COUNTRY LIFE
IT is a seasonable pleasure to visit a part of the country where orchards prevail: We are frequently advised to visit Holland—or south Lincoln- shire—in tulip time, and very gorgeous is the spectacle. (Incidentally I once saw the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm set off from his retirement at Doom on a visit to the tulip ftglds.) Yet for all their splendour I prefer as a spectacle the orchards of Pershore in the-time of plum blossom, when from, upper slopes you may almost mistake orchards for lakes, or the cider orchards of, say, Hereford in apple-blossom days. The ideal moment now arrives; and while yet the trees showed little beyond the pink exterior of the buds I found more than expected pleasure.in the scene. A few years ago many old orchards were tumbling into ruin; and it was generally explained that few people thought it worth-while to replant, since they had to wait some ten years for a return on their expenditure. A change for the better seemed to me evident. I came upon new orchards expertly -planted with well-shaped -trees ; and this geometric neatness of the . pattern—sometimes abused by the aesthetes as regimentation—has its own attraction. The chief cause of the revival of the orchard is the wise policy of some of the Hereford manufacturers of cider, in developing their own nurseries and agreeing to undertake the whole work of planting as well as supplying the treqs. And why should we have to import apples, and, indeed, maiden trees, from France and Spain?
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