THE APPLE-TEEE. 75 



The Pomona of the erudite and philosophic John Evelyn was 

 the first comprehensive treatise on orchards and cider. He 

 was the father of Horticulture. How delightfully he dis- 

 courses ! After the manner of Eay, his illustrious contemporary, 

 and of Gilbert White of Selborne, his brother naturalist in the 

 following century, who was born exactly 100 years later then 

 Evelyn. 



But what charmed pages are Evelyn's — what sermons to lay 

 the fevered dreams of this restless world ! and we owe them all 

 to the intestine broils of the State at that period, which drove 

 Evelyn into retirement at Sayes Court : and this retirement, like 

 that enforced on John Bunyan in Bedford jail, and Kaleigh's 

 captivity in the Tower, begot that concentration of mind which 

 gave to the world the Sylva and Pomona, Pilgrim's Progress, and 

 the History of the World ! Thus do good grow out of evil. 



Evelyn's great works were published after the Restoration, 

 but the material was compiled during the years of retirement 

 at Sayes Court. 



Concerning the annals of horticulture there is an inexplic- 

 able circumstance manifested in the nature of the hawthorn and 

 the apple tree. They belong to kindred families in the same 

 natural division (sub-order pomacese) but whilst the thorn, 

 cultivated too, from seed, for centuries, has scarcely developed 

 half a dozen varieties, the variations of the apple tree are 

 endless and almost innumerable, for it may safely be said no 

 man has exer counted them or ever will, for many a good tree is 

 growing deep in Cornish Valleys to-day, unknown to fame and 

 the gardiner's catalogue. 



Almost every orchard contains one un-canonised saint ! but 

 in the catalogue of the gardens of the Horticultural Society, 

 there are over 1,400 apple trees described, which we may roughly 

 estimate at half the total number in the realm. 



To the student of natural history this is most curious, — the 

 amenable or responsive temper of some plants, and the 

 refactory nature of others, even when of the same order ! Do 

 we not see correspondences in the animal world ? Are there not 

 Wolves and Zebras (things which cannot be tamed) in both 

 kingdoms ? 



