106 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



latitude as Sitka it blossoms iu June but does not always perfect it8 

 fruit. The apple has been praised among writers and poets from the 

 most remote periods of antiquitv. In some countries the custom yet 

 lingers of placing a rosy apple in the hand of the dead that they 

 ma^' find it when they enter paradise. Among the heathen gods of 

 the northern mytholog}' the giants cat apples to keep off old age. 

 Maj' it not be that with us moderns they had found out the health- 

 giAMng properties of this glorious fruit, and endowed it with qualities 

 which conduced to health and long life? Certain it is that the apple 

 is full of vegetable acids and aromatics, which act as refrigerants 

 and antiseptics — enemies to jaundice, indigestion and that dreaded 

 member of the human system, a torpid liver. It is a gentle spur 

 and tonic to the whole biliary s^'stem. Chemists also tell us that the 

 apple contains a greater per cent of phosphorous than an}' other 

 fruit or vegetable — which makes it a proper food for the scholar and 

 sedentary man, feeding his brain and stimulating his liver. This was 

 probably the view taken of the apple by that good old clergyman of 

 whom John Burroughs tells us, who on pulling out his pocket-hand- 

 kerchief in the midst of his sermon, pulled out with it two bouncing 

 apples that went rolling across the pulpit floor and down the pulpit 

 stairs. These apples were, no doubt, to be eaten after the sermon, 

 on his way home — they would take the taste of it out of his mouth. 

 Then, beside, it would be impossible for a minister to gi'ow dull or 

 tiresome wilh two big apples in his coat-tail pockets. He would 

 naturally want to hasten along to ''{inally" and the apples — especialh^ 

 if the season were late fall and the apples Nodheads. Moreover, 

 we must not forget that the apple is full of sugar and mucilage, 

 which makes it highh' nutritious. The P2nglish extol the apple in 

 the highest terms. Mr. William Robinson, a great horticultural 

 authority, of London, pionounces the American apple '*the grandest 

 fruit that ripens under the sun." And well he may, for the English 

 apple is an insipid, tame affair, compared with the solid, aromatic, 

 sun-colored and sun-steeped fruit of our northern orchards. In the 

 humid, cloudy and foggy climate of England, the maple tree yields 

 no sugar, and the apple tree no such sweet, delicious fruit as do our 

 Tolmans and Franklins. "The grandest fruit that ripens under the 

 sun." That may sound extravagant — but is it not true? What 

 single fruit is adapted to so universal use, and to such universal 

 taste? It compasses in its eatable, fresh condition, iu all the mar- 

 kets of the temperate-zoned world, eleven months certainly of the 



