THE APPLE. 89 



the same manner. It has the hue and perfume of the 

 crab, and the richness and raciness of the pippin. But 

 Thoreau loved other apples than the wild sorts and 

 was obliged to confess that his favorites could not be 

 eaten in-doors. Late in November he found a blue- 

 pearmain tree growing within the edge of a swamp^ 

 almost as good as wild. " You would not suppose," 

 he says, " that there was any fruit left there on the 

 first survey, but you must look according to system. 

 Those which lie exposed are quite brown and rotten 

 now, or perchance a few still show one blooming cheek 

 here and there amid the wet leaves. Nevertheless, 

 with experienced eyes I explore amid the bare alders, 

 and the huckleberry bushes, and the withered sedge, 

 and in the crevices of the rocks, which are full of 

 leaves, and pry under the fallen and decayed ferns 

 which, with apple and alder leaves, thickly strew the 

 ground. For I know that they lie concealed, fallen 

 into hollows long since, and covered up by the leaves 

 of the tree itself — a proper kind of packing. From 

 these lurking places, everywhere within the circum- 

 ference of the tree, T draw forth the fruit all wet and 

 glossy, maybe nibbled by rabbits and hollowed out 

 by crickets, and perhaps a leaf or two cemented to it 

 (as Curzon an old manuscript from a monastery's 

 mouldy cellar), but still with a rich bloom on it, and 

 at least as ripe and well kept, if no better than those 

 in barrels, more crisp and lively than they. If these 

 resources fail to yield anything, I have learned to look 

 between the leaves of the suckers which spring thickly 

 from some horizontal limb, for now and then one 

 lodges there, or in the very midst of an alder-clump, 

 where they are covered by leaves, safe from cows which 

 may have smelled them out. If I am sharp-set, for I 



