The Apple and the Rose.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 6 November 1914, Page 2

The Apple and the Rose.

BEAUTIFUL COUSINS

: the apple which .played so im-i.i-rtant a part in the episode of the Garden of Eden was anything like the apples which at the present time help to make life worth living for such a large part of humanity, then must it be admitted, reluctantly perhaps, but positively, that the temptation was a great one. Far be it, however, from one in this age of moral development to countenance stealing apples. Strange as it may seem, claims Mr. Charles Burton in a recent paper, the apple belongs to the great rose family. By what accident of process it developed into a sturdy tree and came to rock its young in such a delightful cradle of lusciousness can only be imagined. It is thought to have been indigenous to northern Russia in remote times, and its cultivation spread rapidly throughout the temperate zone. America is the great apple-producing country today, but it is not alone in. the cultivation of this popular fruit. Apples are grown in Europe, South Africa, Northern India, China, Australia, New Zealand. From the original wild crab of Russia, the fruit has developed until to-day there are several thousand distinct varieties and few bad ones in the lot. i Think of thousands of varieties of apples and the multitudinous forms in which they may be eaten and digested. Think of apple butter, apple jelly, baked and boiled apples, apple sauce, even dried apples, and surely there is no harm in thinking of cider, and the old cider mill which was the delight of childhood days. WAY TO DIGEST APPLES. The apple in an uncooked state is not very digestible, says one authority. The apple should be eaten just before going to bed, says another. The skin should never be eaten at . all, says a third. What do we care ? The way to eat an apple is to eat it, and if it distresses you, be happy in the thought that you die in a good cause. But as a fact, if well chewed, the apple is rarely indigestible. The pippin, says science, is composed a< 'viinately of eighty-two parts of Wai - ten parts of sugar, less than one it of free acid, and five or nmro of albuminous substances and salts. But what excesses of the stomach ? Can science, with all its learning, make an appie '? And can any amount of water and sugar and acid console us for a failure of the apple crop ? The apple may not be a rose, concludes Mr. Burton, but is it not greater than a rose ? Beautiful as she is, the garden rose need not blush for her cousins, the first, pink-tinted apyle blossoms of early spring ; graceful as is her foliage, there is no place for hammock and swing beneath friendly branches ; no chance to revel, in grateful shade and the chief glory of the greater rose remains to' be spoken—the apple.