No More Learning

[Illustration: _Wild Apple Tree_]

Even the sourest and crabbedest apple, growing in the most unfavorable
position, suggests such thoughts as these, it is so noble a fruit.


THE CRAB

Nevertheless, _our_ wild apple is wild only like myself, perchance,
who belong not to the aboriginal race here, but have strayed into the
woods from the cultivated stock. Wilder still, as I have said, there
grows elsewhere in this country a native and aboriginal crab-apple,
_Malus coronaria_, "whose nature has not yet been modified by
cultivation. " It is found from western New York to Minnesota, and
southward. Michaux says that its ordinary height "is fifteen or
eighteen feet, but it is sometimes found twenty-five or thirty feet
high," and that the large ones "exactly resemble the common apple
tree. " "The flowers are white mingled with rose color, and are
collected in corymbs. " They are remarkable for their delicious odor.
The fruit, according to him, is about an inch and a half in diameter,
and is intensely acid. Yet they make fine sweetmeats and also cider of
them. He concludes that "if, on being cultivated, it does not yield
new and palatable varieties, it will at least be celebrated for the
beauty of its flowers, and for the sweetness of its perfume. "

I never saw the crab-apple till May, 1861. I had heard of it through
Michaux, but more modern botanists, so far as I know, have not
treated it as of any peculiar importance. Thus it was a half-fabulous
tree to me. I contemplated a pilgrimage to the "Glades," a portion of
Pennsylvania where it was said to grow to perfection. I thought of
sending to a nursery for it, but doubted if they had it, or would
distinguish it from European varieties.
At last I had occasion to go
to Minnesota, and on entering Michigan I began to notice from the cars
a tree with handsome rose-colored flowers. At first I thought it some
variety of thorn; but it was not long before the truth flashed on me,
that this was my long-sought crab-apple. It was the prevailing
flowering shrub or tree to be seen from the cars at that season of the
year,--about the middle of May. But the cars never stopped before one,
and so I was launched on the bosom of the Mississippi without having
touched one, experiencing the fate of Tantalus. On arriving at St.
Anthony's Falls, I was sorry to be told that I was too far north for
the crab-apple. Nevertheless I succeeded in finding it about eight
miles west of the Falls; touched it and smelled it, and secured a
lingering corymb of flowers for my herbarium. This must have been near
its northern limit.


HOW THE WILD APPLE GROWS

But though these are indigenous, like the Indians, I doubt whether
they are any hardier than those backwoodsmen among the apple trees,
which, though descended from cultivated stocks, plant themselves in
distant fields and forests, where the soil is favorable to them. I
know of no trees which have more difficulties to contend with, and
which more sturdily resist their foes. These are the ones whose story
we have to tell. It oftentimes reads thus:--

Near the beginning of May, we notice little thickets of apple trees
just springing up in the pastures where cattle have been,--as the
rocky ones of our Easterbrooks Country, or the top of Nobscot Hill, in
Sudbury. One or two of these, perhaps, survive the drought and other
accidents,--their very birthplace defending them against the
encroaching grass and some other dangers, at first.

In two years' time 't had thus
Reached the level of the rocks,
Admired the stretching world,
Nor feared the wandering flocks.

But at this tender age
Its sufferings began:
There came a browsing ox
And cut it down a span.

This time, perhaps, the ox does not notice it amid the grass; but the
next year, when it has grown more stout, he recognizes it for a
fellow-emigrant from the old country, the flavor of whose leaves and
twigs he well knows; and though at first he pauses to welcome it, and
express his surprise, and gets for answer, "The same cause that
brought you here brought me," he nevertheless browses it again,
reflecting, it may be, that he has some title to it.