HOW THE WILD APPLE GROWS. 65 



a nursery for it, but doubted if they had it, or would 

 distinguish it from European varieties. At last I had 

 occasion to go to Minnesota, and on entering Michi 

 gan I began to notice from the cars a tree with hand 

 some rose-colored flowers. At first I thought it some 

 variety of thorn ; but it was not long before the truth 

 flashed on me, that this was my long-sought Crab- 

 Apple. It was the prevailing flowering shrub or tree 

 to be seen from the cars at that season of the year, 

 about the middle of May. But the cars never stopped 

 before one, and so I was launched on the bosom of 

 the Mississippi without having touched one, experienc 

 ing the fate of Tantalus. On arriving at St. An 

 thony s Falls, I was sorry to be told that I was too 

 far north for the Crab-Apple. Nevertheless I suc 

 ceeded in finding it about eight miles west of the 

 Falls ; touched it and smelled it, and secured a linger 

 ing corymb of flowers for my herbarium. This must 

 have been near its northern limit. 



HOW THE WILD APPLE GROWS. 



But though the.se are indigenous, like the Indians, 

 I doubt whether they are any hardier than those back 

 woodsmen among the apple-trees, which, though de 

 scended from cultivated stocks, plant themselves in 

 distant fields and forests, where the soil is favorable 

 to them. I know of no trees which have more dif 

 ficulties to contend with, and which more sturdily 

 resist their foes. These are the ones whose story we 

 have to tell. It oftentimes reads thus : 



Near the beginning of May. we notice little thickets 

 of apple-trees just springing up in the pastures where 

 cattle have been, as the rocky ones of our Easter- 

 brooks Country, or the top of Nobscot Hill in Sud- 



