80 THOREAU. 



good as wild, You would not suppose that there was 

 any fruit left there, on the first survey, but you must 

 look according to system. Those which lie exposed 

 are quite brown and rotten now, or perchance a few 

 still show one blooming cheek here and there amid 

 the wet leaves. Nevertheless, with experienced eyes, 

 I explore amid the bare alders and the huckleberry- 

 bushes and the withered sedge, and in the crevices of 

 the rocks, which are full of leaves, and pry under the 

 fallen and decaying ferns, which, with apple and 

 alder leaves, thickly strew the ground. For I know 

 that they lie concealed, fallen into hollows long since 

 and covered up by the leaves of the tree itself, a 

 proper kind of packing. From these lurking-places, 

 anywhere within the circumference of the tree, I 

 draw forth the fruit, all wet and glossy, maybe nib 

 bled by rabbits and hollowed out by crickets and 

 perhaps with a leaf or two cemented to it (as Curzon l 

 an old manuscript from a monastery s mouldy cellar), 

 but still with a rich bloom on it, and at least as ripe 

 and well kept, if not better than those in barrels, 

 more crisp and lively than they. If these resources 

 fail to yield anything, I have learned to look between 

 the bases of the suckers which spring thickly from 

 some horizontal limb, for now and then one lodges 

 there, or in the very midst of an alder-clump, where 

 they are covered by leaves, safe from cows which may 

 have smelled them out. If I am sharp-set, for I do 

 not refuse the Blue-Pearmain, I fill my pockets on 

 each side ; and as I retrace my steps in the frosty 

 eve, being perhaps four or five miles from home, I 



1 Robert Curzor was a traveller who searched for old manu 

 scripts in the monasteries of the Levant. See his book, An* 

 dent Monasteries of the East. 



