APPLES. 25 



A very valuable and highly esteemed apple, either for the dessert or 

 culinary purposes, but, strictly speaking, more suitable for the latter. 

 It is in use from November to February. 



The common complaint against the Blenheim Pippin is that the tree 

 is a bad bearer. This is undoubtedly the case when it is young, being 

 of a strong and vigorous habit of growth, and forming a large and 

 very beautiful standard ; but when it becomes a little aged, it bears 

 regular and abundant crops. It may be made to produce much earlier, 

 if grafted on the paradise stock, and grown either as an open dwarf or 

 an espalier. 



This valuable apple was first discovered at Woodstock, in Oxfordshire, and 

 ren-ivnl its name from Blenheim, the seat of the Duke of Marll>orouph, which is 

 in the immediate neighbourhood. It is not noticed in any of the nursery cata- 

 logues of the last century, nor was it cultivated in the London nurseries till about 

 the year 1818. 



The following interesting account of this favourite variety appeared some years 

 ago in the Gardeners 1 Chronicle : ** In a somewhat dilapidated corner of the 

 decaying borough of ancient Woodstock, within ten yards of the wall of Blenheim 

 Park", stands all that remains of the original stump of that beautiful and justly 

 celebrated apple, the Blenheim Orange. It is now entirely dead, and rapidly 

 falling to decay, being a mere shell about ten feet high, loose in the ground, and 

 having a large hole in the centre ; till within the last three years, it occasionally 

 sent up long, thin, wiry twigs, but this last sign of vitality has ceased, and what 

 remains will soon be the portion of the woodlouse and the worm. Old Qrimmctt, 

 the basket-maker, against the corner of whose garden-wall the venerable relict is 

 supported, has sat looking on it from his workshop window, and while he wove the 

 pliant osier, has meditated, for more than fifty successive summers, on the muta- 

 bility of all sublunary substances, on juice, and core, and vegetable, as well as 

 animal, and flesh, and blood. He can remember the time when, fifty years ago, he 

 was a boy, and the tree a tine, full-bearing stem, full of bud, and blossom, and fruit, 

 and thousands thronged from all parts to gaze on its ruddy, ripening, orange burden; 

 then gardeners came in the spring-tide to select the much-coveted scions, and to 

 hear the tale of his horticultural child and sapling, from the lips of the son of the 

 white-haired Kempster. But nearly a century has elapsed since Kempster fell, like 

 a ripened fruit, and was gathered to his fathers. He lived in a narrow cottage 

 garden in Old Woodstock, a plain, practical, labouring man ; and in the midst of 

 his bees and flowers around him, and in his * glorious pride,' in the midst of his 

 little garden, he realised Virgil's dream of the old Corycian : * Et regum eqnabat 

 opes animis.' 



" The provincial name for this apple is still ' Kempster's Pipping a lasting monu- 

 mental tribute and inscription to him who first planted the kernel from whence it 

 sprang." 



Bonnet Carre. See Calville Blanche d'Hiver. 

 Borowitsky. See Duchess of Oldenburg. 



BORDEN PIPPIN. Fruit, two inches and a quarter wide, and 

 two inches and a half high ; conical, even, and regular in its outline, 

 and frequently larger and longer on one side of the axis than the 

 other. Skin, quite covered with dark bright crimson, thickly sprinkled 

 with large fawn-coloured russet dots, and patches of russet of the same 

 colour on the side next the sun, and yellow streaked with red on the 

 shaded side. Eye, small and closed, with convergent segments set 

 almost level with the surface. Stamens, marginal ; tube, funnel- 



