XXIV Orchard Aisles 



WHEN the corn is carried, the sense of maturing 

 harvest is transferred to the ripening orchards. 

 From very early in the year, the ancient grassy 

 orchards that cover so large an extent of land in 

 the western English counties are a focus of the 

 advancing life of the seasons, and of the fascination 

 of their ordered change. Science has condemned 

 as unprofitable the whole system of these ancient 

 orchards, with their straggling and mossy limbs, 

 their loss in productiveness from the drain of the 

 grass upon the soil, and their retention of many 

 poor and obsolete varieties of fruit, of which not 

 even the oldest farmers and labourers in the village 

 can sometimes give the names. But there is an 

 attraction in their hoary shadows of the same kind 

 that enfolds an ancient house and garden, or any 

 spot which the union of nature and man's labour 

 has long ripened ; and they are a feature of the west- 

 ern landscape which it is hard for a native to exchange 

 for bare soil, and trunks unpolished by the lazy 

 flanks of the heifers, and flecked, in the crevices, 

 with their hair. 



In January or early in February, the great tit 

 begins to call up spring to the orchard boughs with 

 his metallic, see-saw cry. His is the earliest note 

 peculiar to the opening year among the smaller 



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