VARIETIES. 
60 
charcoal to a barrel will secure this end ; but if a scum collects on 
the surface, and the fermentation seems inclined to proceed fur- 
ther, it must be immediately racked again. The vent-spile may 
now be driven tight but examined occasionally. In the begin- 
ning of March a final racking should take place, when, should the 
cider not be perfectly fine, about three fourths of an ounce of Isin- 
glass should be dissolved in the cider and poured in each barrel, 
which will render it perfectly clear. It may be bottled now, or 
any period before the blossoming of the apple or afterwards, late 
in May. When bottling, fill the bottles within an inch of the 
bottom of the cork, and allow the bottles to stand an hour before 
the corks are driven. They should then be sealed, and kept in 
a cool cellar, with clean dry sand up to their necks; or laid on 
their sides in boxes or bins, with the same between each layer. 
Varieties. The varieties of the apple, at the present time, 
are very numerous. The garden of the Horticultural Society, 
of London, which contains the most complete collection of fruit 
in the world, enumerates now about 900 varieties, and nearly 
1500 have been tested there. Of these, the larger proportion 
are of course inferior, but it is only by comparison in such an 
experimental garden that the value of the different varieties, for 
a certain climate, can be fully ascertained. 
The European apples generally, are in this climate, inferiour 
to our first rate native sorts, though many of them are of high 
merit also with us. There is much confusion at the West, in regard 
to names of apples; and the variation of fruits from soil, location, or 
other causes, makes it difficult to identify the kinds, and until they 
are brought together and fruited on the same ground the certainty 
of their nomenclature will not be established. The same remarks 
will apply to the South. New varieties of apples are constantly 
springing up in this country from the seed, in favourable soils ; 
and these, when of superiour quality, may, as a general rule, be 
considered much more valuable for orchard culture than foreign 
sorts, on account of their greater productiveness and longevity. 
Indeed, every state has some fine apples, peculiar to it, and it is, 
therefore, impossible in the present state of pomology in this 
country, to give any thing like a complete list of the finest ap- 
ples of the United States. To do this, will require time, and an 
extended and careful examination of their relative merits col- 
lected in one garden. The following descriptions comprise all 
the finest American and foreign varieties yet known in our 
gardens. 
In the ensuing pages, apples are described as set upon their 
base or lower side, with the stalk inserted in the centre of the 
base or more generally in a cavity that occupies the centre of the 
base. They are said to be globular when they would be nearly 
bounded by the lines of a circle, as Summer Rose ; and oblate 
when they would be circumscribed perpendicularly by a depressed 
