XLV. THE POPULATION OF AN OLD APPLE TREE 



"My host was a bountiful apple tree; 

 He gave me shelter and nourished me 

 With the best of fare, all fresh and free. 



A nd light-winged guests came not a few, 

 To his leafy inn, and sipped the dew, 

 A nd sang their best songs ere they flew. 



I slept at night on a downy bed 



Of moss, and my host benignly spread 



His own cool shadow over my head." 



— Thomas Westwood {Mine Host). 



There are few trees about the farm home so well beloved 

 in childhood as the old apple trees. The grass grows like a 

 carpet under their spreading crowns. Their smooth hori- 

 zontal boughs seem to have been made to climb in. Their 

 fruit was certainly made to eat. Food and shade and 

 pleasant pastime — all these for us, and not for us alone, but 

 for many other creatures as well. 



The robin loves to build her plastered nest in the stout 

 crotch of the apple bough where well concealed by the leaves 

 on a few thin ' 'water-sprouts. ' ' The dove selects a horizontal 

 spray, and lays her thin platform of twigs across "the level 

 branches. Catbird and thrush and many other song-birds 

 search the thickest of the unpruned crowns for home- sites. 

 The apple tree covers them with its leaves and embowers 

 them with its flowers in the time of nest building, and sup- 

 ports, all summer long, a multitude of insects that serve 

 them well for food. In an old "stag-headed" tree, the 

 dead and hollow snag may be perforated and occupied 

 by woodpeckers, or later by wrens and sparrows. But 

 whether woodpeckers find a nesting place in the apple 

 tree or not, they find food in it, in the insects that 

 burrow in its bark and wood. One may hear their tapping 



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