickest of the unpruned cro\\Tis for home-sites. 

 The apple tree covers them with its leaves and embowers 

 them with its flowers in the time of nest building, and sup- 

 ports, all summer long, a multitude of insects that ser\'e 

 them well for food. In an old * 'stag-headed'* tree, the 

 dead and hollow snag may be perforated and occupied 

 by woodpeckers, or later by wrens and s])arrows. But 

 whether woodpeckers find a nesting place in the apple 

 tree or not, they find food in it, in the insects that 

 burrow in its bark and wood. One may hear their tapping 



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