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Many species of trees become dwarfed towards the northern 

 limit of their growth. The most northern pines and spruces, 

 birches and poplars, are but little shrubs ; in the same way we find 

 this Anis in Kazan, especially when growing on thin soil and 

 without cultivation, loaded with fine fruit, and this, evidently, not 

 one of their fiiSt crops, and yet the trees not more than six feet 

 high. We find little trees planted two, three, and even four 

 together in a clump like stalks of corn, three or four to a hill, and 

 these clumps ten feet apart each way. This is strictly true of 

 some orchards, not so of others ; for upon richer and moister soil, 

 the trees grew somewhat larger, and, as we went southwards, 

 at each town we stayed at, we found the Anis larger, until, at 

 Saratof, we saw Anis thirty-five years planted which had attained 

 a diameter of trunk of ten inches. In nursery it is a slow and 

 crooked grower such as nurserymen hate to grow and hate to 

 sell after they have grown them. In orchard a slow grower. 

 Trees in different places, pointed out as thirty years planted, 

 seemed very small. In old orchards at Khvalinsk and elsewhere, 

 it was considered the most long-lived tree. We saw there, trees 

 seventy years at the very least. These were fourteen inches in 

 diameter of trunk, branched low as the Anis usually is, and, 

 though some large limbs had been removed some years ago, yet 

 the trees were sound in trunk and top. 



The Volga is a very old apple growing region. I am told that 

 old poems, written about the time when Rurik was upon the 

 throne of Kiev, about 850, allude to this. The maiden whose 

 neck was like a swan, and whose lips were like cherries, had 

 cheeks like a Volga apple. The high color of the apples of this 

 dry region is very striking. 



A wild rugged race of apple trees have been grown here for 

 many centuries from seedling production, until we have a number 

 of seedlings much alike in tree and fruit, and hence it is that the 

 name Anis is but a family name. 



• As we used to gallop past these peasant orchards in our 

 Tarantass, a basket on wheels without springs usually drawn by 

 three horses abreast, we were always struck by the beauty, even 



