American Apples. 27 



in Cheshire county, Connecticut, U.S., there is one certi- 

 fied by family tradition to be quite a hundred and forty 

 years old, the trunk of which at a foot from the ground, 

 above all the enlargements common to the base of trees, 

 has a girth of over thirteen feet. The uppermost limbs 

 of this wonderful tree reach to the height of sixty feet, 

 and the lateral spread of the whole is a hundred feet. 

 From five out of the eight branches there have been 

 gathered crops varying from eighty-five to one hundred 

 and ten bushels of perfectly good ripe fruit. The best of 

 the New World apples now come from Nova Scotia, 

 immensely to the credit of that little colony ; the next 

 best from Canada. This helps to prove that it is not 

 cold winters which are obnoxious to apple-trees. They 

 are content to endure frost if it be balanced by hot sum- 

 mers. American apples are now brought to England in 

 prodigious quantity. In 1881 the import amounted to 

 1,250,000 barrels. We receive plenty, also, from conti- 

 nental Europe, the total from all parts amounting in 1882 

 to 2,386,805 bushels. In our own island, according to 

 the Agricultural Returns for 1883, the number of acres 

 planted with fruit-trees is about 185,800. About 150,000 

 are devoted, probably, to the culture of the apple, and as 

 an acre will hold, on the average, about seventy, the total 

 number of orchard trees owned by old England will 

 exceed ten millions. How many more exist in private 

 gardens it is impossible to estimate. What comes of this 

 wonderful amount of apple-culture was illustrated at the 

 great Apple Congress mentioned above (p. 19), Chiswick, 



