26 THE APPLE, 



instead of being converted into cider, were sold to the 

 poor, and the laborers asserted that they could ' stand 

 their work ' on baked apples without meat ; whereas 

 a potato diet required either meat or some other sub- 

 stantial nutriment. The French and Germans use 

 apples extensively, so do the inhabitants of all Euro- 

 pean nations. The laborers depend upon them as an 

 article of food, and frequently make a dinner of sliced 

 apples and bread." 



Yet the English apple is a tame and insipid affair, 

 compared with the intense, sun-colored and sun- 

 steeped fruit our orchards yield. The English have 

 no sweet apple, I am told, the saccharine element 

 apparently being less abundant in vegetable nature 

 in that sour and chilly climate than in our own. It is 

 well known that the European maple yields no sugar, 

 while both our birch and hickory have sweet in their 

 veins. Perhaps this fact accounts for our excessive 

 love of sweets, which may be said to be a national 

 trait. 



The Russian apple has a lovely complexion, smooth 

 and transparent, but the Cossack is not yet all elimi- 

 nated from it. The only one I have seen — the 

 Duchess of Oldenburg — is as beautiful as a Tartar 

 princess, with a distracting odor, but it is the least 

 bit puckery to the taste. 



The best thing I know about Chili is not its guano 

 beds, but this fact which I learn from Darwin's " V oy 

 age," namely, that the apple thrives well there. Dar- 

 win saw a town there so completely buried in a wood 

 of apple-trees, that its streets were merely paths in an 

 orchard. The tree indeed thrives so well, that large 

 branches cut off in the spring and planted two oi 

 three feet deep in the ground send out roots and 



