496 WILD FLOWEES OF 



fruit. It thus offers a type of that perpetual spring 

 believed once to have pervaded the whole earth 



" Green all the year; and fruit and blossoms blush'd 

 In social sweetness on the self-same bough." 



The Arbutus is celebrated for its connection with 

 the Lakes of Killarney and the monks of Mucruss, 

 finely adorning, as it does in the present day, the 

 romantic district of the south-west of Ireland, whether 

 truly indigenous there or not. It is a native of Italy 

 and the south of Europe, as well as of Asia Minor, 

 where some use appears to be made of the fruit, in- 

 sipid as it tastes in this climate, however beautiful its 

 strawberry simulation. It may be considered as curi- 

 ous that a tree whose fruit certainly fed the early and 

 simpler races of mankind, should now be cultivated 

 only for its beauty as a shrub, while humbler plants 

 have been increased in size and luxuriance, and ele- 

 vated into importance for their development by horti- 

 cultural effort. Several of the classic poets have 

 mentioned the Arbutus, and its shade (" arbutus 

 umbra") is alluded to by VIE GIL, as a pleasant ingre- 

 dient in that sunny climate. LTELL mentions it as 

 covering the slumbering volcanic hill of Monte Nuovo, 

 near Naples, which like Vesuvius of old, may one day 

 again awake and scatter the magnificent woody vest 

 that now envelops it, in burning splinters through the 

 air. OVID has mentioned the "rubenti arbutus" as 

 an object of ornate beauty ; but the moral attaches to 

 it that its charms are but deceptive, the specific name 

 unedo being supposed to indicate that no one would 

 eat it more than once. There are things, indeed, that 

 had better not be tasted at all. 



