26 THE APPLE. 
instead of being converted into cider, were sold to the - 
poor, and the laborers asserted that they could ‘ stand 
their work’ on baked apples without meat; whereas 
a potato diet required either meat or some other sub- 
stantial nutriment. The French and Germans use 
apples extensively, so do the inhabitants of all Euro- 
pean nations. The laborers depend upon them as an 
article of food, and frequently make a dinner of sliced 
apples and bread.” 
Yet the English apple is a tame and insipid affair, 
compared with the intense, sun-colored and _ sun- 
steeped fruit our orchards yield. The English have 
no sweet apple, I am told, the saccharine element 
apparently being less abundant in vegetable nature 
in that sour and chilly climate than in our own. It is 
well known that the European maple yields no sugar, 
while both our birch and hickory have sweet in their 
veins. Perhaps this fact accounts for our excessive 
love of sweets, which may be said to be a national 
trait. , 
The Russian apple has a lovely complexion, smooth 
and transparent, but the Cossack is not yet all elimi- 
nated from it. The only one I have seen — the 
Duchess of Oldenburg — is as beautiful as a Tartar 
princess, with a distracting odor, but it is the least 
bit puckery to the taste. 
The best thing I know about Chili is not its guano 
beds, but this fact which I learn from Darwin’s “ Voy- 
age,” namely, that the apple thrives well there. Dar- 
win saw a town there so completely buried in a wood 
of apple-trees, that its streets were merely paths in an 
orchard. The tree indeed thrives so well, that large — 
branches cut off in the spring and planted two or 
three feet deep in the ground send out roots and 

