NEXT YEAR'S APPLES 427 



So here are some of our next year's apples in 

 this pot of tangle-foot " grease," with which we 

 draw impassable barriers round the trees. There are 

 others in this roofed box, which any one knows now 

 at sight for a bee-hive. Out of every million blossoms 

 that the trees exhibit next April, some very few 

 would be fertilised in an insectless world by the 

 wind. Others the few early humble-bees would 

 pollenate in their blundering, industrious, but irre- 

 sponsible way, sometimes carrying willow dust to an 

 apple blossom, sometimes hawthorn pollen to a pear. 

 In certain parts of Normandy the girls cut branches 

 of blossom from one tree, with which they beat 

 the others, till out of the scented, beautiful confusion 

 arises the fertilisation of a thousand blooms, that 

 would else go barren. That would, indeed, make 

 a beautiful picture in our humdrum English Georgics, 

 the girls in white robes, their faces as bonny as the 

 apple blossom, their laughter as sunny as the scattered 

 petals. But there are economic reasons that spoil it 

 for the farmer, so we keep in these boxes a million 

 workers, that not only do the work for nothing, but 

 give us honey for permission to do it. 



There is no apple that is not the better for the mini- 

 stration of a bee at blossoming time. The farther 

 the pollen comes, whether from the next branch or 

 from another tree, the lustier the fruit, and the better 

 its chance of withstanding frost, caterpillar, or blight. 

 Even an otherwise neglected orchard, in which the 

 flowers are weak, can be quickened by admixture 

 of pollen brought from a better cultivated area. The 

 self-sterile apples of Normandy, which girls must 

 thrash with other blossoms, are by no means so 



