Mr - : ¥ SN Se (jo SB356 C-$6™ THE JOHN - CRAIG LIBRARY COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE NEW YORK STATE _ COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE, DEPARTMENT OF HORTICULTURE, CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, DATE DUE JUL 25 ao s APR 2 Blvula- DEMCO 38-297 FRUITS AND FRUIT-TREES. ae eS Sie Vis yy} re NV) hat i NY p ZW d Mit the Gat ofthe Chohard. FRUITS «° FRUIT-TREES, HOME AND FOREIGN. An Index to the Rinds Valued in Britain, WITH DESCRIPTIONS, HISTORIES, AND OTHER PARTICULARS. BY -beC. Si; GRINDON, . Author of “Country Rambles,” “ Manchester Banks and Bankers,” “* The Shakspere Flora,” ‘‘ The Little Things of Nature,” and other works. “To know That which before us lies in daily life, Is the prime wisdom.” Paradise Lost. MANCHESTER : PALMER & HOWE, 73, 75, AND 77, PRINCESS-ST. LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO. 1885. oe Can BG MANCHESTER : PALMER AND HOWE, PRINTERS, 73, 75, AND 77, PRINCESS STREET. PREFACE. Te volume claims to be no more than an amateur’s contribution to the literature of the very large and varied subject of Fruits and Fruiting-plants. To exhaust the subject would require folios: the difficulty in dealing with even a portion of it is not to find material, but to select such as may be likely to prove most generally useful and interesting. In the following chapters those fruits only have been dealt with which are either produced in Great. Britain, or which are Vi. Preface. imported from foreign countries as established articles of commerce. So many novelties from abroad now make their appearance in the shops, that it is hoped that a book giving exact informa- tion, at all events respecting these last, may meet a want without question often felt. No attempt has been made to deal with the arts of Culture. They require special treatises, and happily such works have already been published by experienced practical gardeners. Neither has endeavour been made, except briefly, to describe the very numerous “varieties” of the garden fruits commonly cultivated. Particulars respecting these are given at length in the Catalogues issued every year by the leading fruit-growers. Three of the latter the author here begs to thank very sincerely for supplying him with the names of the sorts they consider supreme :—Messrs. Thos. Rivers & Sons, Sawbridgeworth ; Messrs. R. Smith & Sons, Wor- cester; and Messrs. R. P. Ker & Sons, Liverpool. Preface. vil. The information brought together in these pages has been gathered from very various sources, all esteemed authentic. Everything that has needed only a carefully observant life passed in the British Islands is, so far as regards the authors own responsibility, purely and wholly original. LEO. H. GRINDON. Manchester, October, 1885. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Page. INTRODUCTORY ... CHAPTER II. THE: APPUR: Giclee wee co Ge cee ate, TY) CHAPTER III. THe PEAR, THE QUINCE, THE MEDLAR, THE LoQquaT, THE SERVICE, &C. ... ee eee 35 x. Contents. CHAPTER IV. Page. Stone-Fruits: THE Pitum, CHERRY, PEacH, Apricot, ALMOND, &C.... 0... 0.6. wee vee) OF CHAPTER V. GRAPES, RAISINS, &C. ... we. vee ee ee es TOF CHAPTER VI. THE CURRANT, THE GOOSEBERRY, CRANBERRIES, WHORTLE-BERRIES, XC. ... ee vee eevee 133 CHAPTER VII. THE ORANGE AND ITS KINDRED... ... ... ... 160 CHAPTER VIII. THE RASPBERRY, THE BLACKBERRY, THE STRAW- BERRY, F1G, MULBERRY, PINE-APPLE, &C. ... 197 Contents. Xi. CHAPTER IX. Page. NuTS OF ALL KINDS tie) AGH Ww ai, tae Son BAS CHAPTER X. VaRIORUM: THE POMEGRANATE, THE DATE, THE BaNANA, THE MELON, THE TOMATO, AND OTHERS. APPENDIX... 10.0 06. cee vee vee 283 Xi. Contents. ILLUSTRATIONS. Page. AT THE GATE OF THE ORCHARD... Fvontispiece. (Drawn and Etched by Thos. Letherbrow.) PRUNING” cee vant. ans! asi gee) ee! oe? gee, eee CEO CHILDREN GATHERING APPLES... ... w) ee 34 PEAR BLOSSOM... 6.00.0. 0 cae ee tee tee eee «60 THE CHERRY-LAUREL ...0 1. oe. tee tee eee 103 THE VINE... 06.0 cee ee cue tee tee ee nee 132 THE BLACKBERRY 0.0.0 c. 0c. cee tee tee vee 247 THE HAZEL-NUT www cee eee cee ee tee vee 282 HRUILS AND FRUIT-EREES. Chapter First. INTRODUCTORY. ‘*My fruit is better than gold ; yea, than much fine gold.” Prov. viii. 19. 3) YIERE are words which touch the imagination with peculiar force, the very sound of which ¢, is agreeable, and which in their compass and _ immortal charm remind us of the “infinite eg variety” of Cleopatra. Such are Home, : Spring, Truth, Friendship, Sunshine. To this excellent list belongs that other simple but very meaningful one, Fruir. The mention of fruit never fails to inspire thoughts of classic form, artistic hue, fragrance, delight of palate, healthful service to the body. It invites also, in the pleasantest manner, to contemplation of the B 2 Fruits and Fruit-Trees. delightfulness of a well-kept promise, since fruit of every kind begins with Flowers: not such as lilies, which come and go, casting their brightness on the world for only an hour; but flowers that are prophets as well, sending the mind forward into generous autumn. No one ever refuses fruit. Every man who has the opportunity of eating fruit, makes the best use of his chance. We are invited to fruit by the pleasant consciousness that here is something upon which Nature, in providing for our sustenance, has concentrated her richest and most useful powers. Fruits give us all their virtue at the first solicitation. We may bake if we please, or boil, or stew, but very few indeed are the fruits which are not eatable just as they come from the tree or the plant, charged with wooing