THE ORCHARD. 



THE CULTURE AND USES OF THE APPLE. 



PRIZE ESSAY BY J. J. THOMAS. 



The Apple may justly be considered, in taking into view its various 

 usesj and the facility of its culture, as the most important and valua- 

 ble fruit of the northern states, if not of the temperate regions of the 

 earth. Other fruits, as the apricot, the peach, and the pear, may be 

 more delicious at their best seasons ; but the apple, regarded as a 

 hardy, healthy, vigorous, and uniformly productive tree, and as an 

 excellent, easy-keeping, and long-continued fruit, alike valuable for 

 the table, for culinary use, for farm stock, and for the market, 

 and promising yet to be well adapted to even other uses, — stands pre- 

 eminent as the fruit of the farm, and under proper culture, is one of 

 the most profitable of all crops raised by the farmer. Hence every 

 hint in relation to its culture may prove of essential value. 



The cultivated apple, with all its varieties, is supposed to have ori- 

 ginated from the native variety of the Pyrus mains, known in Eng- 

 land as the crah; which is an entirely distinct species from the native 

 American crab, or Pyrus coronaria. The improved fruit, however, 

 appears to have been brought into western Europe from the Romans, 

 to whom twenty-two varieties were known in Pliny's time. Leonard 

 Maschal first introduced some of the cultivated apples into England 

 about 1525. Since then, the number has been multiplied to a vast 

 extent ; the collection of the London, Horticultural Society includes 

 more than 1400 ; and new ones are yearly originating — many from 

 the natural process of propagation by seeds ; and others, under the 

 hands of scientific cultivators, by the adoption of President Knight's 

 mode of crossing, which consists in clipping out the stamens of the 



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