STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 75 



of their class of keepers, abide with us in good cellars through the 

 winter. But 1 have before put lu^-self on record ou this point. 



The vallej- of the Piscataquis, having been first settled by emi- 

 grants from the oldei- settlements of New England, they natnrall}' 

 took their first grafting from the fruits that suited their taste in 

 childhood ; and their first-grown apples were a rich solace to years 

 of privation and suppressed homesickness. An old uncle of mine, 

 who moved from Massachusetts to the wilderness east of the Penob- 

 scot earlv in this centur}-, once said to me : "When we raised our 

 first apples, and one of them came as my share on a winter evening 

 before the great open fire, I would pare it prudentl}' and eat it slowly. 

 The paring, core, seeds and stem la}- before me. The seeds were 

 carefully saved to be planted in spring. Then to prolong the taste 

 of that apple, I ate the parings, then the core followed — and lastl}' 

 I chewed the stem." 



My father, the late Samuel Chamberlain, planted a small nursery 

 on the land he first cleared in the present town of Foxcroft, and 

 when this was suflScientl}' grown he grafted some of the trees with 

 scions from his native place, Charlton, Mass. This grafting must 

 have been done from the year 1810 to 1814, as the fruit appeared 

 ver}- soon after the last date. I hoed over that little nurser\' of 

 about four square rods many times before the last of the trees were 

 removed. 



As a boy I heard very little said about names of apples. In after 

 years I learned that this beginning included two greenings, four 

 sweet apples, one early sour, one large red winter apple, and the 

 since well-known Hubbardston Nonsuch. One of the greenings is 

 that known as Limbertwig. The other, a smaller apple, called by 

 us the Cluster Greening, from its habit of giving several apples to 

 each set of blossoms. It was a nice winter fruit, but was not con- 

 tinued beyond the first few grafted trees. The sweet were one early 

 autumn, called the Hightop (not the well-known Hightop of the 

 present), a juicy, very sweet apple, of the size and form of the 

 Porter; one a little later in season, called Spurr Sweet by some; 

 one the Pound Sweet ; and the fourth, the Talman. The large red 

 was larger — when we could get a good one from a young, thrifty 

 tree — than the King or Rolfe or any other apple I ever saw in Maine. 

 Trees with ordinary career under neglect, gave only green, worthless 

 fruit, little colored. It was condemned alter a trial of twenty years 

 as not adapted to the climate. Of the Hubbardston Nonsuch I have 



