THE APPLE 115 



Tartar 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 Dar- 

 win's "Voyage," namely, that the apple thrives well 

 there. Darwin 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 large 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 chil- 

 dren and pigs ate little or no other food. He does 

 not add that the people are healthy and temperate, 

 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 1 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 spitz- 

 zenburgs and greenings and northern spies. A 



