Following is a facsimile reproduction of a spontaneous and unpruned record made by a child in the third grade. The child grew beans in a tumbler against blotting paper, as shown in Fig. 299. I hope that this will illustrate to both teacher and children the value of simple note-taking. [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration: _Fig. 300. The bean plants that were grown by the third-grade child._] LEAFLET LIII. AN APPLE TWIG AND AN APPLE.[71] BY L. H. BAILEY. (Compare Leaflet XXXI.) [71] Junior Naturalist Monthly, January, 1903. [Illustration] Yesterday I went over into the old apple orchard. It was a clear November day. The trees were bare. The wind had carried the leaves into heaps in the hollows and along the fences. Here and there a cold-blue wild aster still bloomed. A chipmunk chittered into a stone pile. I noticed many frost-bitten apples still clinging to the limbs. There were decayed ones on the ground. There were several small piles of fruit that the owner had neglected, lying under the trees, and they were now worthless. I thought that there had been much loss of fruit, and I wondered why. If the fruit-grower had not made a profit from the trees, perhaps the reason was partly his own fault. Not all the apples still clinging to the tree were frost-bitten and decayed. I saw many very small apples, no larger than the end of my finger, standing stiff on their stems. Plainly these were apples that had died when they were young. I wondered why. [Illustration: _Fig 301. This is the branch that tried and failed._] I took a branch home and photographed it. You have the engraving in Fig. 301. Note that there are three dead young apples at the tip of one branch. Each apple came from a single flower. These flowers grew in a cluster. There were three other flowers in this cluster, for I could see the scars where they fell off. But why did these three fruits die? The whole branch on which they grew looked to be only half alive. I believe that it did not have vigor enough to cause the fruit to grow and ripen. If this were not the cause, then some insect or disease killed the young apples, for apples, as well as people, may have disease. [Illustration: _Fig. 302. These are the flowers that make the apples. How many clusters are there?_] Beneath the three dead apples, is still another dead one. Notice how shrivelled and dried it is, and how the snows and rains have beaten away the little leaves from its tip. The three uppermost apples grew in 1902; but this apple grew in some previous year. If I could show you the branch itself, I could make you see in just what year this little apple was borne, and just what this branch has tried to do every year since. This branch has tried its best to bear apples, but the fruit-grower has not given it food enough, or has not kept the enemies and diseases away.