THE PEAR HARVEST. 209 



XXXV. 



THE PEAR HARVEST. 



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 con- 

 stituents 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 



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