nectar, and that dissolve almost upon the instant; or if not juicy, then of the capital substance of the filbert and the chestnut. Their charm does not wait, like that of dinner-vegetables, for bringing forth under the influence of fire. A little sugar now and then, or a touch of salt, adds a certain chaste felicity to the flavour. In the aggregate they are still independent of any artifices we may call to our aid. Matured in the sunshine, they are themselves like the sunbeams of heaven, which ask nothing from mankind but grateful reception and perennial enjoyment. Because so useful to us—and this not simply as aliment, but very generally as sustainers and restorers of health, “good physicians” really and truly—Nature has endowed fruits with all sorts of pretty wiles and persuasions to The Fruit-Shop. 3 approach—“ Come and eat.” The things that are less good for us, though still salutary, have to make their claims heard in some indirect and merely suggestive way. Fruit speaks a language that needs no teaching, and no effort to learn and understand. The eye and the heart interpret simultaneously, and every portion of our fabric reaps the benefit. “What beauty,” says Leigh Hunt, ‘as well as other agreeablenesses, in a well-disposed fruiterer’s window! Here are the round, piled-up oranges, deepening almost into red, and heavy with juice; the apple, with its brown red cheek, as if it had slept in the sun; the pear, swelling. downwards, and provocative of a huge bite in the side; thronging grapes, like so many tight little bags of wine ; the peach, whose handsome leathern coat strips off so finely ; the pearly or ruby-like currants, heaped in light, long baskets; the red little mouthfuls of strawberries, ditto; the larger purple ones of plums; cherries, whose old comparison with lips is better than anything new; mulberries, dark and rich with juice, fit to grow over what Homer calls the deep black-watered fountains ; the swelling pomp of melons; the rough, inexorable-looking coco-nut, milky at heart; the elaborate elegance of walnuts; the quaint cashew-nut ; almonds, figs, raisins— in short, ‘Whatever Earth, all-bearing mother, yields, Rough, or smooth rind, or bearded husk, or shell.’” How much more refined a service, he might have con- tinued, the waiting upon a lady in a fruit-shop than in a 4 Fruits and Frutt-Trees. pastry-cook’s! A white hand looks better on a basket of strawberries than on any sophisticated preparation from the oven. Man or woman, whoever it may be, that renders the comely meed of ripe fruit, takes us, in that pleasant action, so much the nearer to nature, thus to the pure, upon which we can always rest in faith. Surely, too, it is because so good for us that Nature yields her fruits in abundance so vast. No niggard hand is that which converts the orange-tree into an edorado, and hangs the crimson clusters upon the currant-bushes. Happy the day when the munificent design of all this shall be recognized by statesmen and every one in power, and simple alimentary fruit, that costs little to produce, be reckoned as one of the genuine “ rights of the people.” Happy again when it is remembered that God sends fruit, as He sends flowers, not for personal pleasure only, but for employment in kindly charities, very specially in the hospital. A sound and large- hearted Christianity is better declared by the gift to a poor creature who has lain for weeks, perhaps months, on the couch of sickness, of a bunch of grapes, or a basket of strawberries, the “fruit of refreshing,” than by any amount of aériform benedictions. Here, indeed, it is “blessed to give.” For the same reasons, how vast becomes the practical importance of seeing that our gardens and orchards contain the best varieties, the sweetest and the most prolific. Fruit-culture, fortunately, is no longer hap-hazard, but now conducted upon scien- Structure of Frutts. 5 tific principles. The best kinds of fruit can be got quite as easily as the inferior. No man is constrained nowa- days to put up with anything third or fourth rate. Not that the procuring of good sorts from the nurseryman is the all in all. Fruiting-plants require care, attention, and watchfulness every bit as much as orchids. It is the successful treatment of these which proves the gardener’s ability. That beautiful and far-reaching phrase, “ By their fruits ye shall know them,” is not more true in morals as a metaphor than in the literal sense when we are looking to those who dig and prune. The garden and market-place signification of the word Fruit is, after all, only a part of that in which it is employed by the botanist, and this it becomes important to consider, so that we may perceive how very limited is the ordinary sense. The fruit of a plant is the seed-case when ripe—the portion of the flower which in its earliest state was the “ ovary,” with anything, in special instances, that may have become adjoined to it. Many actual “fruits” are regarded as only “seeds,” as corn of all kinds, and the fruits of such plants as sage, parsley, and the sunflower. But every one of these consists of a seed within and a “pericarp,” or enclosing case, though this may be a simple shell or integument. Of this seed-like class of fruits there are probably, taking the whole world, quite twenty-five thousand. The beauty of very many of them is delectable, as happens with the embossed cypseles of the hawkweeds, and the polished grains of the forget-me-not. Another twenty-five thousand of the \ 6 Frutts and Fruit-Tyrees. botanical “fruits” come to the front as finished examples of the capsule, the cone, the legume, and