224 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



part of the manure, but its very existence depends upon the presence in the 

 Boil of a sufficient quantity of those inorganic or mineral substances which 

 are indispensable to the formation of acids." 



But it is also found by analysis that lime enters into the com- 

 position of the wood of the apple-tree in very large proportions. 

 By the analysis of Fresenius, the ash of the wood of the apple 

 contains 45.19 per cent, of lime, and 13.67 per cent, of potash. 

 By the analysis of Dr. Emmons, of Albany, N. Y., the ash of 

 the sap-wood of the apple contains of lime 18.63 per cent, and 

 17.50 per cent, of phosphate of lime. 



But it is not wherever soils of the sort I have described (cal- 

 careous sandstones and marly clays) abound in a district, that 

 you find that the farmers have discovered that it is to their in- 

 terest to have orchards ; nor are they common in all the milder 

 latitudes of England ; but I believe that wherever you find a 

 favorable climate, conjoined with a strongly calcareous and mod- 

 erately aluminous soil of a sufficient depth, there you will find 

 that for centuries the apple-tree has been extensively cultivated. 

 Evelyn speaks, 1676, of the apples of Herefordshire, and says 

 there were then 50,000 hogsheads of cider produced in that 

 county yearly. The ancient capital of modern Somersetshire, 

 one of the present " Cider Counties," was known by the Romans 

 as Avallonia, (the town of the apple orchards.) It would not be 

 unlikely that the universal ceremony in Devonshire, of " shooting 

 at the apple-tree," (hereafter described,) originated in some 

 heathen rite of its ancient orchardists. 



To obtain choice dessert fruit, the apple in England is every- 

 where trained on walls, and in the colder parts it is usual to 

 screen a standard orchard on the north by a plantation of firs. 

 There is no part of the United States where the natural summer 

 is too short for most varieties of the apple to perfect their fruit. 

 In Maine, and the north of New Hampshire and Vermont, the 



