COUNTRY LIFE
IT is complained by some of our dwellers in the south that the climate of their Riviera grows harsher, that frosts of ten degrees or so become almost a commonplace, that the Gulf Stream does not exercise its pro- per influence. If it is so, there is consolation. The one objection to the balmy clime of some of the south-western valleys is that the trees, as one grower used to complain, suffer from insomnia: they continue growth till the year is old, and the sappy shoots, never hardening off, grow liable to canker and such maladies. If harder frosts take toll of st.,ch a pampered alien as the mimosa or wattle, they will give new health to the half-native apple. It is a quaint coin- cidence that since writing the above I have by mere accident come across an orchard poem by an American, poet of New Hampshire.
No orchard's. the worse for the wintriest storm; But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm.
How often already you've had to be told, Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold.
Dread fifty above more than fifty below • All of which is good horticultural advice, and the poetry—fitly written by Robert Frost—is very much better than this citation would suggest. He is a nature poet, so called, who regards the countryman as even more important than the country.
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