HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



Z4T 



CONCERNING CERTAIN FRUIT TREES. 



By MARY B. MORRIS. 

 No, III. — Apple and Pear Trees. 



S these two fruits 

 are botanically 

 very closely al- 

 lied, both being 

 included in the 

 genus Pyrus, they 

 may well be 

 classed together 

 in our "jottings" 

 upon their^ origin 

 and history. 



The apple has, 

 indeed, a very 

 early history, and 

 though so many 

 varieties have 

 been introduced 

 in the course of 

 the thousands of 

 years during 



which they have 

 been favourite and familiar fruits, that before our 

 American cousins brought their new and beautiful 

 varieties to swell the numbers, we could count about 

 fifteen hundred kinds, yet it is asserted that the 

 earliest kinds differed so httle from some of the fruits 

 we now cultivate that they may even be said to be 

 identical. 



Careful researches made in the pile huts of the 

 Swiss lake dwellers of the stone age have resulted in 

 the discovery there of many apples, indicating plainly 

 that the fruit was used in very large quantities, and 

 that these pre-historic men dried their apples for 

 winter use. Many specimens have been met with 

 dried, and also many carbonized by the action of fire ; 

 and when in this latter state, the internal structure of 

 the fruit is better preserved and more easily recog- 

 nised. A German author who enters into the 

 minutest details of the discoveries made, distinguishes 

 and describes the distinct kinds of apples differing in 

 size, the one being twice the size of the other kind. 

 No. 299. — November 1889. 



and corresponding with an apple which still grows^. 

 both in Germany and Switzerland. "The other, the 

 smaller kind," he says, "is found in such abundance 

 amongst these relics of a past age, as to suggest the . 

 probability of its having been a wild apple. In,vesti- 

 gations made in the lake dwellings of Italy have led 

 to similar discoveries. The conclusion to be drawn.. 

 from these facts seems to be that the apple is 

 indigenous in these two countries, at any rate." 



Philologists assert that every one of the ancient, 

 languages has its own word for apple ; which we 

 may accept as a strong reason for assuming that in 

 every country, whose language named the fruit, it 

 was a native tree, and this being so, it must have 

 been indigenous throughout a very widely-extended 

 area. 



On the other hand, pears have been found but 

 rarely in these lake dwellings, and when they have 

 been discovered, were usually cut lengthwise, in 

 which state they had evidently been dried. Accom- 

 panying circumstances, however, seem to indicate 

 that these pears do not belong to a period earlier Lhai> 

 the foundation of Rome, or, perhaps, to that of the 

 Trojan war. The mural paintings of Pompeii . 

 abound with examples of the pear tree with its fruit,, 

 and ancient writers give interesting and minute 

 descriptions of many varieties with which they were 

 acquainted. The fruit is mentioned under three 

 different Greek names by Theophrastes and Dios- 

 corides. Pliny, who calls it by its Latin name, 

 " Pyrus," says there were forty-one varieties cultivated 

 in his time. "All the world," he says, "are 

 extremely fond of the Crustumian pear, and next . 

 to it comes the Falernian, so called from the drink . 

 which it affords, so abundant is its juice. This juice 

 is known by the name of milk, in the variety, which, 

 of a black colour, is by some called the pear o£' 

 Syria." 



Various methods of keeping the fruit seem to have, 

 been adopted, which have probably fallen into disuse. - 

 Thus : they were placed, we are told, in earthea jars 



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