Country Life How quickly the windfall apples are set upon
by the creatures that lurk in the soil or among the straggling grass beneath the trees! Slugs make a meal when they can, but their attack is much slower than the woodlice who do not need to search for bruised fruit before they bore in and begin to excavate caves in the windfalls. The sweet scent of the juice attracts all the drinkers in the way of flies and even dropsical wasps that survive from one frost to another by nothing else but luck. In an amazingly short time the fallen fruit is riddled with holes from which insects tumble as one picks it up. Going to clear a few apples from the old tree, I found that the gale had left few indeed. The crop had tumbled into the shelter of shrivelling Michaelmas daisies where the insects' feast was going on. There is a time for picking apples. It is when they are ripe and not when there is twenty-four hours of rain, nor when a gale is blowing. This time the apples ripened when it was impossible to pick them. One good sou'-wester was all that it needed.
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