n6 THE APPLE. 



all. Beside its hygienic properties, the apple is full of 

 sugar and mucilage, which make it highly nutritious. 

 It is said "The operators of Cornwall, England, con- 

 sider ripe apples nearly as nourishing as bread, and 

 far more so than potatoes. In the year 1801 — which 

 was a year of much scarcity — apples, instead of being 

 converted into cider, were sold to the poor, and the 

 laborers asserted that they could 4 stand their work ' 

 on baked apples without meatj whereas a potato 

 diet required either meat or some other substantial 

 nutriment. The French and Germans use apples ex- 

 tensively, so do the inhabitants of all Europeans 

 nations. The laborers depend upon them as an article 

 of food, and frequently make a dinner of sliced apples 

 and bread." 



Yet the English apple is a tame and insipid affair, 

 compared with the intense, sun-colored and sun-steeped 

 fruit our orchards yield. The Russian apple again 

 has the right complexion and no doubt the right tang. 

 Small, according to the fruit catalogues, but beautifully 

 transparent like larger and improved crabs, — a kind 

 of half wild Cossack fruit, I should say. 



The best thing I know about Chili is not its guano 

 beds, but this fact which I learn from Darwin's s< Voy- 

 age," 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 



