a hill near me and striking its roots deep in the shale, is a giant
specimen of native tree that bears an apple that has about the clearest,
waxiest, most transparent complexion I ever saw. It is good size, and
the color of a tea-rose. Its quality is best appreciated in the kitchen.
I know another seedling of excellent quality and so remarkable for its
firmness and density, that it is known on the farm where it grows as the
"heavy apple."

I have alluded to Thoreau, to whom all lovers of the apple and its tree
are under obligation. His chapter on Wild Apples is a most delicious
piece of writing. It has a "tang and smack" like the fruit it
celebrates, and is dashed and streaked with color in the same manner.
It has the hue and perfume of the crab, and the richness and raciness of
the pippin. But Thoreau loved other apples than the wild sorts and was
obliged to confess that his favorites could not be eaten in-doors. Late
in November he found a blue-pearmain tree growing within the edge of a
swamp, almost as good as wild. "You would not suppose," he says, "that
there was any fruit left there on the first survey, but you must look
according to system. Those which lie exposed are quite brown and rotten
now, or perchance a few still show one blooming cheek here and there
amid the wet leaves. Nevertheless, with experienced eyes I explore amid
the bare alders, and the huckleberry bushes, and the withered sedge, and
in the crevices of the rocks, which are full of leaves, and pry under
the fallen and decayed ferns which, with apple and alder leaves, thickly
strew the ground. For I know that they lie concealed, fallen into
hollows long since, and covered up by the leaves of the tree itself--a
proper kind of packing. From these lurking places, everywhere within the
circumference of the tree, I draw forth the fruit all wet and glossy,
maybe nibbled by rabbits and hollowed out by crickets, and perhaps
a leaf or two cemented to it (as Curzon an old manuscript from a
monastery's mouldy cellar), but still with a rich bloom on it, and at
least as ripe and well kept, if no better than those in barrels, more
crisp and lively than they. If these resources fail to yield anything,
I have learned to look between the leaves of the suckers which spring
thickly from some horizontal limb, for now and then one lodges there, or
in the very midst of an alder-clump, where they are covered by leaves,
safe from cows which may have smelled them out. If