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. 
And light-winged guests came not a few, 
To his leafy inn, and sipped the dew, 
And 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 
ona 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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