prairie-states crab-apple, which I have never seen, but
which, I am told, has nothing like the beauty of our exquisite Eastern
native. This Western species lacks the long stem and the bright color of
the flowers of our favorite, and its fruits, while quite as viciously
sour, are a dull and greasy green. The great West has many other things,
but we have the wild crab-apple.

Rather between, as to beauty, is the native crab-apple of the Southland,
which is known as the Soulard crab. It is not as attractive as our own
Eastern gem, a pure native possession, and one which our foreign friends
envy us.

Curiously enough, our own fruiting apple is not a native of America. It
was at a meeting of a New England pomological association that I heard,
several years ago, an old man of marvelous memory and power of
observation tell of his recollections of seventy years, notable among
which was his account of seeing the first good apples, as a boy, during
a visit in the state of New York. Think of it! the most widely grown and
beautiful of all our fruits hardly older than the railroad in America!
We owe the apples we eat to Europe, for the start, the species being
probably of Himalayan origin. America has greatly developed the apple,
however, as one who has looked over the fruit tables at any great
exposition will promptly testify, and nearly all our really good
varieties are of American origin. Moreover, we are the greatest
apple-growers in the world, and the yearly production probably exceeds
a hundred millions of barrels.

[Illustration: Fruits of the wild crab]

The curious story of "Johnny Appleseed" is given us by historians, who
tell us of this semi-religious enthusiast who roamed barefoot over the
wilds of Ohio and Indiana a century ago, sowing apple-seeds in the
scattered clearings, and living to see the trees bearing fruit,
selections from which probably are interwoven among the varieties of
today. New varieties of apples, by the way, come from seeds sown, and
trees grown from them, with a bare chance that one in ten thousand may
be worth keeping. When a variety seems thus worthy, "buds" or "scions"
from the original tree are "budded" or "grafted" by the nurseryman into
young seedling trees, which are thus changed into the selected sort. To
sow the seeds of your favorite Baldwin does not imply that you will get
Baldwin trees, by any means; you will more likely have a partial
reversion to the acid and bitter original specie