22 OUK COMMON FEUITS. 



their roots every year, one season with lime and the next 

 with stable manure, when he found that the trees thus 

 treated, after furnishing him one autumn with 1,700 

 barrels of apples, part of which sold in New York for 

 four dollars, and the rest in London for nine dollars 

 the barrel, were yet the next year again bending to the 

 earth with a rich and ample burthen, while the plants 

 around them, less generously fostered, remained quite 

 barren each alternate season. The Newtown Pippin, 

 too, more than any other apple, requires time and high 

 culture, and where this is denied it is already degenerating 

 rapidly in some parts of America. This is the more to be 

 regretted, as the special suitability of that country to its 

 development, when coupled with due attention to the 

 fruit, seems calculated to bring the apple to the greatest 

 possible degree of perfection ; for Downing, alluding to 

 the fresh varieties which are still being produced there, 

 says that some of the Southern winter apples are of sur- 

 passing quality, owing to the complete elaboration of 

 their juices during the lengthened warm season of that 

 climate. So plentiful too is the produce in many parts, 

 that the orchards have overflowed beyond human require- 

 ments, and it has recently become a practice to employ 

 the surplus sweet apples in fattening hogs, horses, and 

 other animals ; and so excellent has the saccharine matter 

 of the apple been found for this purpose, that whole 

 orchards are now frequently planted for the purpose of 

 fattening swine and cattle, which are therefore turned 

 loose to range them at will. 



Nutritive and pleasant as is the apple in its natural 

 state, the field of its usefulness becomes greatly enlarged 

 when it is subjected to the processes of cookery. Ellis, 

 in the Modern Husbandman, particularizes the Catshead 

 as " a very useful apple to the farmer, because one of 

 them pared and wrapped up in dough serves with little 

 trouble for making an apple dumpling, so much in request 

 with the Kentish farmer, for being part of a ready meal 

 that in the cheapest manner satiates the keen appetite of 

 the hungry ploughman, both in the field and at home, 

 and therefore has now got into such reputation in Hert- 



