sedentary would call harsh and crabbed. They must be eaten in the
fields, when your system is all aglow with exercise, when the frosty
weather nips your fingers, the wind rattles the bare boughs or
rustles the few remaining leaves, and the jay is heard screaming
around. What is sour in the house a bracing walk makes sweet. Some
of these apples might be labelled, "To be eaten in the wind."

Of course no flavors are thrown away; they are intended for the
taste that is up to them. Some apples have two distinct flavors, and
perhaps one-half of them must be eaten in the house, the other out-
doors. One Peter Whitney wrote from Northborough in 1782, for the
Proceedings of the Boston Academy, describing an apple-tree in that
town "producing fruit of opposite qualities, part of the same apple
being frequently sour and the other sweet;" also some all sour, and
others all sweet, and this diversity on all parts of the tree.

There is a wild apple on Nawshawtuck Hill in my town which has to me
a peculiarly pleasant bitter tang, not perceived till it is three-
quarters tasted. It remains on the tongue. As you eat it, it smells
exactly like a squash-bug. It is a sort of triumph to eat and relish
it.

I hear that the fruit of a kind of plum-tree in Provence is "called
Prunes sibarelles, because it is impossible to whistle after having
eaten them, from their sourness." But perhaps they were only eaten
in the house and in summer, and if tried out-of-doors in a stinging
atmosphere, who knows but you could whistle an octave higher and
clearer?

In the fields only are the sours and bitters of Nature appreciated;