LD APPLE.

So much for the more civilized apple-trees (_urbaniores_, as Pliny
calls them). I love better to go through the old orchards of ungrafted
apple-trees, at whatever season of the year,--so irregularly planted:
sometimes two trees standing close together; and the rows so devious
that you would think that they not only had grown while the owner was
sleeping, but had been set out by him in a somnambulic state. The rows
of grafted fruit will never tempt me to wander amid them like these. But
I now, alas, speak rather from memory than from any recent experience,
such ravages have been made!

Some soils, like a rocky tract called the Easterbrooks Country in my
neighborhood, are so suited to the apple, that it will grow faster in
them without any care, or if only the ground is broken up once a year,
than it will in many places with any amount of care. The owners of this
tract allow that the soil is excellent for fruit, but they say that it
is so rocky that they have not patience to plough it, and that, together
with the distance, is the reason why it is not cultivated. There are,
or were recently, extensive orchards there standing without order. Nay,
they spring up wild and bear well there in the midst of pines, birches,
maples, and oaks. I am often surprised to see rising amid these trees
the rounded tops of apple-trees glowing with red or yellow fruit, in
harmony with the autumnal tints of the forest.

Going up the side of a cliff about the first of November, I saw a
vigorous young apple-tree, which, planted by birds or cows, had shot
up amid the rocks and open woods there, and had now much fruit on it,
uninjured by the frosts, when all cultivated apples were gathered. It
was a rank wild growth, with many green leaves on it still, and made an
impression of thorniness. The fruit was hard and green, but looked as if
it would be palatable in the winter. Some was dangling on the twigs, but
more half-buried in the wet leaves under the tree, or rolled far down
the hill amid the rocks. The owner knows nothing of it. The day was not
observed when it first blossomed, nor when it first bore fruit, unless
by the chickadee. There was no dancing on the green beneath it in its
honor, and now there is no hand to pluck its fruit,--which is only
gnawed by squirrels, as I perceive. It has done double duty,--not only
borne this crop, but each twig has grown a foot into the air. And this
is _such_ fruit! bigger than many berries, w