spur and tonic to the whole biliary system. Then I have read that
it has been found by analysis to contain more phosphorus than any
other vegetable. This makes it the proper food of the scholar and the
sedentary man; it feeds his brain and it stimulates his liver. Nor is
this all. Besides its hygienic properties, the apple is full of
sugar and mucilage, which make it highly nutritious. It is said,
"The operators of Cornwall, England, consider 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 'stand their work' on baked apples without meat; whereas
a potato diet required either meat or some other substantial nutriment.
The French and Germans use apples extensively, so do the inhabitants
of all European 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 English have no sweet apple, I am told, the saccharine element
apparently being less abundant in vegetable nature in that sour and
chilly climate than in our own. It is well known that the European maple
yields no sugar, while both our birch and hickory have sweet in their
veins. Perhaps this fact accounts for our excessive love of sweets,
which may be said to be a national trait.

The Russian apple has a lovely complexion, smooth and transparent,
but the Cossack is not yet all eliminated from it. The only one I have
seen--the Duchess of Oldenburg--is as beautiful as a Tartar princess,
with a distracting odor, but it is the least bit puckery to the taste.

The best thing I know about Chili is not its guano beds, but this fact
which I learn from Darwin's "Voyage," 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 feet deep in the ground send out roots and develop
into fine full-bearing trees by the third year. The people know the
value of the apple too. They make cider and wine of it and then from
the refuse a white and finely flavored spirit; then by another process
a swee