of the natural urns, vases, cups, and goblets which Art has in all ages delighted to imitate in gold and silver, marble and glass. A collection of the principal types of these compares well with a cabinet of sea-shells. How beautiful the sculptured produce of the pine-tree; the round head of the poppy, with its ring of little apertures under the eaves for escape of the seeds; the acorn in its tesselated cup; the three-fold pod of the moringa; the ribbed hemisphere of the sand-box tree! Another set, smaller in measurement, includes those charmingly pretty play- things of nature, the fruits of the common pimpernel, the rose lychnis, the wood-sorrel, the birdsfoot, the willow-herb. They are little, it is true. Are they, then, insignificant? Little things belong to much more elevated reaches of eyesight than big ones. Any one can see big things. The perceiving of little ones demands fine and assiduous culture of the best of the human faculties, the inner eyes as well as the outer. The minims of nature declare far more powerfully than the immense things that nature is “a lute that lieth still,” waiting only the skilful musician. Yet another great company of the botanical “ fruits” presents itself in the form of Berries. The scope for variation is here much more restricted, seeing that a berry must needs be more or less oval or spherical, and totally devoid of carving or filagree. Never mind. There is always a resource. Here the lack of diversity in figure is Potsonous Frutts. a compensated by inexhaustible variety of bright colours and endless fashion of cluster. Recall the spectacle pre- sented at Michaelmas by the opulus and the mountain- ash, the innumerable shining scarlet of the hedgerow brier, the crimson of the dulcamara, the festoons of the curling bryony, the deep-toned purple of the elder, the raven-wing thyrsi of the privet, and at Christmas the bracelets of Old England’s incomparable holly. As in the field so in the garden, where the impearled snow- berry is challenged by the scarlet aucuba, the berbery, the Mahonia, the cotoneasters in their many kinds, the thorns, no fewer, the arbutus, the pyracantha, and the passion-flower, with golden pendants as large as plums. Every good conservatory makes equal show in its plenty of scarlet Rivina, ardisias, and cherry-solanums, in its white leucobotrys, and azure-berried Billardiera and elzeocarpus. Berried plants, in the hands of the skilful decorator, stand abreast of the best examples of tinted foliage, and often prove more valuable for enduring orna- ment than even the longest-blooming flowers. Before parting with them it is unwillingly that we are constrained to remember that among fruits there are many that are deleterious, malevolent, and even poisonous. That a fruit should at any time prove false to its exalted ideal is a disheartening discovery, and one rendered more lamentable by the traitors being detected among the Berries, since it is these which are most likely to seduce the unwary. Happily, the number of really poisonous berries is very small in comparison with the 8 Fruits and Fruit-Trees. harmless ones, and it is seldom that the flavour of these is sufficiently inviting for much danger to accrue. In England we have the scarlet berries of the common arum, or “ lords-and-ladies,” and the shining black ones, not unlike cherries, of the belladonna, or “deadly- nightshade.” There is again a very capital set-off. The infinite benevolence of nature has attached to every poisonous plant some special mark or feature by which it may be learned off-hand. It will be a good sign that truly useful Botany is being taught in schools when the pupils are less heavily charged with abstractions regard- ing protoplasm and cell-formation, and are shown how to distinguish noxious plants from the innocent. No exact line can be drawn between fruits popularly so called and those which are “fruits” only with the botanist. The margins overlap, and not infrequently the idea of a fruit changes with the latitude and the people. Berries disdained in a wealthy country are prized where there is nothing better to be got, as when the Indians of North America resort to the Gaultheria. In warm countries, again, many become palatable which in cold ones are harsh and insipid, as cornels in the south of Europe, the gay fruit of which Horace boasts when he sends to his dear friend Quintius that beautiful little sketch of his Sabine country-seat: “And did you but see my hedges, rich with sloes and ruddy cornels!” So, again, as myrtle-berries in the Levantine countries. “ Of the perfumed berries of the myrtle,” says Miss Beaufort (now Lady Strangford) in one of the most lively and Tropical Frurts. 9 picturesque books of Eastern travel ever printed, “while staying at Damascus, I made my luncheon.”* The botanical fruits also include various esculents commonly counted with the “ vegetables,” as kidney-beans, marrows, cucumbers, tomatoes, aubergines; with certain spices and condiments, as capsicums, pepper-corns, pimento, and vanilla-pods. Confining the term to fruits commonly so understood, the total number in the whole world is small in propor- tion to the entire number of different flowering-plants. Probably the total is about five hundred. Many are peculiar to tropical countries, as the mango, the mango- steen, the durion, the papaw, the sour-sop, the sweet-sop, the mammee, the anchovy-pear, the alligator-pear, the cherimoyer, the rose-apple, the bread-fruit, the guava, the carambola. Of these we never see examples in England (though a few may now and then be ripened in some choice hothouse), because too perishable to be conveyed across the water. Others belonging to sub- tropical and the warmer temperate countries, though staples or favourites at home, are equally unknown in England, for various reasons easily conjectured, such as the water-chestnut of the south of Europe, the famous nelumbo-seeds of Asia, the Moreton Bay chestnut, the May-apple of North America, and the kei-apple of Natal. In England, of indigenous fruits, growing wild and col- lected for market, we have six or seven—the blackberry, the cranberry, the whortle-berry, the elder-berry, the * ¢¢eyptian Sepulchres and Syrian Shrines,” 1861, p. 318. 