JUNE. 131 



out England. It classes amongst the best for the dessert, and for 

 kitchen uses it is one of the finest. The fruit is of the first size, of 

 a roundish oblate figure, regularly formed and very handsome, skin 

 yellowish (otherwise deep orange), stained with dull red on the 

 sunny side, streaked with a deeper colour, and at times a little russet 

 near its base. Stalk half an inch long, inserted in a deep even ca- 

 vity. Eye large, open. Calyx short, and set in a large basin. Flesh 

 yellow, breaking, very rich and pleasant. In use from November to 

 the beginning of March. 



The trees are very vigorous when young, consequently they do 

 not bear well in that state ; but old trees produce heavy crops of 

 fruit, which is superior in quality to that from young trees. 



This splendid Apple is from Woodstock in Oxfordshire, and takes 

 its name from Blenheim, the seat of the Duke of Marlborough, close 

 to whose domain it originated. 



" In a somewhat dilapidated corner of the decaying borough of 

 ancient Woodstock, w T ithin ten yards of the wall of Blenheim Park 

 (says a recent writer in the Gardeners' Chronicle), stands all that 

 remains of the original stump of that beautiful and justly-celebrated 

 apple, the Blenheim Orange. It is now entirely dead, and rapidly 

 falling to decay, being a mere shell about ten feet high, loose in the 

 ground, and having a large hole in the centre. Till within the last 

 three years, it occasionally sent up long, thin, wiry twigs ; but this 

 last sign of vitality has ceased, and what remains will soon be the 

 portion of the woodlouse and the worm. Old Grimmett, the basket- 

 maker, against the corner of whose garden- wall the venerable relict 

 is supported, has sat looking on it from his workshop window, and 

 while he wove the pliant osier, has meditated, for more than fifty 

 successive summers, on the mutability of sublunary substances, on 

 juice, and core, and vegetable, as well as animal, and flesh and blood. 

 He can remember the time when, fifty years ago, he was a bo) r , and 

 the tree a fine, full-bearing stem, full of bud, and blossom, and fruit, 

 and thousands thronged from all parts to gaze on its ruddy, ripen- 

 ing, Orange burden; then gardeners came in the spring-tide to select 

 the much- coveted scions, and to hear the tale of his horticultural 

 child and sapling, from the lips of the son of the white-haired Kemp- 

 ster. But nearly a century has elapsed since Kempster fell, like a 

 ripened fruit, and was gathered to his fathers. He lived in a narrow 

 cottage-garden in Old Woodstock, a plain, practical, labouring man; 

 and in the midst of his bees and flowers around him, and in his 

 * glorious pride,' in the midst of his little garden, he realised Virgil's 

 dream of the old Corycian : ' Et regum aequabat opes animis.' 



" The provincial name for this Apple is still ' Kempster's Pippin,' 

 a lasting monumental tribute and inscription to him who first planted 

 the kernel from whence it sprang." 



23. Golden Harvey. 



Synonyms : Brandy Apple, Round Russet Harvey (of some). 

 Fruit small, cylindrical, and much flattened at the ends. Skin 



