THE MOST FAVOURABLE Is OILS AND CLIMATE. 29 



portions. By the analysis of Frescnius, the ash of the wood of 

 the apple contains 45.19 per cent, of lime and 13.67 per 

 cent, of potash. By the analysis of Dr. Emmons, of Albany, 

 N. Y., the ash of the sap-wood of the apple contains of lime 

 18.63 per cent, and 17.50 per cent, of phosphate of lime. 



But it is not wherever soils of the sort I have described 

 (calcareous sandstones and marly clays) abound in a dis 

 trict, that you find that the farmers have discovered that it is 

 for their interest to have orchards ; nor are they common in 

 all the milder latitudes of England ; but wherever you find a 

 favourable climate, conjoined with a strongly calcareous and 

 moderately aluminous soil of a sufficient depth, there you 

 will find that for centuries the apple-tree has been extensively 

 cultivated. Evelyn speaks, 1676, of the apples of Hereford 

 shire and says there were then 50,000 hogsheads of cider 

 produced in that county yearly. The ancient capital of modern 

 Somersetshire, one of the present &quot; Cider Counties,&quot; was 

 known by the Romans as Avallonia, (the town of the apple 

 orchards.) It would not be unlikely that the universal cere 

 mony in Devonshire, of &quot; shooting at the apple-tree,&quot; (here 

 after described,) originated in some heathen rite of its 

 ancient orchardists. 



To obtain choice dessert fruit, the apple in England is every 

 where trained on walls, and in the colder parts it is usual to 

 screen a standard orchard on the north by a plantation of 

 firs. There is no part of the United States where the natural 

 summer is not long enough for most varieties of the apple to 

 perfect their fruit. In Maine, and the north of New Hamp 

 shire and Vermont, the assortment of varieties is rather more 

 limited than elsewhere, I believe ; but I have eaten a better 

 apple from an orchard at Burlington, Vermont, than was ever 

 grown even in the south of England. We may congratulate 

 ourselves then, that all that we need to raise the best apples in 



