and sheltered by the tangled branches that our sticks
could not dislodge it?

It is a fruit never carried to market, that I am aware of,--quite
distinct from the apple of the markets, as from dried apple and
cider,--and it is not every winter that produces it in perfection.

* * * * *

The era of the Wild Apple will soon be past. It is a fruit which will
probably become extinct in New England. You may still wander through old
orchards of native fruit of great extent, which for the most part went
to the cider-mill, now all gone to decay. I have heard of an orchard in
a distant town, on the side of a hill, where the apples rolled down and
lay four feet deep against a wall on the lower side, and this the owner
cut down for fear they should be made into cider. Since the temperance
reform and the general introduction of grafted fruit, no native
apple-trees, such as I see everywhere in deserted pastures, and where
the woods have grown up around them, are set out. I fear that he who
walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of
knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man, there are many pleasures which
he will not know! Notwithstanding the prevalence of the Baldwin and the
Porter, I doubt if so extensive orchards are set out to-day in my town
as there were a century ago, when those vast straggling cider-orchards
were planted, when men both ate and drank apples, when the pomace-heap
was the only nursery, and trees cost nothing but the trouble of setting
them out. Men could afford then to stick a tree by every wall-side and
let it take its chance. I see nobody planting trees to-day in such
out-of-the-way places, along the lonely roads and lanes, and at the
bottom of dells in the wood. Now that they have grafted trees, and pay a
price for them, they collect them into a plat by their houses, and fence
them in,--and the end of it all will be that we shall be compelled to
look for our apples in a barrel.

This is the word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.

"Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land!
Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers?...

"That which the palmer-worm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that
which the locust hath left hath the canker-worm eaten; and that which
the canker-worm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten.

"Awake, ye drunkards, and weep! and howl, all ye drinkers of wine,
because o