CONCERNING APPLES 



BY THE EDITOR 



THE apple tree and England, as we have known it, must 

 stand or fall together, and the greatest patriot is he 

 who, having realised this fact, does most to encourage 

 the love and knowledge of the apple in the hearts and 

 minds of the people. 



What the orchard has been in the history of our race 

 is shown in the fact that among those unsophisticated, 

 atavistic, racial records, known as schoolboys, the "vice" 

 of "robbing an orchard" is the one most universal, 

 in the presence of which all distinctions and artificial 

 gradations of caste are as nothing. The very name is 

 significant, for it originally denoted not one particular 

 fruit, but fruit in general any other than the apple 

 being notified by the addition of a suffix as in the 

 Welsh Aval-melynhir, a lemon, and the early English 

 Peche-appule, a peach. Regard, unseen, a solitary 

 unsophisticated Englishman in the act of eating an 

 apple, and you cannot fail to observe that something 

 more than the mere satisfying of appetite is in progress. 

 As he vigorously munches the fragrant and delicious 

 fruit, his mind and his soul are carried back uncon- 

 sciously to more primitive times, and he becomes almost 

 barbaric. Hence the triviality of the knife-and-fork 

 method of apple eating. 



The old Saxon Coronation Benediction suggests how 

 very important a part the apple has played in English 

 national life. " Bless, O Lord, the courage of this 



