hardly full summer before the closely set branches of
Early Harvest are as beautiful as any orange-tree, or the more upright
Red Astrachan is ablaze with fruit of red and yellow. Truly, an apple
orchard might be arranged to give a series of pictures of changing
beauty of color and growth from early spring until fall frost, and then
to follow with a daily panorama of form and line against snow and sky
until the blossoms peeped forth again. Let us learn, if we do not
already love the apple tree, to love it for its beauty all the year!

[Illustration]

Willows and Poplars

"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we
remembered Zion. Upon the willows in the midst thereof we hanged our
harps." Thus sang the Psalmist of the sorrows of the exiles in Babylon,
and his song has fastened the name of the great and wicked city upon one
of the most familiar willows, while also making it "weep"; for the
common weeping willow is botanically named _Salix Babylonica_.

It may be that the forlorn Jews did hang their harps upon the tree we
know as the weeping willow, that species being credited to Asia as a
place of origin; but it is open to doubt, for the very obvious reason
that the weeping willow is distinctly unadapted to use as a harp-rack,
and one is at a loss to know just how the instruments in question would
have been hung thereon. It is probable that the willows along the rivers
of Babylon were of other species, and that the connection of the city
of the captivity and the tears of the exiles with the long, drooping
branches of the noble tree which has thus been sorrowfully named was a
purely sentimental one. Indeed, the weeping willow is also called
Napoleon's willow, because the great Corsican found much pleasure in a
superb willow of the same species which stood on the lonely prison isle
of St. Helena, and from twigs of which many trees in the United States
have been grown.

The willow family presents great contrasts, both physical and
sentimental. It is a symbol both of grief and of grace. The former
characterization is undoubtedly because of the allusion of the one
hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm, as quoted above, thoughtlessly
extended through the centuries; and the latter, as when a beautiful and
slender woman is said to be of "willowy" form, obviously because of the
real grace of the long, swinging wands of the same tree. I might hint
that a better reason for making the willow symbol