70 THOREA U. 



celestial fruit which they suggest and aspire to bear, 

 browsed on by fate ; and only the most persistent and 

 strongest genius defends itself and prevails, sends a 

 tender scion upward at last, and drops its perfect fruit 

 on the ungrateful earth. Poets and philosophers and 

 statesmen thus spring up in the country pastures, and 

 outlast the hosts of unoriginal men. 



Such is always the pursuit of knowledge. The 

 celestial fruits, the golden apples of the Hesperides, 

 are ever guarded by a hundred-headed dragon which 

 never sleeps, so that it is an herculean labor to pluck 

 them. 



This is one and the most remarkable way in which 

 the wild apple is propagated ; but commonly it springs 

 up at wide intervals in woods and swamps, and by the 

 sides of roads, as the soil may suit it, and grows with 

 comparative rapidity. Those which grow in dense 

 woods are very tall and slender. I frequently pluck 

 from these trees a perfectly mild and tamed fruit. 

 As Palladius says, &quot; And the ground is strewn with 

 the fruit of an unbidden apple-tree.&quot; 



It is an old notion, that, if these wild trees do not 

 bear a valuable fruit of their own, they are the best 

 stock by which to transmit to posterity the most highly 

 prized qualities of others. However, I am not in 

 search of stocks, but the wild fruit itself, whose fierce 

 gust has suffered no &quot; inteneration.&quot; It is not my 



&quot; highest plot 

 To plant the Bergamot.&quot; 



THE FRUIT, AND ITS FLAVOR. 



The time for wild apples is the last of October and 

 the first of November. They then get to be palatable, 

 for they ripen late, and they are still, perhaps, as 



