88 THE APPLE. 



In this casket Pomona lias put her highest flavors. It 

 can stand the ordeal of cooking and still remain a 

 spitz. I recently saw a barrel of these apples from 

 the orchard of a fruit-grower in the northern part of 

 New York, who has devoted especial attention to this 

 variety. They were perfect gems. Not large, that 

 had not been the aim, but small, fair, uniform, and 

 j red to the core. How intense, how spicy and aromatic ! 



But all the excellences of the apple are not con- 

 fined to the cultivated fruit. Occasionally a seedling 

 springs up about the farm that produces fruit of rare 

 beauty and worth. In sections peculiarly adapted to 

 the apple, like a certain belt along the Hudson River, 

 I have noticed that most of the wild unbidden trees 

 bear good, edible fruit. In cold and ungenial districts, 

 the seedlings are mostly sour and crabbed, but in 

 more favorable soils they are oftener mild and sweet. 

 I know wild apples that ripen in August, and that do 

 not need, if it could be had, Thoreau's sauce of sharp 

 November air to be eaten with. At the foot of a liili 

 near me and striking its roots deep in the shale, is a 

 giant specimen of native tree that bears an apple that 

 has about the clearest, waxiest, most transparent com- 

 plexion I ever saw. It is good size, and the color of 

 a tea-rose. Its quality is best appreciated in the 

 kitchen. I know another seedling of excellent quality 

 and so remarkable for its firmness and density, that 

 it is known on the farm where it grows as the " heavy 

 apple." 



I have alluded to Thoreau, to whom all lovers of 

 the apple and its tree are under obligation. His 

 chapter on Wild Apples is a most delicious piece of 

 writing^. It has a " tanj^ and smack " like the fruit it 

 celebrates, and is dashed and streaked with color va 



