ioo OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



surroundings. Or seeds, planted by bird or 

 squirrel grow up in rich, modest humus among 

 rough rocks where never a plough could pass and 

 we have some new variety, a veritable wild apple 

 with no semblance of the original fruit about it 

 but often a delectable, wild tang, a flavor and 

 perfume such as no cultivated variety ever had. 

 No tree gives more beauty to the wildest of New 

 England woods and pastures today than this. 

 Innocent of pruning knife or fertilizer its growth 

 has a rugged picturesqueness about it that makes 

 the well trained tree look pusillanimously conven- 

 tional beside it. I think the perfume of its blos- 

 soms is richer and carries farther and I know 

 the pink of the petals is fairer. The wild apple 

 is the queen of all pasture trees today and does 

 not need to bear a tag for the most cityfied man, 

 the most boudoir-encysted woman to know it. 

 To get beneath an apple tree, even in the wildest 

 and most unfrequented portion of the pasture or 

 woodland, is to all of us like finding one's roof- 

 tree once more. The race seems to have been 

 brought up beneath it and I take it for a sign of 

 decadence in the New England character that we 

 no longer plant orchards. It is fortunate for us 

 all that the wild creatures are doing what man 



