ITS USES. 
57 
The species of crab from which all our sorts of Apples have 
originated, is wild in most parts of Europe. There are indeed 
two or three kinds of wild crab belonging to this country ; as the 
Pyrus coronaria , or sweet scented crab, with fruit about an inch 
in diameter, grows in many parts of the United States ; and the 
wild crab of Oregon, P. rivularis , bearing a reddish yellow fruit 
about the size of a cherry, which the Chenook Indians use as an 
article of food ; yet none of our cultivated varieties of apple have 
been raised from these native crabs, but from seeds of the species 
brought here by the colonists from Europe. 
The Apple tree is, however, most perfectly naturalized in 
America, and in the northern and middle portions of the United 
States succeeds as well, or, as we believe, better than in any part 
of the world. The most celebrated apples of Germany and the 
north of Europe, are not superiour to many of the varieties ori- 
ginated here, and the American or Newtown Pippin is now 
pretty generally admitted to be the finest apple in the world. 
No better proof of the perfect adaptation of our soil and climate 
to this tree can be desired, than the seemingly spontaneous pro- 
duction of such varieties as this, the Baldwin, the Spitzenburg, 
or the Swaar — all fruits of delicious flavour and great beauty 
of appearance. 
The Apple is usually a very hardy and rather slow growing 
fruit tree, with a low spreading, rather irregular head, and bears 
an abundance of white blossoms tinged with red. In a wild 
state it is very long-lived, but the finest garden sorts usually live 
about fifty or eighty years ; though by proper care, they may be 
kept healthy and productive much longer. Although the apple 
generally forms a tree of medium growth, there are many speci- 
mens in this country of enormous size. Among others we re- 
collect two in the grounds of Mr. Hall, of Rayanham, Rhode 
Island, which, -ten years ago, were 130 years old ; the trunk of 
one of these trees then measured, at one foot from the ground, thir- 
teen feet two inches, and the other twelve feet two inches. The 
trees bore that season about thirty or forty bushels, but in the year 
1780 they together bore one hundred and one bushels of apples. 
In Duxbury, Plymouth county, Mass., is a tree which in its 
girth measures twelve feet five inches, and which has yielded in 
a single season 121^- bushels. 
Uses of the apple. No fruit is more universally liked or 
generally used than the apple. It is exceedingly wholesome, 
and, medicinally, is considered cooling, and laxative, and use- 
ful in all inflammatory diseases. The finest sorts are much 
esteemed for the dessert, and the little care required in its culture, 
renders it the most abundant of all fruits in temperate climates. 
As the earliest sorts ripen about the last of June, and the latest 
can be preserved until that season, it may be considered as a 
fruit in perfection the whole year. Besides its merits for the 
