respond to sympathetic treatment through a series of years, then a
garden collection of dwarf apples may satisfy the desire. It is too
bad that we do not have time to cultivate the dwarfs often in the
yards and gardens of North America. We are more familiar with the
raising of dwarf pears (which are grafted on quince stocks since there
is no similar race of natural dwarf pear-tree), but we do not give
them the thumb-and-finger care that is demanded for the choicest
results. The abundance of apples in the market should only stimulate
the desire of the connoisseur to have trees and fruits that are wholly
personal. The market produce can never gratify the affections.

X

WHENCE COMES THE APPLE-TREE?

If the dwarf apple-tree goes back to the Middle Ages and perhaps
farther, then whence comes the apple originally? No one can surely
answer. Carbonized apples are found in the remains of the prehistoric
lake dwellings of Switzerland. When recorded history begins, apples
were well known and widely distributed. The apple-tree is wild in many
parts of Europe, but it is difficult to determine whether, in a given
region, it is indigenous or has run wild from cultivation. Wild
apple-trees are common in North America, but no one supposes that the
orchard apple is native here.

Expert opinion generally considers that the apple is native in the
region of the Caspian Sea and probably in southeastern Europe. Perhaps
it had spread westward before the Aryan migrations. It had also
probably spread eastward, but it is not a cultivated fruit in China
and Japan except apparently as introduced in recent time. The apple is
essentially a fruit of central and northern Europe, and of European
migration and settlement.

It is a fertile retrospect to conceive of the apple as an attendant of
the course of Western civilization. Without voice and leaving no
record, it has nevertheless followed man in his wanderings, encouraged
his attainment of permanent habitations, succored him in his
emergencies. What the apple has contributed to sustenance can never be
known, but we are aware that it yields its fruit abundantly, that it
thrives in widely unlike regions and conditions, that the tree has the
ruggedness to endure severe climates and to provide food that can be
stored and transported. In the ages it must have stood guard at many a
rude camp and fireside. It would be fascinating to know what the
apple-tree has witnessed.

These early apple