THE BRIDGE OF WINTER. 75 



result of these conditions is that the apples, which are 

 the supreme fruit of the region, set in quantity every 

 year ; and at the end, like Portia s suitor, are clad in the 

 &quot; burnished livery of the sun.&quot; They redden more than 

 most English apples always excepting the Quarendens, 

 whose red is more than skin deep, and they furnish a 

 more regular crop. The moisture and coolness of an 

 English summer are apt so to dilute the climbing juice 

 that every other year or so it produces not fruit buds 

 (which resemble the Queen bee in their need of a special 

 nectar and ambrosia), but leaf buds. 



We may already see the fruits of a summer of long 

 hours of sunlight. It is more than a prophecy that the 

 clear skies of June last will beget flower and fruit. Does 

 any gardener remember a year when that glorious and 

 lusty alien, though long since thoroughly at home in 

 England, the winter jasmine, bore such large flowers or 

 such quantity ? A bowlful distracts my eyes as I write. 

 It is one of the many virtues of this most springlike plant 

 that (like the clarkia and unlike the blackthorn) it will 

 open every bud in water. It is known as nudiflorum, 

 and in truth can 



Wallow naked in December snows, 



or, what are worse, January frosts. These splices, along 

 which ample blossoms, a]! of the true spring colour, 

 sunshine colour, stand as omen and promise of a fruitful 

 year, are a happy comment on the passing of the virtues 

 of one summer into its immediate successor. Winter is 

 no more than a bridge intrinsically joining one summer to 

 the next, or the beauty coming to the beauty gone. 

 Whatever does it matter that for a space when the sun 

 enters Capricorn it shows itself above our horizon for no 

 more than, seven and three-quarter hours ? It encourages 



