APPLE FLAVOURS.
Visitors to fruit-growing centres have been surprised by the earliness and bulk of some part of the apple-harvest. A certain amount was gathered as early as July ; and there is usually a particularly good market for the very earliest sorts, though none perhaps—in the expert's view—can compete with the later apples—with Cox or Blenheim or even the russets—in the proper apple flavour. Nevertheless, the very early Grosvenors have a peculiar popularity, and, indeed, some of the Codlins, though they are as bruisable as a peach ; and after them Beauty of Bath, with its seductive tints, and Worcester Pearmain, deliciously sweet, though the specialist calls it mere sugar. One seldom sees, in the South, that most quaintly flavoured of all apples, the Irish Peach, with its odd red and yellow and crumpled top. There is no doubt about the suggestion of peach in its scent and savour. You would hardly know it for an apple. To many palates it is more queer than pleasant, is almost suggestive of medication, but the tree bears abundantly and gives an individual dessert fruit that precedes even the Red Quarenden. Of all the early apples the sort that appears to be gaining most ground, and well deserves all the popularity it gets, is James Grieve, just reaching its best. It has the further advantage of helping its neighbours, especially Cox, to greater fertility by its mere neighbourhood.
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