128 WINTER SUNSHINE 



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 w^ere per- 

 fect gems. ]S'ot large, — that had not been the aim, 

 — but small, fair, uniform, and 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 seed- 

 ling 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 Eiver, 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 hill 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 complexion I ever 

 saw. It is of 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 