10 Fruits and Frutt-Trees. cloud-berry, and the hazel-nut. Of kinds more or less probably indigenous, Z/vs many introduced from foreign countries in bygone ages, and assiduously cultivated, we have over twenty—the apple, the pear, the quince, the medlar, the peach, the nectarine, the apricot, the plum, the cherry, the grape, the gooseberry, the currant, the raspberry, the strawberry, the walnut, the melon, the pine- apple, the fig, the mulberry, and others of less import- ance. Some of these present themselves under forms so different—the plum, for instance, when fashioned into a greengage—that practically the number is perhaps nearer thirty. Of imported fruits—few of them ever cultivated, and then chiefly as curiosities or for ornament—the list runs again to about a score, including the orange, the lemon, the citron, the lime, the shaddock, almonds, chest- nuts, coco-nuts, juvias, sapucajas, opuntias, bananas, pomegranates, hickory-nuts, pecuan-nuts, souari-nuts, etc., all in the fresh condition, or just as they come from the tree, with various dried ones besides, as dates and litchis. Figs in the dried state, ‘“‘ French plums,” prunes, raisins, and the currants of the grocers’ shops may be mentioned for completeness’ sake, though belonging botanically to the previous lists. Occasionally we may see loquats, the custard-apple, granadillas, and a few others, the aggregate of all sorts thus amounting to about sixty. The number of the strangers will probably increase year by year, owing to the more rapid ocean communication now practicable, and to that laudable, not to say noble, interest in the productions of foreign ffistory of Fruits. II countries which always marks a highly civilized com- munity, and which has already filled our gardens and conservatories with the loveliest flowers and the greenest leaves played forth by nature. Two very interesting questions here present them- selves. Whence did England derive, in the first instance, the fruits not indigenous we now cultivate? and from what countries do we receive the imported ones? The history of all the very ancient fruits, such as the fig, the grape, the walnut, and the citron, and of some even of the comparatively modern ones, such as the. orange, presents in many of the particulars the complexion of a romance, so curious is the blending of truth and fable. Dating, like the history of the cereals, and of language, from the earliest ages of which we have knowledge, over some of the most interesting portions there hangs a veil that will be lifted only when men behold the face of Isis. It is practicable, nevertheless, to trace what may be termed the middle history, or that which runs abreast of the diffusion of Christianity. As regards our own island, fruit-culture may be referred, for its beginning, to the Romans, that wonderful people to whom primitive Britain was indebted for its first lessons in the useful arts, as road-making and architecture. The Roman governors and other magnates, of whose handsome and well- appointed villas vestiges still exist, brought into this country the earliest practice of horticulture. It was the Romans who introduced “greens” and the onion, and among fruit-trees, the chestnut and the vine, probably . 12 Fruits and Fruit- Trees. also the apple and pear, the plum, the cherry, the fig, and the walnut. That some of these in their crude form are natives of Britain is quite true. But the harsh crab and austere wild cherry are not to be confounded with improved descendants fit for the orchard. Introducing the eatable kinds, the Romans have as clear a title to be considered the founders of British apple and cherry culture as of the cultivation in our island of the vine. The six or seven indigenous British fruits, eatable just as they occur in the wilderness, and never cultivated for market, have been mentioned above. Two others only are palatable without cultivation, the wood strawberry and the raspberry, and these would be all the Romans found on their arrival. Let us not forget, however, that pleasant little fruit-substitute which Caractacus himself may not have disdained to eat, and which in another immortal island was for certain not unknown to darling Miranda— ** And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts.” g pig Though introduced by the Romans, the culture of several of the fruits named above, after their departure, in all likelihood, declined rapidly, and some of them may have been lost. With the Normans, that other great people to whom Britain owes so much, horticulture flourished anew. In the gardens of the monasteries—those grand old asylums of literature and religion when everything around was dark and rude—along with medicinal plants would certainly be cherished whatever good fruits were Fruit-Culture in England. 