it is a pity that the public in general forgets
the maxim about beauty—and ugliness—being skin-deep. How much does Jonathan owe to its blush, though the experts almost universally prefer a greenish apple ? Of all the orchard experiments that I have seen, the most interesting was one of Mr. Spenser Pickering's undertaken for the Duke of Bedford. He had a tree whose apples he could colour more or less to choice. If he let the grass grow up to the trunk the tree lost vitality and the apples were red. The farther he removed the circle of grass from the trunk the greener— and better—grew the fruit. Perhaps the best taster among apples—Cox and Ribston always excepted—is that rather cantankerous russet, Darcy Spice. It grows very slowly and the fruit is a brown-green ; but how delicious the flavour and how enduring the fruit ! It is well not to despise the race of russets ; and after all, you do not see an apple when you are eating it.
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