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 back-woodsmen 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