i 3 6 MAY 



orchards of the West, of Hereford, in especial, and Wor 

 cester some commercial orchards, some private we 

 noticed not once or twice the entire absence of insects. 

 The sprays now kill the noxious insects with success. 

 One orchard, a marvel of scientific production, was 

 sprayed five times since the winter washings ; twice 

 before the bud opened, three times later. The harmful 

 insects that live on flower and fruit, the capsid and the 

 sawfly and the rest, with lichen and fungus and such ill- 

 placed growths, had no chance. The sprays even killed 

 the canker that had defaced some older trees. Again, 

 reluctant boughs and trees are ring-barked and persuaded 

 into bud-blossom rather than leaf-blossom. New tillage 

 and watering and manuring and grafting and budding 

 all add to fertility ; and we may feel some assurance that 

 more and yet more blossom will appear on the trees. 



Blossom, above all apple blossom, is a boon in itself ; 

 and spreading orchards add to the springtime glory of 

 England ; yet what is apple flower without the promise 

 of fruit ? We have new ways of ensuring the setting of 

 the blossom. &quot; Great is juxtaposition/ 5 and when Cox 

 and James Grieve flourish cheek by jowl the shy blossoms 

 are more likely to be fertilised. Juxtaposition of comple 

 mentary sorts can do much for such desirable consumma 

 tion ; but the native agent in the work keeps her place. 

 The orchard desires the bee, now as when an ancestor of 

 Charles Darwin let his imagination play about the mar 

 riage of the plants. Bees are proper inhabitants of all 

 gardens in apple time; and the orchard where they 

 flourish is, of course, twice blessed : the apple is per 

 suaded to make fruit by the same act that fills the hive 

 with honey. Must we, then, all become bee-keepers, and 

 learn the delicate and to some of the more susceptible 

 the dangerous art of keeping bees, of keeping them snug 



