430 [Assembly 



the king of apples above its fellows; and it is scarcely possible 

 for the lover of fine fruit to conceal his chagrin on seeing the 

 cracked, half-charred specimens which now represent that noble 

 fruit. 



We have known horticultural pilgrims make their pious jour- 

 neys to Newtown for the purpose of seeing the pippin which bears 

 its name in its native excellence ; and the grievous disappoint- 

 ments with which they looked upon the products of its orchards 

 was both painful and amusing. 



Truth it is, that some entire orchards will not yield for years a 

 perfect apple ; and particularly when grafted for the Newtown 

 pippin. In some seasons not a bushel of passable fruit can be 

 obtained from a hundred trees, and at the best not as many bush- 

 els from that number of well-grown and thrifty trees. Loaded 

 with blossoms in spring, the orchards give fine promise of a rich 

 harvest, but as the summer advances one side cf the apple opens 

 with unseemly cracks, and then gradually becomes covered with 

 a substance resembling burnt leather, worse than the fabled ap- 

 ples of the Dead Sea, for the ashes are on the outside. The peach 

 tree is an exotic on Long Island, that obstinately refuses to yield 

 the fruit, which tradition and the Jerseyman relate of it, and hor- 

 ticulturists will soon place it with the orange in the conservatory. 



The melting Vergaloo, once exported from Long Island to Al- 

 bany, and the river towns by sloop loads, has ceased to afford any- 

 thing more attractive in taste and appearance than a last year's 

 butternut, or the pippin abortion, Avhich it uniformly resembles — 

 the same half-burnt skin, covering a fruit that never ripens into 

 endurance. 



Twenty years since the tall shapely trees that still shade many 

 a door-yard and garden-ground bore the queenly fruit that rivals 

 all we dream of the Hesperides. Scarcely one of those paternal 

 overhanging Dutch roofs, along the lanes and crooked roads of the 

 outer wards of Brooklyn and Bushwick, but is shaded by fine tall 

 pear trees of a dignity of dimensions and carriage that has some- 

 thing burgher-like, and staunch as its Dutch owner; but rarely 

 does any but the winter bell (a savage old variety) hang upon its 

 branches. 



