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HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



Common Fruits). It is generally to be met with in 

 almost every large orchard in the kingdom. Norfolk 

 has long been famous for apples ; some account of the 

 best varieties peculiar to or cultivated in that county 

 by Mr. Lindley, will be found in the Horticultural 

 Transactions, vol. iv. p. 65. The Norfolk Beaufin, or 

 Beefin, Lindley tells us, is undoubtedly a Norfolk 

 apple. Independently of its general use in the kitchen, 

 it furnishes a luxury for the table as a sweetmeat ; 

 great numbers used to be prepared at Norwich by 

 drying them slowly in baker's ovens after the bread 

 had been drawn, and pressing them with the hand to 

 flatten them till they are perfectly soft and are of a 

 ■ deep, rich brown colour ; they were then packed in 

 boxes and sent to London and other parts of the 

 kingdom, where they were considered a great delicacy. 

 The Horsham russet is another Norfolk apple, and 

 raised from the pip of a Nonpareil by a Mrs. Goose, 

 of Horsham, St. Faith's, Norwich, many years ago. 

 The apple, as an article of food, is probably unsur- 

 passed for its agreeable and nutritive properties. 

 Our forefathers believed the fruit to be something 

 more than to fill an empty stomach ; they also com- 

 mended it in " splenatick" and melancholy disorders. 

 John Key, better known as John Caius, the Court 

 physician to Mary and Elizabeth, had a high opinion 

 of the fragrance of apples in a sick-room, for 

 he recommends them in one of his works to patients 

 recovering from a " sweatynge sickness," if they 

 found their strength wasted, "for," adds the doctor, 

 " there is nothing more comfortable to the spirits 

 than good sweet odours." Another old English 

 writer of 1657 tells us that those pleasanter kinds of 

 pippins and pearmanes being roasted and eaten with 

 rose-water and sugar, are helpful to dissolve melancholy 

 humours, and to expel heaviness and promote mirth. 



Pomatum owes its name to apples. In a work 

 called "Secreti d'AlessioPiemontees,"by W. Ruscelli, 

 an Italian, published in the sixteenth century, there 

 are several formulae for making pomatum, in which 

 pippins form the principal ingredient. Gerard, in his 

 herbal, states that the pomatum in his time was 

 ■composed of the pulp of apples beat up with swine- 

 grease (lard), and rose-water. The wassail cup our 

 forefathers used to indulge in on All Hallow eve, 

 and the eves of church festivals, called lambswool, was 

 composed of apples toasted on a string until they 

 dropped into a bowl of hot spiced ale, placed ready 

 to receive them, and they gave great softness to the 

 beverage. Lambswool is thus etymologised by 

 Vallancey. " The first day of November was dedi- 

 cated to the angel presiding over fruits, seeds, &c, 

 and was therefore named La Mas Ubhal, that is the 

 day of apple fruits, and being pronounced lamasvel, 

 the English have corrupted the name to lambswool." 

 The various ways in which apples are cooked is well 

 known. " A Hundred ways of Cooking Apples " was 

 one of the cheap popular books one used to see on the 

 bookstalls not many years ago. Perhaps the most 



staple form in which it appears in this land of solids 

 is the apple dumpling. Coleridge said that no man 

 has lost all simplicity of character who retains his 

 fondness for apple dumplings ; let us hope this doctrine 

 is still true, for in some countries an apple dumpling 

 with a piece of bacon or pickled pork in it, forms the 

 staple of the mid-day and evening meal of the agri- 

 cultural labourer. It is said that King George III. 

 was once greatly puzzled to know how the apple got 

 into the dumpling. Most of the old-fashioned farm 

 and manor houses in this country possess large 

 orchards, which contain more of these fruit trees than 

 any other. Dr. Johnson gave the following advice to 

 one of his friends. " If possible," said he, "have a 

 good orchard. I know a clergyman of small income 

 who brought up a family very respectably, whom he 

 chiefly fed on apple dumplings." 



Hogg remarks, in his work on apples, that it has 

 existed as an indigenous tree throughout all ages, and 

 that the most ancient varieties were accidental variations 

 of the original species with which the forests abound. 

 In its wild and uncultivated state, the apple is known 

 in this country as the crab ; by some authors it has 

 been supposed that the garden apple is not an im- 

 proved crab, but rather the crab is a degenerate apple, 

 and that it has an Eastern origin (See Prior's " Popular 

 Names of British Plants"). As to the Eastern origin 

 of this tree, Professor Koch spent much time between 

 1836 and 1844 in Armenia and the adjacent countries 

 investigating the subject, and the results of his studies 

 and inquiries led him to believe that the apple never 

 grew wild anywhere south of the Caucasus. The 

 celebrated traveller Van Buck, remarks that the apple 

 will grow in the open air wherever the oak thrives, 

 thus it is found as far north as lat. 6o° in western 

 Russia. The crab of Europe is wanting in Siberia, but 

 the Siberian form of the species is widely distributed 

 over the country. 



The people of Lapland showed Linnaeus what they 

 called an apple-tree, which they said bore no fruit 

 because it had been cursed by a beggar woman to whom 

 the owner of the tree had refused some of its produce. 

 The naturalist found that it was the common elm, a 

 tree also rare in that severe climate. The apple is 

 stated by Royle to be cultivated in the southern parts 

 of India, also in the Himalayas, and in China and 

 Japan, but it is not indigenous to the warmer parts 

 of these countries. As an instance of the difficulties 

 attendant on the introduction of European plants into 

 the north of India in former days, it is stated by 

 Mr. Royle, that an apple-tree from Liverpool, in 

 consequence of being the only one that survived, 

 cost upwards of ,£70 before it was planted in the 

 nursery at Mossuree. Apple-trees were introduced 

 into America by the early settlers, and were first 

 planted on an island in Boston Harbour, which still 

 bears the name of Apple Island. The Indian tribes 

 helped to spread this fruit through the country, and 

 nowhere does it flourish better than in the land of 



