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part and close with the breeze. Love other trees as you will. All have their virtues when taken at the proper season of the year, from the proper point of view, or when you yourself are in the proper mood. My claim for my Lady Beech is that her virtues rise above all vicissitudes of time and mood and point of view. Go to her for rest from labors done or inspiration for duties still before you, go to her for communion in joy or comfort in sorrow, go to her in summer or winter, in fair weather or in foul, and what tree of all the forest can contest her primacy in power to render that aid which the sensitive human heart looks to outward nature to supply?

SEEDLESS APPLES

AN altogether new species of apple, it is announced, has been developed by horticultural skill. It differs from the apple which tempted Adam and comforted Solomon in all his glory, in not having blossoms, core, or seeds. Because of these shortcomings it claims "superior commercial advantages" and seeks to supplant the time-honored species of our fathers and forefathers.

The acceptance of this coreless apple by the public is a matter of the most serious import. It touches the springs of human action; it changes the face and laws of nature. Indeed, the apple presented us by the serpent seems hardly more grave in its effects. The greedy youngster who originated the classic retort, "There ain't goin' to be no core to this apple," prophesied better than he knew. This apple of solid substance is capable of becoming a powerful force in the ethical development of childhood, relieving its conscience from the strain of generosity and from evolving questionable expedients for the retention of the delectable morsel. But we who have outlived the age when the heart swells with pride at the royal liberality exhibited in the bestowal of an apple-core upon a mate, - shall we gain or lose by taking this parvenu, this

heartless apple, into our affections and our stomachs?

From a gastronomic point of view the core has duties to perform. A friendly gendarme reaching from pole to pole of the toothsome sphere, it admonishes us with a "thus far and no farther." We seem to see annoying consequences following the removal of this sentinel. Shall we know where to stop? Must we, perforce, keep right on munching through to the other side?

Contemplate this too, too solid apple baked! Fled is the delicate flavor imparted by the seedy core! No brown beauties peep at us from papery apartments! Baked or unbaked, we delight in appleseeds, the glittering white hid under the polished brown coat.

Yet much as we admire cores and seeds we could forgive the new apple its flagrant digressions from ancestral habits did. it not fly flauntingly into the face of nature, subvert knowledge, and leave us botanically speaking without a foot to stand on. With infinite patience and perseverance it was drilled into our young mind that the vegetable kingdom may wax luxuriant, having roots, stem, and leaves for its purveyors; but these might not ensure its perpetuation. On the flowers was this all-important duty laid. A graphic picture of the earth's nakedness without this beneficent provision was placed before our mental vision, and the utter desolation of a dead world impressed

upon us.

Since those irresponsible days, Linnæus, Gray, Wood, and others have strengthened our faith. Our own limited experience in observing the feverish haste of our dooryard weeds to perfect seeds has added conviction to faith. The plantain ruthlessly beheaded by the lawn-mower leaves off adorning itself with succulent greenery and bends every energy to the formation of a short spike in the fervent hope of ripening a few seeds before the next onslaught of the destroyer.

That it can produce fruit without blossoms is the proud boast of this abnormal

species. Should it obtain favor, the exquisite beauty of our spring landscape shall be swept away. The clouds of pink and white blossoms, whose simple grace and delicate perfume restore for a time the lost Eden, shall be seen no more.

Since our greed for substance has become so great that we are intolerant of the space occupied by an apple-core, will not the march of progress also sweep away the stones and pits of other members of the family Rosacea? Faithful Dick Red Cap, you who have for centuries stood at the garden gap, the stone in your throat is demanded! Out with it and off with your snowy robes in May! Ye pink-petaled peach-blossoms, blush the deeper at the despoiling of the apple-tree, and hold your pit in a firmer embrace lest a like fate overtake you!

We cannot conceive of an apple-tree without blossoms. They are interwoven with the life of man. Literature, art, and heart pay tribute of love to the fragrant pink-tinted petals. Shall a "group of three or four green leaves " supplant these magic wands of memory in our affections and feed our sense of the beautiful? A poet of the crude old times tells us what we plant with the apple-tree, and the chief of these things are a flood of fragrance, a world of blossoms, a cloud of beauty

Flowers for the sick girl's silent room For the glad infant sprigs of bloom. Can commercial advantages outweigh such forces?

apple for our consideration, he left us in the condition of the man who went down to Jericho, and naught could restore our serenity save a hand-to-hand contact with a collection of apples it had pleased us to make in the early winter, ranging in size from the native wild apple to the twentyounce pippin; appealing to the eye in varied shades of red, yellow, and green, and to the olfactory nerves like a breath from paradise. Here were apples round, flat, and pointed; apples with waxy skins and apples with dry skins; apples thickskinned and thin-skinned, coarse-grained and fine-grained; apples ranging in color of substance from snowy white to yellow; sweet and sour, good, excellent, and indifferent; apples with lowly names, as Greasy Pippin, and apples of aspiring title, as King of Tompkins, Bismarck, and Golden. Fall apples and winter apples; baking, cooking, eating and keeping apples, each labeled with its name and claim to public favor, smiled upon us.

Lovingly we gazed upon them, for we knew that under each shining exterior was a core which held in warm embrace the germs of flower-bearing, law-abiding apple-trees, beloved of birds, bees, and man.

The new apple may have its virtues. We would not deny them. But as for us, comfort us with apples that were breathed upon by fragrant blossoms. O Pomona, goddess perennially kind, continue, we beseech thee, graciously to guard applebloomin' and apple-corin' as well as apple

When the wily tempter presented this gatherin' time!

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