62 THOREAU. 



THE WILD APPLE. 



So much for the more civilized apple-trees (urba- 

 niores, as Pliny calls them). I love better to go 

 through the old orchards of ungrafted apple-trees, at 

 whatever season of the year, so irregularly planted : 

 sometimes two trees standing close together ; and the 

 rows so devious that you would think that they not 

 only had grown while the owner was sleeping, but had 

 been set out by him in a somnambulic state. The 

 rows of grafted fruit will never tempt me to wander 

 amid them like these. But I now, alas, speak rather 

 from memory than from any recent experience, such 

 ravages have been made ! 



Some soils, like a rocky tract called the Easter- 

 brooks Country in my neighborhood, are so suited to 

 the apple, that it will grow faster in them without any 

 care, or if only the ground is broken up once a year, 

 than it will in many places with any amount of care. 

 The owners of this tract allow that the soil is excel 

 lent for fruit, but they say that it is so rocky that 

 they have not patience to plough it, and that, to 

 gether with the distance, is the reason why it is not 

 cultivated. There are, or were recently, extensive or 

 chards there standing without order. Nay, they spring 

 up wild and bear well there in the midst of pines, 

 birches, maples, and oaks. I am often surprised to 

 see rising amid these trees the rounded tops of apple- 

 trees glowing with red or yellow fruit, in harmony 

 with the autumnal tints of the forest. 



Going up the side of a cliff about the first of No 

 vember, I saw a vigorous young apple-tree, which, 

 planted by birds or cows, had shot up amid the rocks 

 and open woods there, and had now much fruit on it, 



