18 ORIGIN OF THE APPLE TREE. 



In cookery, apples are used in various ways and forms, 

 constituting elegant table deserts. They may be sliced and 

 fried in lard or after meat ; they make fine pies and tarts, and 

 the famous dowdy or family pie ; may be made into excellent 

 dumplings, sliced into puddings, boiled in rice, &c.; are fine 

 roasted or baked : and the aiyple butter made from this fruit 

 in the Valley of Virginia, East Tennessee, and in some of the 

 Northern States is a delightful dish for any season. Dried 

 apples keep well, and are a valuable article of trade. 



As to the medical qualities of apples, consumptive persons 

 have been greatly relieved, and even permanently cured b}" the 

 persistent and regular use of this fruit in some form or other. 



Apples serve as an excellent fruit for the deseit, the kitchen 

 and for making cider, brandy and vinegar ; and stock of almost 

 every kind thrive and fatten, when allowed free use of this 

 most valuable of all fruits. 



Concerning the physical properties of apples, it deserves 

 to be stated, that besides their aromatic qualities, they are 

 wholesome and laxative, when fully ripe. In diseases of the 

 breast, such as catarrhs, coughs, asthmas, &c., they 

 are of considerable service ; for beneficial purposes, how- 

 ever, they ought not to be eaten raw, but either roasted, or 

 stewed, or boiled ; they also may be usefully employed in de- 

 coctions, which if drank plentifully tend to abate febrile heat, 

 as well as to relieve pectoral complaints. The author has 

 himself found the use of ripe Apples and Peaches, both cooked 

 and raw, a most admiiable, convenient and palatable regulator 

 of the bowels, and by their use has been happily relieved of 

 chronic diarrhoea. 



In treating of the general properties, as well as the relative 

 salubrity of fruit, we shall in this place, only add, that the 

 injudicious practice of promiscuously allowing it, whether 

 ripe or unripe, to children and infants is very reprehensible, 

 though their liberal use, when fully ripe, is rarely followed by 

 any injury. On account of its acidity, they are not able to 

 bear it in excess ; and their digestive powers become too 

 frequently impaired at the expense of other secretions; such 



