is excellent when roasted or baked, especially the sweet
apple. It is very common, in some places, to eat baked sweet apples with
milk; and the practice is by no means a bad one. Indeed, baked or raw
apples might be advantageously made a part of at least one of our meals
every day. There is said to be a miserly farmer--a single gentleman--in
the western part of the state of Massachusetts, who has lived on nothing
but apples for his food, and water for his drink, about forty years. And
yet he is said to enjoy the most perfect health. I do not propose this
as an example worthy of imitation; but it shows that apples maybe made
to subserve an important purpose in diet. And though I have more than
once expressed an opinion highly unfavorable to the exclusive use of any
one article of diet, yet if I were to confine myself to any one thing, I
know of nothing except bread that I should prefer to good apples. Still,
however, I prefer a variety--sweet, sour, early, late, &c.; and I should
use them raw, roasted, baked, made into sauce with new or unfermented
cider, and boiled. Good apples, eaten raw, with bread, form not only a
very wholesome, but, to an unperverted appetite, a most delicious
dinner.

Much has been said about cutting down orchards; but the whole seems to
me idle--for if the fruit is of a good quality, it may be used as food,
either for man or beast. And if not good, the trees ought either to be
destroyed or replaced by those that will produce fruit which is
better--even if the object were to make it into cider. I have said that
apples may be used both by man and beast. It is well known that most
domestic animals thrive well on good apples, especially sweet ones. Very
tolerable molasses is also sometimes made from sweet apples.

Nearly everything which has been said above in regard to apples, will
apply to pears. The best varieties of this excellent fruit are quite as
nutritious and as wholesome as the apple; and as much improved for the
table by baking. I believe, however, that no cheap process has yet been
devised for keeping them as long in the winter. They may be preserved in
the form of sauce, prepared in the same way with common apple sauce. The
skins, of many kinds of pears are less injurious than those of apples;
but even the skins of pears need not be eaten.

Some kinds of peaches are tolerably wholesome; but the stringy character
of their pulp appears to me to render them less so than apples and
pears,