Page:Natural history of the farm.djvu/21

them. Cranberries and some blueberries demand bog conditions which strawberries and apples will not endure.

The wild fruits in a state of nature, have their enemies also, which are ever with them when cultivated. The fruit-fly of the cherry, the codling moth of the apple, the plum-curculio and all the other insect pests of the fruit garden, have merely moved into the garden from the wildwood. And they flourish equally in the wildwood still. When, for example, an orchardist has rid his trees of codling moths, a fresh stock soon arrives from the unnoticed wild apples of the adjacent woods, and infests his trees again.

So, we must go back to nature to find the sources of our benefits and of their attendant ills.

The wild fruits of the farm all grow in out-of-the way places that escape the plow. They grow in the fence-row, by the brookside, on the stony slope. If in the forest, they grow only in the openings or in the edges; for fruit trees do not grow so tall as the trees of the forest cover, and cannot endure much shading. The bush fruits especially are wont to spring up in the fence-row, where birds have perched and have dropped seeds from ripe fruit they have eaten. They are a lusty lot of berry-bearing shrubs and vines that tend to form thickets, and when cut down by the tidy farmer, they spring up again with cheerful promptness from uninjured roots. In a few years they are in bearing again. The neglected fence-row is, therefore, one of the best places to search for the lesser wild fruits.

Of nature's fruits there is endless variety. They grow on tree, shrub, herb and vine. They are large and small, sweet and sour, pleasant and bitter, wholesome and poisonous. They mellow in the sun like apples, or sweeten with the frosts like persimmons. They hang exposed like plums, or are hidden in husks like ground-cherries. The edible ones that remain growing wild in the autumn are a rather poor lot of