ITS USES. 57 



The species of crab from which all our sorts of Apples have 

 originated, is wild in most parts of Europe. There are indeed 

 two or three kinds of wild crab belonging to this country ; as the 

 Pyrus coronaria, or sweet scented crab, with fruit about an inch 

 in diameter, grows in many parts of the United States ; and the 

 wild crab of Oregon, P. rivularis, bearing a reddish yellow fruit 

 abot the size of a cherry, which the Chenook Indians use as an 

 article of food ; yet none of our cultivated varieties of apple have 

 been raised from these native crabs, but from seeds of the species 

 brought here by the colonists from Europe. 



The Apple tree is, however, most perfectly naturalized in 

 America, and in the northern and middle portions of the United 

 States succeeds as well, or, as we believe, better than in any part 

 of the world. The most celebrated apples of Germany and the 

 north of Europe, are not superiour to many of the varieties ori- 

 ginated here, and the American or Newtown Pippin is now 

 pretty generally admitted to be the finest apple in the world. 

 No better proof of the perfect adaptation of our soil and climate 

 to this tree can be desired, than the seemingly spontaneous pro- 

 duction of such varieties as this, the Baldwin, the Spitzenburg, 

 or the Swaar all fruits of delicious flavour and great beauty 

 of appearance. 



The Apple is usually a very hardy and rather slow growing 

 fruit tree, with a low spreading, rather irregular head, and bears 

 an abundance of white blossoms tinged with red. In a wild 

 state it is very long-lived, but the finest garden sorts usually live 

 about fifty or eighty years ; though by proper care, they may be 

 kept healthy and productive much longer. Although the apple 

 generally forms a tree of medium growth, there are many speci- 

 mens in this country of enormous size. Among others we re- 

 collect two in the grounds of Mr. Hall, of Rayanham, Rhode 

 Island, w 7 hich, ten years ago, were 130 years old ; the trunk of 

 one of these trees then measured, at one foot from the ground, thir- 

 teen feet tw 7 o inches, and the other twelve feet two inches. The 

 trees bore that season about thirty or forty bushels, but in the year 

 1780 they together bore one hundred and one bushels of apples. 

 In Duxbury, Plymouth county, Mass., is a tree which in its 

 girth measures twelve feet five inches, and which has yielded in 

 a single season 121^- bushels. 



- USES OF THE APPLE. No fruit is more universally liked or 

 generally used than the apple. It is exceedingly wholesome, 

 and, medicinally, is considered cooling, and laxative, and use- 

 ful in all inflammatory diseases. The finest sorts are much 

 esteemed for the dessert, and the little care required in its culture, 

 renders it the most abundant of all fruits in temperate climates. 

 As the earliest sorts ripen about the last of June, and the latest 

 can be preserved until that season, it may be considered as a 

 fruit in perfection the whole year. Besides its merits for the 



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