A Perfect Apple Tree

The apple tree has long been a favorite. The ancient botanist, Solomon, mentions it as conspicuous for beauty "among the trees of the wood," and other oriental writers have named it along with thegraceful palm and noble citrón. Apples have been cultivated on the soil of Great Britain ever since the time of the Roman invasión, and it is said that there are now known to beas many as 2,000 varieties, some of which are successfully grown as far South as New Zealand, while others thrive as far north as the 65th degree of latitude. The fruit is universally appreciated and each variety has its admirers, from the globular aromatic pippin, down to the painted Siberiau crab. And yet, among all the thousanda of trees now growing, how rarely do you see one that is shapely and symmetrical. The perfect apple tree of which an account is here given is a specimen of the hearty, juicy, old-fashioned Vaiideveer pippin. It was selected with care by my father, in 1838, and transplanted to a sunny, sheltered spot, near bis home in Crawf ordsville, Ind. The viigin forest had just been removed from the fertile soil amid which its roots were placed, and throughout its career it has been plentlf ully watered by the overflow from two ampie roofs. The law of spiral growth, so often distorted has been beautif ully wrought out in this individual tree. The reader is probably aware that the Ieave3 on every tree follow adeflnite arrangement on the stem. The plan is highly complex in pines and cedars, but simple in the apple tree. Fasten a thread to a leaf and pass it from one to another, in the same direction, and it will go twice around the stem before reachiug a leaf situated exactly above the flrst. The divergence of the second leaf from the flrst is 144 , or two-fifths of a circle; there is the same distance between the second and the third, and so on to the sixth, which is directly above the first. This is what is known as the generating spirál. The leaf is the buiide'r of the tree. It hangs out its inch or two of oval green in the air for breadth and sunshine, and drinks in the dew and the rain, conveying the results of its vegetable chemistry to a permanent place in üie substance of the tree. From the heart of each leaf a cord goes into the flbre of the wood, which is only a binding and knittlng together of many leaf cords and wheu the leaves shrivel and f all, these cords remain as their monuments. As Ruskin has said, "Behold how fair, how far prolonged in arch and asile, the avenues of the valley, the fringes of the hills, the joy of man, the comfort of all living creatures, the glory of the earth, they are but the monuments of those poor leaves that fllt faintly past us to die." It is evident that, unless the orderly procedure of nature be in some way disturbed, each twig branch, and bough, aHd the very structure of the trunk itself, should conform to this law of spiral development, the entire fabric btíng reared after the plan marked out by the first flve leaves. And thus it is, in the fine old tree here held up as an example of what a tre9 is capable of becoming. All its conditions have favored a symmetrical and uninterrupted development, Her.ce one can trace the spirals from the ground to the outmost bough, except where they lose themselvea by belng knotted together. Five buttres8ed roots, each one foot in diameter, mark the emergence of tlie tree from the ground. The circumference oL the trunk immediately above them is nine feet, and it is made of 'flve distinct strands, like those of a rope twisted around each other, until at the height of six feet from the ground, and exactly over each corresponding root, each stand puts fortli a branch. The girth of the tree, midway, is eight feet, but just below the wliorl of branches it increases to nine again. The branches, flve is number and arrangeU in a spiral, measure at the point of divergence respectively, three feet, and six inches, three feet and eight inches, f our feet, and six inches. The height of the entire tree is about forty feet. The diameter of its canopy from north to south is forty-three feet and from east te west it is forty-üve. It should be added that this patriarchial apple tree enjoys a green and fruitful oíd age; being still a proliüc bearer, although it has stood where it now is for forty-four years, and isprobably as much as forty-six years old.