THE CRAB-APPLE TREE. 371 
At this age the plants should be inserted into nursery lines, 
fifteen inches apart, and the plants six inches asunder. After 
being two years transplanted they are fit for being put into 
lines for stocks, or for being planted into good clean prepared 
ground in the forest; but if they are required larger, they 
should be again transplanted into nursery lines and allowed 
additional space. At the age of five, plants established in 
the ground often yield shoots three feet long in one season in 
ordinary rich soil. 
As a fence plant it grows far more vigorously than haw- 
thorn, but none of the varieties make so close a hedge, or 
present so even a surface as that plant. Many of the varie- 
ties raised from the seeds of grafted fruit have few or no 
spines, yet as a rough fence and shelter forming a thicket 
on the outside of an exposed plantation, or belting on dry 
ground, such as that along a sunk fence, it readily springs 
up, and is a useful tree. 
The figure of the wild tree is generally pyramidal, and to 
that shape the varieties commonly incline, although some are 
very dissimilar in figure. All yield white blossoms, and in 
good soil the ordinary rate of growth is about twenty feet in 
ten years, or about forty-five to fifty feet in thirty years, with 
a trunk from one to one and a half feet in diameter, which is 
the ordinary size of the tree in this country. # 
It is of great duration, not subject to disease, and has been 
known to live for several centuries. 
The wood is much valued by artisans. When well dried 
it is not apt to crack or warp; it takes a fine polish, and is 
esteemed as the most suitable timber for being died black, 
in imitation of ebony, as is the wood of all the allied species. 
P. Malus (L.), the Wild or Crab-Apple Tree. Syn. Malus 
communis (De Candolle.)\—This tree is a native of Britain, 
and is also found wild throughout Europe. It is the 
parent of the innumerable varieties of fine apples in culti- 
vation in our gardens and orchards. The tree is grown 
extensively in nurseries for the supply of stocks, on which 
