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 Easter-brooks 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