142 MY FARM. 



summer ; and every May, in its latter days, sees 

 them a great pyramid of blooming and blushing 

 white. But after the bloom, the beauty is never 

 fully restored. There is fruit indeed, but small, 

 pinched, pierced with curculio stings, bored through 

 and through with the worm of the apple-moth ; and 

 over and above all, every apple is patched with a 

 mouldy blight which forbids full growth, and gives 

 it, with its brilliant red cheek, a falsified promise of 

 excellence. I have found in the books no illustration 

 of this peculiar distemper which attacks the Lady 

 apple ; but in my orchard, in the month of Novem- 

 ber, the illustrations abound. 



The Esopus Spitzenberg, that red, spicy bit of 

 apple-flesh, had its representatives among the old 

 trees which came under my care ; I may give it the 

 credit of showing grateful cognizance of the labor 

 bestowed. The trees thrived ; they are thrifty now ; 

 the bloom is like that of a gigantic, out-spread 

 Weigelia. The fruit too (such as the curculio 

 spares), is full and round ; but there is not a speci- 

 men of it which is not bored through by the inevit- 

 able grub of the apple-moth. 



Besides the varieties I have particularized, there 

 were the Tallman and Pound Sweetings sparsely 

 represented ; and the Rhode Island Greening, which, 

 I will fairly admit, has made a better struggle 