13 procurable. The monks always sought to establish them- selves in situations favourable to the cultivation of good fruit, just as they always had an eye to good fishing. Under ecclesiastical influence, during the old days of monastic splendour, when Tintern, and Fountains, and Rievaulx, and Furness, were the centres of the local civilization, there can be no doubt that many excellent introductions from the Continent took place. The period of the revival of learning was also eminently favourable to fruit-culture. With the period of the Reformation may be associated, very definitely, the original culture of the gooseberry and the currant; probably, also, of the strawberry and the raspberry. Henry VIII., whatever his short-comings in other respects, was a great patron of fruit-growing. The troubles upon the Continent which drove the Flemings, with their auriculas, into old England, refuge always of the destitute and forlorn, again proved serviceable to our gardens. Of substantial importance even greater was the assiduity, with a view to improvement of quality, which marked the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Fruit-culture at length became one of the fine arts, and to-day there is no country in the world in which the value of science, in many of its departments, is so well demonstrated as by the British fruit-grower. The precise date of the introduction of any particular kind of fruit is thus in most cases indeter- minable. It can be conjectured, but no more. The history of the importation of gathered fruit from foreign countries forms quite as interesting a chapter in 14 Fruits and Fruit-Trees. the annals of British commerce. Cherries and pears were supplied from the Netherlands at a very early period. When the cathedrals were building, when Venice was in its glory, there came from the ports in the Mediterranean dates, oranges, lemons, almonds, chest- nuts, pomegranates. In the Elizabethan age, the banana and the coco-nut made their appearance, only as curiosi- ties—an item, nevertheless, of no little significance in the record. The pine-apple was first seen in the reign of Charles II. Which shall we put down as the latest intro- duction? The fruit, it would seem, of the “ tree-tomato,” Cyphomandra betacea, to be spoken of by-and-by. The aggregate of the present imports, until the actual figures are seen, is almost inconceivable. According to the Government Blue-book “Annual Statement of the Trade of the United Kingdom with Foreign Countries and British Possessions,” the quantities of the different kinds of fruit landed upon the shores of England, and the declared values, were in 1883 as follow :— Value. AIUMONAS: 2 siccciecsiensisiecssewee 61,654 cwts. ... £232,260 Apples (raw) ........00.. s+. 2,251,925 bushels... 553,488 INES): cxiieesaneprcinnanierabtieidecssan —. ve 455,124 Oranges and lemons............ 4,477,043 5, ..- 1,704,826 Various fruits, not specified} , ¢¢, 475 1,28 GAW)) sisi aittageairres ae yy, vet 193905952 Do. do. (dried) ... 299,866 cwts. ... 303,337 me ie 15,364,015 Ibs. + 147,623 Snctmrved mauge ef SHTOB owls, ... 124,088 CUTTERS ade sontcndg cod acaveeseren 1,026,584 ,, so 1,423,062 Luport of Frutts. 15 Value. Figs and fig-cakes .........664 128,434 cwts. ... £262,671 French plums and prunelloes 13,937 5, fe 54,430 Plums (dried or preserved) ... 1,841 ,, en 6,651 PLUneS w.ceeeeeseeeererer cre eeenee 25,343 95 gat 35,226 RAISINS ssesvesecsesucnacenare 588,309 ,, ves 1,057,934 47:741,672 In addition to this enormous quantity, all destined for the British mouth, there was an import of 61,262 tons of various “nuts and kernels used for expressing oil,” value 4872,179. Apart from contemplation of the magnitude, how vast the amount of diverse industry implied! What breadths of land to supply it all! What diligence in the gathering! How many good ships to be freighted ! How much enterprise and activity in the buying and selling! No mean position in the world’s economy assuredly is held by flowers, since in flowers all fruit begins. Who shall measure the annual fruit-commerce of the world? Jamaica alone sent to the United States, in 1884, more than five millions of coco-nuts, and nearly forty-two millions of oranges ! Now arises a third question. In what parts of the world did our cultivated fruits originally grow? What countries were their birthplaces? When and how—for that some have travelled far is very plain—did they get diffused? In the beginning, the seeds of different sorts would be carried, as at the present day, by birds. In all ages, streams of water and the waves of the sea have lent their aid in promoting dispersion, the sea very conspicu- 16 Fruits and Frutt-Trees. ously in the conveyance of the coco-nut to the islands of the South Pacific. Others would be carried by man, in the course of his wanderings and migrations. But who shall write the minute history? No problems are more difficult ; few are more fascinating than are wrapped up in the archeology of the fruit-bearing plants. It is well that we are thus beset, since half the enjoyment of life consists in the sense of being embosomed in enigmas. TMP. Chapter Second. THE APPLE (Pyrus Malus). ‘For things we make no compt of, have in them The seeds of life, use, beauty, like the cores Of apples, that we fling away.”’