and bearing qualities,--not so much for their beauty, as for their
fairness and soundness. Indeed, I have no faith in the selected
lists of pomological gentlemen. Their "Favorites" and "Non-suches"
and "Seek-no-farthers," when I have fruited them, commonly turn out
very tame and forgetable. They are eaten with comparatively little
zest, and have no real tang nor smack to them.

What if some of these wildings are acrid and puckery, genuine
verjuice, do they not still belong to the Pomaceae, which are
uniformly innocent and kind to our race? I still begrudge them to
the cider-mill. Perhaps they are not fairly ripe yet.

No wonder that these small and high-colored apples are thought to
make the best cider. Loudon quotes from the Herefordshire Report
that "apples of a small size are always, if equal in quality, to be
preferred to those of a larger size, in order that the rind and
kernel may bear the greatest proportion to the pulp, which affords
the weakest and most watery juice." And he says, that, "to prove
this, Dr. Symonds of Hereford, about the year 1800, made one
hogshead of cider entirely from the rinds and cores of apples, and
another from the pulp only, when the first was found of
extraordinary strength and flavor, while the latter was sweet and
insipid."

Evelyn [Footnote: An English writer of the seventeenth century.]
says that the "Red-strake" was the favorite cider-apple in his day;
and he quotes one Dr. Newburg as saying, "In Jersey 't is a general
observation, as I hear, that the more of red any apple has in its
rind, the more proper it is for this use. Pale-faced apples they
exclude as much as may be from their cider-vat." This opinion still