Orchard Aisles 217 



may not be until the second or third September 

 that we first note some curious and forgotten fruit, 

 of which the years of honour are gone by. 



The perfume of the orchard is as deep and almost 

 as varied as its hues. Many apples shed in the 

 field the same mellow scent which is familiar in the 

 store- cupboard or winter apple-room. These are 

 chiefly the eating kinds. But other and less familiar 

 perfumes are breathed about an old cider orchard 

 in September. There is one keenly aromatic fra- 

 grance, probably derived from the more highly tannic 

 varieties of cider apple, which is like a breath from 

 the potherb corner of the garden, or a hillside of 

 marjoram and thyme. Bruised by their fall and 

 stabbed and hollowed by wasps and birds, the 

 softer and sweeter kinds exude a heavy scent of 

 ripeness ; while from beneath other trees, or from 

 the same as the days go by, comes the odour of the 

 juice in various stages of fermentation. Sweetest 

 and heaviest of all is the scent of the perry pear, 

 in one of those Gloucestershire or Herefordshire 

 orchards where the pear trees are ranked in noble 

 groves. The pear is naturally a tree of much 

 taller growth than the apple ; and it needs free 

 growth of the orchard trees to show its candelabra- 

 like branches in full dignity. Drawn by the fumes 

 of the fermenting juices, troops of the large red 

 admiral butterflies haunt the orchards, and suck 

 their fill from the crushed and hollowed fruit. With 

 closed wings showing the delicate grey brocading 

 of their undersides, the red admiral steps daintily 

 among the gorged and hustling wasps, probing with 