— Festus. @ OREMOST always among fruits interesting to an Englishman is the Apple. The apple is of more use and benefit to the people of England in general than all the other fruits put together. It remains longest in season, and can be used in the greatest variety of ways. No one ever objects to apples. Newly gathered from the tree they are the most brisk and refreshing of all the common fruits of temperate climates. For culinary purposes they are unexcelled ; even when dried, as in “Normandy pippins,” their merit remains ; and we must not forget that the most genuinely English beverage Cc 18 Fruits and Frutt-Trees. is cider. No one ever tires of the apple. It is to fruits in general what good wheaten bread is to other accus- tomed food. While it satisfies it never cloys. There is no time of life, either, when the apple becomes a super- fluity, or is no longer suitable as aliment. As for boys and girls in fair health, for them the apple would almost seem to have been primarily created. There is a period in the life of children when they are hungry all over, voracious at every pore. Eat they must and will, flying to cakes and mischievous sweets, candies, and confec- tions, unless judiciously supplied with what is really wholesome. Bread is deficient in savour. Fruit, fully ripened and of simple kinds, is the happy medium, and in no shape is it better for them than that of the apple. The tree itself is recommended by its hardiness—it thrives wherever the oak will flourish; by the ease with which it accommodates itself to every diversity of soil and situation our island affords—very good apples are ripened, in the Orkneys, and even in Shetland—and by the comparatively late season of the bloom, so that a fair crop can always be calculated upon. In Britain no fruit can be brought to so high a degree of excellence with so little trouble, though pains taken in apple-culture never go without plentiful reward: the fruit is infinitely varied in flavour, and in the comeliness that ensues upon change of form and colour; and to complete the pleasant list of virtues and good qualities, there is the longevity, and, increasing with age, the gracious fertility. The potential life of an apple-tree is quite a hundred and fifty years. The Apple of Mythology. 19 Many of the best apples shown at the great Congress of 1883 came from trees a full century old, and com- paratively few were from trees less than fifty years of age. No wonder that the apple appears so often in myth and fable; that it serves the poet so well as a symbol at once intelligible and picturesque; and that if in past times there were “apples of discord,” to-day we have our “love-apples.” In literature, as these phrases show, the word is not to be always taken in the strictly literal sense. In fiction it is apt to appear after the same manner as “rose” and “lily,” the figurative image of something delectable, even supreme, not a reality, but abundantly significant to the imagination. Not apples to be eaten were those in the mind of the donor of the famous fable of Hippomenes and Atalanta, where the maiden loses the race through stopping to gather up the too seductive “poma aurea;” nor were they veritable apples in the picture of the golden fruit of the Hesperides, in that beautiful story of the three chaste young ladies, far away in the West, who kept them safe from intrusion and curiosity. The meaning of the fable is easy to discern. Every particular has its purpose; it would be difficult to find anything in the whole range of story and myth more delicately expressed, or more in harmony with the best principles of nature and virtue. No wonder, again, that painters of the Temptation of Eve, sustained by Paradise Lost, should employ the apple to represent the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; and that in the A.V. of the 20 Fruits and Fruit-Trees. Old Testament, whatever the Hebrews understood by tappiiach, we read upon six occasions of “apples” and the “‘apple-tree.” ‘Apples of gold in pictures of silver ;” ‘Stay ye me with raisins, comfort me with apples ;” “As the apple-tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons: I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.” Not one of the Scripture references carries allusion to the apple of the English orchard. That the ancient Hebrews ever saw or knew anything of apples of any kind is in the highest degree improbable. The Hebrew word simply denotes something fragrant. The quince, the citron, the apricot, have all in turn been suggested as the fruit meant. Conjectural the proper rendering must remain, and seemingly for ever, since the “ Revised” has allowed “apple” and “apple-tree” to stand untouched. Their idea of the words (apple and apple-tree) is very plainly that they are to be understood as very elegant and intelli- gible figures of speech. The tree, as well known, is one of medium dimensions, disposed to be round-headed, but never lofty. The leaves are ovate, and fall in autumn. The flowers come at the same time as the cowslips and the poets’ narcissus, in little umbels of three to six ; in figure, as in all the rest of their family, they are rosaceous, the five petals quite free, white, and delicately shaded outside with pale carmine. Hence the enchanting spectacle of an apple-tree in full bloom—a sight as lovely as the scarf of Iris*—not simple * «Rich scarf to my proud earth.” — TZenzpest, iv. 1. Structure of the Apple. at snow, like a cherry or a pear, but roseate. The upper- most portion of the flower-stalk is deeply concave, the sepals of the calyx springing from the margin, as do the petals and the numerous stamens, while in the centre are five slender pistils. The curious should note this care- fully, since the apple, as regards structure, is one of the most remarkable productions of nature. The rule in plants is for the ripe fruit to consist only of the matured ovary. In the apple the matured ovary is the smallest portion of the fruit! Soon after the petals drop, the vase-like top of the peduncle becomes gradually dis- tended with juicy tissue. By degrees it adjoins