THE APPLE 115 



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 Dar- 

 win's "Voyage," namely, that the apple thrives well 

 there. Darwin 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 or three feet deep in the 

 ground send out roots and develop into fine, full- 

 bearing trees by the third year. The people know 

 the value of the apple, too. They make cider and 

 wine of it, and then from the refuse a white and 

 finely flavored spirit; then, by another process, a 

 sweet treacle is obtained, called honey. The chil- 

 dren and pigs ate little or no other food. He does 

 not add that the people are healthy and temperate, 

 but I have no doubt they are. We knew the apple 

 had many virtues, but these Chilians have really 

 opened a deep beneath a deep. We had found out 

 the cider and the spirits, but who guessed the wine 

 and the honey, except it were the bees ? There is 

 a variety in our orchards called the winesap, a 

 doubly liquid name that suggests what might be 

 done with this fruit. 



The apple is the commonest and yet the most 

 varied and beautiful of fruits. A dish of them is 

 as becoming to the centre-table in winter as was the 

 vase of flowers in the summer, — a bouquet of spit-- 

 zenburgs and greenings and northern spies. A 



