THE APPLE. 3 



of poverty, it forms no uncommon part of the peasant's 

 dinner. This pome, as it is called by botanists, consists 

 of a succulent fleshy pulp, enclosed in a thin outer skin, 

 and surrounding the cells in which, protected by inner 

 walls of cartilage, the seeds of future trees lie ensconced. 

 It is well that they are thus strongly entrenched, for 

 "somehow or other," writes an author in the Entomo- 

 logical Magazine, " the pips of an apple are connected 

 with its growth, as the heart of an animal with its life : 

 injure the heart, an animal dies; injure the pips, an 

 apple falls j" and thus, whenever any of its insect foes do 

 succeed in piercing through all these strongholds and 

 storming the kernels in their inmost citadel, the poor 

 fruit, a living thing no longer, drops down at once to seek 

 a grave in the earth. An unimportant event, truly ! and 

 yet, once at least in the world's history, the fall of an 

 apple proved of greater import than the fall of a kingdom, 

 when in the quiet garden at "Woolsthorpe, a busily de- 

 vouring grub penetrated to the centre of the codlin he 

 was consuming, snapped its connexion with the parent 

 branch, and brought it to the feet of the sage, whose 

 resulting speculations on ".why an apple falls " resolved 

 the question of how worlds are sustained. But this was 

 an accident in apple life, and it was doubtless for hum- 

 bler purposes and more direct uses than to furnish philo- 

 sophers with food for reflection, that the pomea are 

 scattered over the world. 



Growing spontaneously almost throughout Europe, and 

 in most other temperate climes, just where that warmth 

 ceases which enables the vine to bring forth .good fruit, 

 there, by a kind provision of Providence, begins the cli- 

 mate most suitable to the apple ; and the celebrated tra- 

 veller Von Buch has remarked that it will grow in the 

 open air wherever the oak thrives, thus extending its 

 range to 60 N. latitude, beyond which it is scarcely 

 known. Linnaeus, indeed, was told in Lapland that one 

 apple-tree at least was growing there a fruitless one, it 

 was admitted, but its barrenness only due to its having 

 been cursed by a beggar woman to whom the owner had 

 refused a taste of its produce ; but on asking to be shown 



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