itself to the pistils within. These at last become completely embedded, and constitute the “core” —French ceur, the heart. A horizontal section of a ripe apple shows plainly where the adhesion took place, this being indicated by green fibres. A ripe apple is thus, in truth, zmperium in imperio, a fruit within a fruit. Contemplated only in maturity, it would seem to be one of the class technically called “inferior,” very numerous, and explained perhaps on the same general principle—that of the adhesion of outward parts to inner ones. The charm about the apple is that we can watch day by day how all progresses. The lesson it gives is quite as salutary as pretty, since it is only by studying and watching development, beginning with infancy and youth, that we can ever properly com- prehend conclusions and the perfect. The five cells of the core contain (unless some of them fail) two brown seeds or “pips” apiece, so that every apple is designed 22 fruits and Fruit-Trees. originally by nature to be the parent of ten more apple-trees. This astounding fecundity in regard to possible offspring, shown also in most other plants, seems beyond the power of man to understand. When seed is distinctly the food of any of the lower classes of animal life, it speaks for itself as another disclosure of the divine munificence. By-and-by perhaps we may know: for the present the question goes with the enigmas. ‘“Pippins” are properly apples that have been raised from these “pips” as distinguished from grafts, though the name is now restricted to particular sorts. “Grafts” are simply multiplications of an already existing kind. The elder horticulturists thought that a tree was improved by re-grafting, ze grafting upon itself. Hence the term rennet or reinette—a corruption of re-natus.* The native countries of the apple cannot be said to be certainly known. According to Decandolle it appears to be most truly indigenous in the district lying between Trebizond and Ghilan (North Persia). He believes it to be a native also of the mountains of north-west India, and of Europe in general, excepting the extreme north, Britain included. Karl Koch, on the other hand, whose views and opinions are never to be treated lightly, while he allows the Asiatic claim, considers that the apple is only naturalized in Europe, though the introduction may have taken place in pre-historic times. That it existed * “Grafted,” the accustomed word, is a vulgarism, as bad as ‘‘drownded.”” See the A.V. of Romans xi. 17, 19, 23. 71 19, 23 Parentage of the Apple. 23 in Europe at that remote period is proved by the remains of apples found in the Swiss Lake-dwellings. When we talk of the native country of a cultivated plant or tree, of course it means of the plant in its crude, original, rudimentary condition. Garden apples are not spon- taneous anywhere. All have come, in course of time, from simple and primitive forms represented in our English hedgerows by the Crab ; for this seems after all to be only one of three or four different species of Pyrus, each of which has played its own part in the origination. It is convenient to call the English Crab and all our cultivated apples by the collective Linnean name of Pyrus Malus. Still, however, we have to ask how much of their nature and character they may have inherited from the Pyrus pumila (or precox), the P. dasyphylla, and the P. pruntfolia; the “crab” of England, a tree found all over Europe, receiving their various influence, just as ancient families, though preserving their integrity, have been tinc- tured by their marriages right and left. At what period! and in what country the austere crab began to disclose its wonderful capacity for change to a better condition,: and by what circumstances the tendency to improve was first aroused, there is no possibility of finding out. Probably the change was contemporaneous with the development of the social and constructive instincts of man, pertaining to no particular spot and to no particular period. Good apples no doubt arose in the earliest times, as they constantly do at the present day, “by accident.” Nature has not two ways of working, nor did 24 Fruits and Fruit-Trees. the bees only begin to carry pollen from one flower to another when men first observed them engaged upon what Virgil so felicitously calls their “studies.” That the crab grew into a sweet and pleasant thing at a very early period is shown by the ramification of the name, plainly Aryan (making allowance for dialectic changes), through- out the languages of the old Celtic and Northern nations, in whose legends and mythology the fruit also appears very generally. With our Saxon ancestors it was “pl” or “zeppel.” That the ancient Greeks possessed it is shown by that charming picture in the Odyssey, so simple and natural, where Ulysses reminds his aged father that when a little boy he had given him, for his own garden, “thirteen pear-trees, and ten apple-trees, and forty fig- trees :” “I asked each of thee, being a child, following thee through the garden, and thou didst name and tell me each.”* How tenderly the words recall to mind that fragment of early paradise—our own first little plot, where, in the golden days of “lang syne,” we first learned how to feel and see. Truly the great poets are for all the ages: “the sun of Homer shines upon us still!” In Roman literature references to apples are frequent. Yet even in Pliny’s time good ones would seem to have been scarce in Italy, for he knew of apple-trees in villages near the imperial city which were more profitable to their owners than small farms. The good wrought in England by the Normans has already been mentioned. It was during their time that apple-culture commenced in our * xxiv. 336-344. The Cider-Counties. 