The trees are excellent bearers, but in most orchards they are generally found unhealthy, cankered, and full of the woolly aphis, a state produced, according to Mr. Lindley, by their being raised from suckers, and truncheons stuck into the ground. In the “Guide to the Orchard,” he says, “Healthy, robust, and substantial trees are only to be obtained by grafting on stocks of the real Sour Hedge Crab; they then grow freely, erect, and form very handsome heads, yielding fruit as superior to those of our old orchards, as the old, and at present deteriorated Codlin is to the Crab itself.” This circumstance was noticed by Worlidge nearly two hundred years ago--“You may graft them on stocks as you do other fruit, which will accelerate and augment their bearing; but you may save that labor and trouble, if you plant the Cions, Slips, or Cuttings of them in the spring-time, a little before their budding; by which means they will prosper very well, and soon become Trees; but these are more subject to the canker than those that are grafted.” This is one of our oldest English apples, and still deserving of more general cultivation than is at present given to it. Formerly it constituted one of the principal dishes in English cookery, in the shape of “Codlings and Cream.” Ray says, “Crudum vix editur ob duritiem et aciditatem, sed coctum vel cum cremore lactis, vel cum aqua rosacea et saccharo comestum inter laudatissima fercula habetur.” The name is derived from _coddle_, to parboil. 113. ESOPUS SPITZENBURGH.--Coxe. IDENTIFICATION.--Coxe. View. 127. Down. Fr. Amer. 138. SYNONYMES.--Æsopus Spitzenberg, _Hort. Soc. Cat._ ed. 3, 790. Æsopus Spitzenburg, _Ken. Amer. Or._ 40. True Spitzenburgh, _acc. Down._ FIGURE.--Down. Fr. Amer. 138. Fruit, large, three inches and a quarter wide, and three inches high; ovate, and regularly formed. Skin, almost entirely covered with clear bright red, and marked with fawn-colored russety dots, except on a portion of the shaded side, where it is yellow tinged and streaked with red. Eye, small and closed, set in a moderately deep and undulating basin. Stalk, slender, about an inch long, inserted in a wide, round, and deep cavity. Flesh, yellow, crisp, juicy, richly, and briskly flavored. A most excellent dessert apple; in use from November to February. This is a native of the United States, and is there considered one of the best dessert apples. Along with the Newtown Pippin it ranks as one of the most productive and profitable orchard fruits, but like many, and indeed almost all the best American varieties, it does not attain to that degree of perfection in this country that it does in its native soil. The tree is tender and subject to canker, and the fruit lacks that high flavor, and peculiar richness which characterizes the imported specimens. It was raised at Esopus, on the Hudson, where it is still grown to a large extent. 114. ESSEX PIPPIN.--Hort. IDENTIFICATION.--Hort. Soc. Cat. ed. 3, n. 239.