OP FRUIT TREES. 13 



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very juicy and palatable, are the least fit to be 

 eaten in a raw state, unless with the addition of 

 bread or biscuit. When baked, or dried in the 

 open air, they make an excellent substitute for rai- 

 sins or plums, in puddings, pies, and other dishes 

 prepared of flour. Sour apples may be much im- 

 proved, both in taste and quality, by either baking 

 or digesting them in a close vessel, by steam, over 

 a slow fire. Thus the saccharine principle is dis- 

 engaged, and they undergo a speedy and complete 

 change." The honourable T. Pickering, in his ad- 

 dress to the agricultural society, Essex county, 

 expresses himself in the following language : " After 

 providing a due proportion of apples for the table 

 and the ordinary purposes of cookery, I do not 

 hesitate to express my opinion, that, for all other 

 uses, sweet apples are entitled to the preference. 

 The best cider I ever tasted, in this country, wag 

 made wholly of sweet apples. They afford also a 

 nourishing food to man and all domestick animals. 

 What furnishes a more delicious repast than a rich 

 sweet apple baked and eaten in milk ? I recollect 

 the observation made to me by an observing farmer, 

 before the American revolution, that nothing would 

 fatten cattle faster than sweet apples. Mentioning 

 this, a few years since, to a gentleman of my ac- 

 quaintance in an adjoining state, he informed me, 

 that he was once advised to give sweet apples to a 

 sick horse. Happening then to have them in plen- 

 ty, the horse was served with them, and he soon 

 got well, and, continuing to be fed with them, he 

 fattened faster than any other horse that he had 

 ever owned that was fed with any other food. 

 Mentioning to the same gentleman, what I had long- 

 before heard, that a good molasses might be made 

 of sweet apples, he confirmed the fact by an in- 

 stance within his own knowledge, &c. &c. The pro- 

 cess is very simple. The apples being ground, and 

 the juice expressed at the cider mills, it is immedi- 



