Before any contract could exist, it was necessary that Dartmouth College should accept of the terms and assume its part. This was done by the erection of the building with the $15,000 appropriated by the State and $25,000 appropriated therefor by Dartmouth College. There was a connection already existing at the time of the passage of the act between the two colleges, expressed by a contract made April 7, 1868. Since the completion of the building, which is known as Culver Hall, the occupation has been joint, in accordance with the above specifications, and so continues to the present time.

The connection provided for by the contract of April 7, 1868, may be terminated at the option of either of the contracting parties. Does such termination alone, without more being done, effect any change in the rights of the two colleges to the occupation of the building? My opinion is that it does not. All that relates thereto is to be found in section 6 of the act, which is: "The appropriation herein before provided for is made upon the distinct understanding and agreement of the trustees of Dartmouth College, that if at any time hereafter the connection between said Dartmouth College and the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts shall be dissolved, said trustees of Dartmouth College, upon the State relinquishing all claim to said building and the Legislature requesting them so to do, shall refund to the State said sum of fifteen thousand dollars."

This section contains no option for Dartmouth College. It is wholly for the protection of the State. The termination of the connection between the two colleges simply fixes the time before which the promise of Dartmouth College to repay the $15,000 should not become operative. After that event, upon the State releasing all claim to the building, and the Legislature demanding it, Dartmouth College is to repay the money. As a necessary inference, after such release and repayment by Dartmouth College, or after such release alone, if repayment is not demanded by the Legislature, Culver Hall would become the exclusive property of Dartmouth College. Until such release, no matter whether the connection between the two colleges is terminated or not, the two colleges are tenants in common of the building,

and neither has the right to eject the other. What the limits of the common use are was defined by the act, of the terms of which a contemporaneous interpretation has been given by the parties interested, which would probably be binding on both. SAMUEL C. EASTMAN.

CONCORD, N. H., May 9, 1887.

THE BALDWIN APPLE.*

BY REV. LEANDER THOMPSON.

No less than seven cities contended for the honor of having been the birthplace of Homer. Each of the seven, however, was indifferent to the claim till the fame of the poet had been achieved. Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodes, Argos, Athenæ, each and all, then were ready to claim, as they were to worship, the Divine Homer."

Thus, in its humble way, has the Baldwin apple, with its worldwide fame, found numerous aspirants for the honor of possessing the original parent tree. Spread out before me as I write, are some forty or more papers, each containing its own story of the origin and history of this apple; and it is a noticeable fact that claims are set up in these papers for the old classical "seven different towns to the honor of its birthplace: Tewksbury, Billerica, Burlington, Wilmington, Somerville, Medford, in Massachusetts, and Baldwin, in the State of Maine.

The writer of this article is not a native, nor has he been a resident, of either of the seven towns named, and has no claim to present for his native Woburn, personally having no prejudice or preference for or against the conflicting claimants; yet in the interests of simple truth feels it proper to state certain historical facts which have been as familiar to him as household words from his childhood, and to corroborate these facts by the testimony of others. In comparing the statements of different writers upon

*Copied from the "Winchester Record" by the courtesy of Hon. Abijah Thompson, president of the Winchester Historical and Genealogical Society, of Winchester, Mass.

this subject it is very noticeable that they largely copy, essentially, the statements of others, and very few of them have made independent investigation for themselves. The "hearsays abound, and inferences from rumors, themselves without foundation, are still wider from historical fact.

The only claim which Billerica and Burlington seem to urge for the disputed honor, as far as is known to the writer, rests upon the fact that the wooded region in Wilmington, in which tradition says that Mr. Butters found the small original tree, which he transplanted near his house, borders upon both these towns and is not far from either. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., in the "Memorial History of Boston,' says: "One autumn day, while surveying the route of the Middlesex canal in Billerica, old Colonel Baldwin chanced across an apple tree, the fruit of which was very red and handsome," etc. In the "Journal of Agriculture," 1852, another writer is referred to, who supposes Burlington, adjoining Woburn, was the native place of this apple. If there was a man living who should have known the validity of these statements when they were made, it was the Rev. Samuel Sewall, the very careful writer of the "History of Woburn," including that of Burlington, as well as frequent notice of Billerica, an adjoining town; but he names Wilmington as the unquestioned native place of the apple.

The claim of Tewksbury is more positive. A writer in "Cole's Fruit Book," in 1849, says of the Baldwin apple that "Wilmington and Tewksbury seem to have an equal claim." But the writer of the following letter, found in the "American Gardener's Magazine," October, 1835, is very confident in his expressions:

The original tree grew on the farm of my grandfather, Mr. John Ball, formerly of Tewksbury. The farm was situated one mile and a half south of the Merrimack river, and three miles southeast of Lowell. Mr. Ball purchased the land, then in a state of nature, about the year 1740. He cleared up a small lot, on which he erected buildings. This tree came up not long after in the lane leading from the house to the barn. My father, the late Dr. Benjamin Kittredge, of Tewksbury, who was born in the year 1742, within a quarter of a mile of the tree, and resided there until his death in 1822, said it was a large tree when he was a lad; that it was not engrafted, as no person at that time in Tewksbury was acquainted with grafting; that it was, to use his expression,

"the mother of them all." It is now more than forty years since scions were taken from this tree and set on trees growing on my father's farm.

The apple was confined to that neighborhood for many years, when the late Colonel Baldwin, of Woburn, became acquainted with it. He at once perceived its great excellences and brought it into general notice. From him it received its present name. We called it the "Red Graft," as it was then the only engrafted fruit we had on the farm, and it still retains that name in our family.

The original tree was alive when I removed to this place in the summer of 1817. In 1832, being at Tewksbury, I visited the spot where it once stood, but found it had disappeared. It was a very high tree, by far the highest apple tree I have ever seen; but not large in circumference, the limbs growing upright. The trunk, too, was unusually large for a Baldwin, but had begun to decay when I last saw it.

(Signed)

Yours truly,

RUFUS KITTREDGE.

PORTSMOUTH, September 8, 1835.

Now, not stopping to show that Colonel Baldwin could not have taken his first scions from each one of several trees in several towns, as is affirmed, we will attend to a letter written between nine and ten years before that of Mr. Kittredge above, and published in the "New England Farmer" in 1826. The writer is a well-known Wilmington man, but resides in Boston.

EXTRACT FROM LETTER.

Having noticed some remarks in a late number of your paper respecting the origin of the fruit known in this city by the name of the Baldwin apple, I take the liberty of stating the following facts, many of which I am personally knowing to, and others I have learned from the oldest inhabitants of the town.

An old gentleman of Wilmington, by the name of Butters, discovered on his farm an apple tree of spontaneous origin, which bore a fine red apple. The tree was very productive and the apple very much admired, and it was denominated in the neighborhood the "Butters apple." Afterward it was called the "woodpecker," because the bird of this name frequented this tree in preference to others, probably on account of the richness of the flavor of its sap. It has by some been called by abbreviation the " pecker " apple. Colonel Baldwin, of Woburn, first introduced the "woodpecker " into the market, hence it took the name of the "Baldwin apple."

Fifty years ago, about 1775, Dr. Jabez Brown, of Wilmington, now eighty. three years old, took scions from the mother tree and grafted two trees on a farm of his in the town of Tewksbury. Forty-five years ago this gentleman brought specimens of the "woodpecker" apple to Boston, 1780, and presented