It would be a pleasant pastime to find suitable names for the hundred
varieties which go to a single heap at the cider-mill. Would it not tax
a man’s invention,—no one to be named after a man, and all in the
_lingua vernacula_? Who shall stand godfather at the christening of the
wild apples? It would exhaust the Latin and Greek languages, if they
were used, and make the _lingua vernacula_ flag. We should have to call
in the sunrise and the sunset, the rainbow and the autumn woods and the
wild flowers, and the woodpecker and the purple finch and the squirrel
and the jay and the butterfly, the November traveller and the truant
boy, to our aid.
In 1836 there were in the garden of the London Horticultural Society
more than fourteen hundred distinct sorts. But here are species which
they have not in their catalogue, not to mention the varieties which
our Crab might yield to cultivation.
Let us enumerate a few of these. I find myself compelled, after all, to
give the Latin names of some for the benefit of those who live where
English is not spoken,—for they are likely to have a world-wide
reputation.
There is, first of all, the Wood-Apple (_Malus sylvatica_); the
Blue-Jay Apple; the Apple which grows in Dells in the Woods,
(_sylvestrivallis_,) also in Hollows in Pastures (_campestrivallis_);
the Apple that grows in an old Cellar-Hole (_Malus cellaris_); the
Meadow-Apple; the Partridge-Apple; the Truant’s Apple, (_Cessatoris_,)
which no boy will ever go by without knocking off some, however _late_
it may be; the Saunterer’s Apple,—you must lose yourself before you can
find the way to that; the Beauty of the Air (_Decus Aeris_);
December-Eating; the Frozen-Thawed _(gelato-soluta),_ good only in that
state; the Concord Apple, possibly the same with the
_Musketaquidensis_; the Assabet Apple; the Brindled Apple; Wine of New
England; the Chickaree Apple; the Green Apple _(Malus viridis);_—this
has many synonymes; in an imperfect state, it is the _Cholera morbifera
aut dysenterifera, puerulis dilectissima_;—the Apple which Atalanta
stopped to pick up; the Hedge-Apple _(Malus Sepium_); the Slug-Apple
_(limacea)_; the Railroad-Apple, which perhaps came from a core thrown
out of the cars; the Apple whose Fruit we tasted in our Youth; our
Particular Apple, not to be found in any catalogue,—_Pedestrium
Solatium_; also the Apple where hangs the Forgotten Scythe; Iduna’s
Apples, and the Apples which Loki found in the Wood; and a great many
more I have on my list, too numerous to mention,—all of them good. As
Bodaeus exclaims, referring to the cultivated kinds, and adapting
Virgil to his case, so I, adapting Bodaeus,—
“Not if I had a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths,
An iron voice, could I describe all the forms
And reckon up all the names of these _wild apples_.”