Other editions of book Wild Apples

“Wild Apples” is a fascinating and wonderfully-written essay concerning the history and variations of wild apple species by American naturalist Henry David Thoreau. One of Thoreau's major essays, “Wild Apples” perfectly conveys his profound love and appreciation of nature and it's many wonders. Highly recommended for lovers of nature writing and fans of Thoreau's seminal work. Contents include: “The History Of The Apple-tree”, “The Wild Apple”, “The Crab”, “How The Wild Apple Grows”, “The Fruit, And Its Flavor”, “Their Beauty”, “The Naming Of Them”, “The Last Gleaning”, and The 'Frozen-thawed' Apple”. Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862) was an American poet, philosopher, essayist, abolitionist, naturalist, development critic, and historian. He was also a leading figure in Transcendentalism, and is best known for his book “Walden”, a treatise on simple living in a natural environment. Other notable works by this author include: “The Landlord” (1843), “Reform and the Reformers” (1846–48), and “Slavery in Massachusetts” (1854). Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.

Webster's edition of this classic is organized to expose the reader to a maximum number of synonyms and antonyms for difficult and often ambiguous English words that are encountered in other works of literature, conversation, or academic examinations. Extremely rare or idiosyncratic words and expressions are given lower priority in the notes compared to words which are ¿difficult, and often encountered¿ in examinations. Rather than supply a single synonym, many are provided for a variety of meanings, allowing readers to better grasp the ambiguity of the English language, and avoid using the notes as a pure crutch. Having the reader decipher a word's meaning within context serves to improve vocabulary retention and understanding. Each page covers words not already highlighted on previous pages. If a difficult word is not noted on a page, chances are that it has been highlighted on a previous page. A more complete thesaurus is supplied at the end of the book; synonyms and antonyms are extracted from Webster's Online Dictionary. PSAT¿ is a registered trademark of the College Entrance Examination Board and the National Merit Scholarship Corporation neither of which sponsors or endorses this book; SAT¿ is a registered trademark of the College Board which neither sponsors nor endorses this book; GRE¿, AP¿ and Advanced Placement¿ are registered trademarks of the Educational Testing Service which neither sponsors nor endorses this book, GMAT¿ is a registered trademark of the Graduate Management Admissions Council which is neither affiliated with this book nor endorses this book, LSAT¿ is a registered trademark of the Law School Admissions Council which neither sponsors nor endorses this product. All rights reserved.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Thoreau’s "Wild Apples" first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in November of 1862. The story begins with a short history of the apple tree, tracing its path from ancient Greece to America. Thoreau saw the apple as a perfect mirror of man, and eloquently lamented where they were both heading. Though his words were written more than 150 years ago, they live on today as a reminder of the need to preserve what is wild. Thoreau wrote, "…our wild apple is wild only like myself, perchance, who belong not to the aboriginal race here, but have strayed into the woods from the cultivated stock."

It is remarkable how closely the history of the Apple-tree is connected with that of man. The geologist tells us that the order of the Rosaceae, which includes the Apple, also the true Grasses, and the Labiatae, or Mints, were introduced only a short time previous to the appearance of man on the globe. It appears that apples made a part of the food of that unknown primitive people whose traces have lately been found at the bottom of the Swiss lakes, supposed to be older than the foundation of Rome, so old that they had no metallic implements. An entire black and shrivelled Crab-Apple has been recovered from their stores.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.