76 THE APPLE-TREE 



finishing them in the ornaments of the remaining calyx. The 

 fruit adapts itself to the hand. The fingers close pleasantly 

 over it, fitting its figure. It has a solid feel. The flesh of a 

 good apple is crisp, breaking, melting, coolly acid or mildly 

 sweet. It has a fracture, as one bites it, possessed by no 

 other fruit. One likes to feel the snap and break of it. 

 There is a stability about it that satisfies ; it holds its shape 

 till the last bite. One likes to linger on an apple, to sit 

 by a fireside to eat it, to munch it waiting on a log when 

 there is no hurry, to have another apple with which to invite 

 a friend. 



Now I am not thinking of the Ben Davis apple or any of 

 its kind. I do not want to be doomed to one variety of 

 apple, or even to half a dozen kinds, and particularly I do 

 not want a poor one. There are enough good apples, if 

 we can get them. The days of the amateur fruit-growers 

 seem to be passing. At least we do not hear much of them 

 in society or in many of the meetings of horticulturists. 

 There may be many reasons, but two are evident: we give 

 the public indifferent fruits, and thereby neither educate the 

 taste or stimulate the desire for more ; we do not provide 

 them places from which they can get plants of many of the 

 choicest things. Yet on a good amateur interest in fruits 

 depends, in the end, the real success of commercial fruit- 

 growing. Just now we are trying to increase the consump- 

 tion of apples, to lead the people to eat an apple a day : it 

 cannot be accomplished by customary commercial methods. 

 To eat an apple a day is a question of affections and 

 emotions. 



We have had great riches in our varieties of apples. It 

 has been a vast resource to have a small home plantation 

 of many good varieties, each perfect in its season. The great 



