uash crept up the bank from the brook at
evening, and greedily devoured it, until he had worn a path in the
grass there; and when it was frozen and thawed, the crow and the jay
were glad to taste it occasionally. The owl crept into the first
apple-tree that became hollow, and fairly hooted with delight, finding
it just the place for him; so, settling down into it, he has remained
there ever since.

My theme being the Wild Apple, I will merely glance at some of the
seasons in the annual growth of the cultivated apple, and pass on to my
special province.

The flowers of the apple are perhaps the most beautiful of any tree, so
copious and so delicious to both sight and scent. The walker is
frequently tempted to turn and linger near some more than usually
handsome one, whose blossoms are two thirds expanded. How superior it
is in these respects to the pear, whose blossoms are neither colored
nor fragrant!

By the middle of July, green apples are so large as to remind us of
coddling, and of the autumn. The sward is commonly strewed with little
ones which fall still-born, as it were,--Nature thus thinning them for
us. The Roman writer Palladius said: "If apples are inclined to fall
before their time, a stone placed in a split root will retain them."
Some such notion, still surviving, may account for some of the stones
which we see placed to be overgrown in the forks of trees. They have a
saying in Suffolk, England,--

"At Michaelmas time, or a little before,
Half an apple goes to the core."

Early apples begin to be ripe about the first of August; but I think
that none of them are so good to eat as some to smell. One is worth
more to scent your handkerchief with than any perfume which they sell
in the shops. The fragrance of some fruits is not to be forgotten,
along with that of flowers. Some gnarly apple which I pick up in the
road reminds me by its fragrance of all the wealth of
Pomona,[5]--carrying me forward to those days when they will be
collected in golden and ruddy heaps in the orchards and about the
cider-mills.

[5] The Roman goddess of fruit and fruit-trees.

A week or two later, as you are going by orchards or gardens,
especially in the evenings, you pass through a little region possessed
by the fragrance of ripe apples, and thus enjoy them without price, and
without robbing anybody.

There is thus about all natural products a certain volatile and
ethereal quality which represents their highes