This year several of the spurs along the 1893 growth--12 to D--bore flowers. Flowers were borne from two buds on the first one (at 13 and 14), but none of the flowers "set." One of the little apples that died last June still clings to the spur at 14. A side bud (15) formed to continue the spur in 1897. Flowers were borne at 16, 20, 21, and 23, but no apples developed. Upon 16 and 20 the flowers died soon after they opened, as seen by the remains of them. Upon 23, one of the flowers set an apple, but the apple soon died. The spurs 17 and 18 are so weak that they have never made fruit-buds, and they are now nearly dead. The spurs 19 and 22 have behaved differently. Like the others, they grew in 1894 and would have made terminal fruit-buds in 1895, and would have borne fruit in 1896; but the terminal buds were broken off in the fall or winter of 1894, so that two side buds developed in 1895, and each of these developed a fruit-bud at its end in 1896 in the spur 19, but only one of them developed such a bud in 22. Upon these spurs, therefore, the bearing year has been changed. Upon the growth of 1894--D to beyond E--only three spurs have developed, nos. 24, 25, 26. These started out in 1895, and two of them--25 and 26--have made large fat buds which are evidently fruit-buds. The shoot at E grew on to EE, and all the buds on its lower two-year-old portion remained dormant. On the 1895 growth--from beyond E to 28--all the buds remained dormant save one, and this one--27--made only a very feeble attempt to grow into a spur. The buds upon the 1892 growth--1 to 12--are still dormant and waiting for an opportunity to grow. What an eventful history this apple twig has had! And yet in all the seven years of its life, after having made fifteen efforts to bear fruit, it has not produced a single good apple! The fault, therefore, does not lie in the shoot. It has done the best it could. The trouble has been that the farmer either did not give the tree enough food to enable it to support the fruit, or did not prune the tree so as to give the twig light and room, or allowed apple-scab or some other disease to kill the young apples as they were forming. I am wondering, therefore, whether, when trees fail to bear, it is not quite as often the fault of the farmer as it is of the trees? LEAFLET XXXII. THE BURST OF SPRING.[44] BY L. H. BAILEY. [44] Nature-Study Quarterly No. 4, Leaflet 17, March, 1900. [Illustration] Spring is coming! The buds will burst and the birds will sing! How do the buds burst? Watch them as the spring opens; or, if you are impatient, cut long twigs and place them in bottles of water in a living-room, and the buds will swell. First, notice what the winter buds are like,--that they are spherical, or oblong, or conical bodies lying close to the limb and tightly covered with scales. Notice that there is a mark or scar beneath the bud, showing where a leaf was borne.