25 island the noble course which has never slackened. Cider- apples were introduced by the Normans, and though Kent led the way, it was while the earliest cathedrals were rising from the ground that the foundations were laid for the future fame of the “cider-counties,”* those beautiful lands, beginning with Devon upon the south, and ending with Hereford in the north, which form a semi-circle round the upper portion of the Bristol Channel, and which, when the orchards are in bloom—often covering many acres—are the loveliest in our country; becoming so again when the fruit is ripe, excelling even the corn- fields. For a short period in late autumn, the spectacle, in some parts at all events, is unique, one that in England only apple-trees can supply. This is when the leaves have mostly dropped, but the fruit still clings to the boughs, and, the sun shining on its loveliness, we are reminded of Paris on the top of Ida, and the rival god- desses who for a moment ‘¢The veil divine Cast unconfined, and gave him all their charms.” The names of various old towns and villages in England which commemorate early apple-culture, as Applethwaite, Applegarth, Appleby, Appledurcombe, date, according to Isaac Taylor, from times anterior to the Conquest. * Cider is said to have been first made in England about the year 1284. Coincidences are always curious: the preparations were just then in hand for the building of the nave of York Minster ; Caernarvon Castle, quite recently completed, was the scene, in this identical year, of the birth of Edward IT. 26 Fruits and Fruit-Tyrees. “Appleton,” the family surname, began just after it. In 1066, among the followers of William there was a lady of the name of Mabilia. She fixed her residence in Kent, at one of the many places where apples, it would seem, were already plentiful, and, commending herself to the people by her virtues, became known as Mabilia d’Appletone, or Mabilia of the apple-orchards. Her descendants, the Appletons of Kent and the adjoining counties, like the Traffords of Lancashire, still, after eight hundred years, cling faithfully to the ancestral soil. The heraldic crest became an apple- bough, with leaves and fruit, and continues such to the present day. , This inestimable fruit-tree has been carried, during the last three centuries, to every part of the world where it can thrive. Hot countries are unfavourable to it: the fruit is appreciated nevertheless, as in Alexandria, and even Cairo, where imported European apples never wait long for a purchaser. It does admirably well in New Zealand, and in Australia, whence apples are now finding their way to the English market, arriving, very opportunely, in the spring. In the park-like prairies of Chili it has become quite plentiful;* it has reached even to Patagonia; and how grand has been its success in North America needs no telling. What may be the dimensions of the largest apple-tree in the Old World we do not know, but *JIn Chili there is made a good deal of cider, in Spanish called chicha, and corresponding, in its use and measure of popularity, to the viz ordinaive of the French. American Apples. a7 in Cheshire county, Connecticut, U.S., there is one certi- fied by family tradition to be quite a hundred and forty years old, the trunk of which at a foot from the ground, above all the enlargements common to the base of trees, has a girth of over thirteen feet. The uppermost limbs of this wonderful tree reach to the height of sixty feet, and the lateral spread of the whole is a hundred feet. From five out of the eight branches there have been gathered crops varying from eighty-five to one hundred and ten bushels of perfectly good ripe fruit. The best of the New World apples now come from Nova Scotia, immensely to the credit of that little colony; the next best from Canada. This helps to prove that it is not cold winters which are obnoxious to apple-trees. They are content to endure frost if it be balanced by hot sum- mers. American apples are now brought to England in prodigious quantity. In 1881 the import amounted to 1,250,000 barrels. We receive plenty, also, from conti- nental Europe, the total from all parts amounting in 1882 to 2,386,805 bushels. In our own island, according to the Agricultural Returns for 1883, the number of acres planted with fruit-trees is about 185,800. About 150,000 are devoted, probably, to the culture of the apple, and as an acre will hold, on the average, about seventy, the total number of orchard trees owned by old England will exceed ten millions. How many more exist in private gardens it is impossible to estimate. What comes of this wonderful amount of apple-culture was illustrated at the great Apple Congress mentioned above (p. 19), Chiswick, 28 fruits and Fruit-Trees. October, 1883, when two hundred and thirty-six exhibi- tors placed upon the tables no fewer than ten thousand one hundred and fifty dishes, illustrating two thousand and twenty different varieties, of which the judges allowed one thousand five hundred and forty-five to be truly dis- tinct. With a view to determining the best, a poll was taken on the votes of a hundred and thirty of the exhibi- tors, the result being that among dessert apples “ King of the Pippins” won the honours, “Cox’s Orange” coming next, and the “ Ribston Pippin” third. Of the culinary apples in cultivation “Lord Suffield” was considered the best; then “‘Dumelow’s Seedling ;” and thirdly, ““Keswick Codling.”