1879, J 
ON ArPLE ORCHARDS, ETC. 
Gll 
Croton mutabilis. 
Eome ill Pliny’s time, for he states that “ there 
were some trees in the villa gardens near the 
city, which yielded more profit than a small 
farm, and which brought about the invention 
of grafting and adds, “ There are Apples 
that have ennobled the countries from which 
they came, and our best varieties will honour 
their first grafters for ever.” It must be con¬ 
fessed that Pliny has related fables as well as 
facts concerning the Apple—such as changing 
the fruit to the colour of blood, by grafting it 
on the IMulberry—now known to be a physio¬ 
logical impossibility. Columella, a practical 
husbandman, who wrote some years before 
Pliny, describes these methods of grafting, as 
handed down to him by those whom he calls 
the “ ancients,” besides a fourth method of his 
own, and a mode of inarching, or grafting by 
approach, “whereby all kinds of grafts may be 
grafted upon all sorts of trees.” It is likely, 
beautifully marbled with various shades of 
yellow and pink in the young state, and these 
take on, as the leaf becomes matured, brilliant 
tints of orange and magenta. The plant is 
very ornamental—one of the richest-coloured 
varieties in cultivation. 
This group of appendiculate varieties com¬ 
mend themselves from the grotesque character 
which a well-grown plant presents, by reason 
of its many variations of form, in some cases 
also blended with a high degree of merit, as to 
colouration.—T. Moore. 
ON APPLE ORCHARDS, Etc. 
T the common Apple-tree is a na- 
e of the eastern hemisphere we have 
3 authority of the earliest writers in 
Holy Writ, as well as of the naturalists of 
ancient Greece and Eome. The cultivated 
Apple was probably not very abundant at 
