THE APPLE. 138 



princess, with a distracting odor, but it is the least bit 

 puckery to the taste. 



The best thing I know about Chili is not its guano 

 beds, but this fact which I learn from Darwin's " Voy- 

 age," namely, that the apple thrives well there. Dar- 

 win saw a town there so completely buried in a wood 

 of apple-trees, that its streets were merely paths in 

 an orchard. The tree indeed thrives so well, that 

 t'arge branches cut off in the spring and planted two 

 or three feet deep in the ground send out roots and 

 develop into fine full-bearing trees by the third year. 

 The people know the value of the apple too. They 

 make cider and wine of it and then from the refuse a 

 white and finely flavored spirit; then by another 

 process a sweet treacle is obtained called honey. The 

 children and pigs ate little or no other food. He 

 does not add that the people are healthy and temper- 

 ate, but I have no doubt they are. We knew the 

 apple had many virtues, but these Chilians have really 

 opened a deep beneath a deep. We had found out 

 the cider and the spirits, but who guessed the wine 

 and the honey, except it were the bees ? There is 

 a variety in our orchards called the winesap, a doubly 

 liquid name that suggests what might be done with 

 this fruit. 



The apple is the commonest and yet the most 

 varied and beautiful of fruits. A dish of them is as 

 becoming to the centre-table in winter as was the vase 

 of flowers in the summer, a bouquet of spitzen- 

 bergs and greenings and northern spies. A rose when 



