THE CRAB-APPLE— continued. 
slightly more than a right angle, thus giving to the tree its characteristic and readily 
recognised irregularly-spreading outline — one of its chief charms. 
The leaves of the Apple are never very ornamental. They unfold with 
a brownish tinge in April, a little in advance of the blossom, and are oblong vith an 
abrupt or acuminate point and slightly serrate margin, and in autumn they dry to a 
dark brown colour. 
When the delicate deeply-blushing petals widen their curves in May, like rosy 
sails billowing in the breeze, the stigmas are already ready to receive the insect- 
borne pollen ; and, whilst bees and other insects come for the abundant honey, the 
anthers burst, row after row, from the outside towards the centre of each blossom, 
during the course of several days. Then, after pollination, there ensues the 
remarkable series of changes by which the receptacular tube enlarges into the fruit, 
which in the wild Crab-apple ripens at first to yellow to be afterwards 
“Sun-reddened with a tempting cheek.” 
Of the two forms found apparently wild, Pyrus Malus^ var. mitis Wallroth, which has 
its young branches, calyx-tube, and under side of the leaves downy and carries its 
fruit erect, is the probable original stock of our cultivated Apples, and in Britain is, 
perhaps, always an escape from cultivation. The other, more truly wild, is Pyrus 
MaluSy var. acerba De Candolle, which has a drooping fruit and the above-mentioned 
parts smooth. 
The Apple may have been spread over northern Europe in prehistoric times 
by migratory herds of deer, and certainly the Crab-trees in our old forest lands owe 
their preservation to the fondness of deer for this fruit. Carbonised remains 
indicate the use of the Apple as food, by the prehistoric Swiss lake-dwellers, before 
the Druid cut with golden knife the golden boughs of the Mistletoe from the trees 
in the Ynys yr Avallon, the Isle of Apples. Pliny, while fabling of pygmies who 
eat nothing, but live on the smell of Apples, enumerates twenty-two cultivated 
varieties ; and the number referred to in our literature increases from the “ Pear- 
mane ” and “ Costard” of Chaucer, the seedling “Pippin” (brought from France by 
Leonard Maschal in 1525), the Codling, Pomewater, Bitter-Sweeting, and others 
mentioned by Shakespeare, to fifty-seven enumerated by Parkinson, seventy-eight 
by Ray, two hundred by Hartlib, and probably at least two thousand sorts at 
present raised. 
Crab-tree cudgels are proverbial for their hardness, and verjuice is still made in 
France from the unripe fruits of the wild species. But from the dim antiquity 
when, as the Edda tells us, Iduna gave the gods Apples to eat in order to renew 
their youth, the cultivated varieties have eclipsed the importance of the Crab. 
