The Canadian Horticulturist. 339 



few as to give it barren aspect. Those of greatly differing characteristics should 

 be somewhat separated. Planting for color effect in autumn foliage may also be 

 done, and to secure this a careful study of the shades of leaf of each variety and 

 species, with the time of their assuming different tints, is necessary. As a rul e 

 an individual tree takes on the same tint each fall, but this color would probably 

 be made to vary by transplanting the tree to other soil. The autumn color of 

 American foliage is among the brightest in the world, and its effects should be 

 more sought in lawn planting. — From " Street and Shade Trees," a book issued 

 by the Rural Publishing Co. 



COMPOSITION OF THE APPLE. 



HEMICALLY, the apple is composed of vegetable fibre, 

 albumen, sugar, gum chlorophyll, malic acid, garlic acid, 

 lime, and much water. Furthermore, the German analysts 

 say that the apple contains a larger percentage of phos- 

 phorus than any other fruit or vegetable. This phosphorus 

 is admirably adapted for renewing the essential nervous 

 yy ™ matter, lethion, of the brain and spinal cord. It is, per- 



haps, for the same reason, rudely understood, that old Scandinavian traditions 

 represent the apple as the food of the gods, who, when they felt themselves to 

 be growing feeble and infirm, resorted to this fruit for renewing their powers of 

 mind and body. Also, the acids of the apple are of signal use for men of 

 sedentary habits, whose livers are sluggish in action ; these acids serving to 

 eliminate from the body noxious matters which, if retained, would make the 

 brain heavy and dull, or bring about jaundice or skin eruptions and other allied 

 troubles. Some such an experience must have led to our custom of taking 

 apple sauce with roast pork, rich goose, and other like dishes. 



The malic acid of ripe apples, either raw or cooked, will neutralize any 

 excess of chalky matter engendered by eating too much meat. It is also a 

 fact that such fresh fruits as the apple, the pear, and the plum, when taken ripe 

 and without sugar, diminish acidity in the stomach rather than provoke it. 

 Their vegetable salts and juices are converted into alkaline carbonates, which 

 tend to counteract acidity. A good ripe raw apple is one of the easiest of 

 vegetable substances for the stomach to deal with, the whole process of its 

 digestion being completed in eighty-five minutes. Gerard found that the 

 "pulpe of roasted apples mixed in a wine-quart of faire water, and laboured 

 together until it comes to be as apples and ale — which we call lambswool — 

 never faileth in certain diseases of the raines, which myself hath often proved, 

 gaining both crownes and credit." — Ex. 



