146 THE PLANT WORLD 



our cultivated spcies, are indefinite on just these points, and works of 

 travel, while frequently mentioning the useful plants of a country, are 

 often without much scientific accuracy or merit. But unsatisfactory 

 as these sources of information are, they are frequently all that we 

 have recourse to. 



Inasmuch as the apple is perhaps the most important of our 

 pomological fruits, and is grown in every temperate part of the world, 

 we may appropriately begin this series with some of the facts regarding 

 its origin and spread. 



In the first place, a brief account of the etymology of the word 

 apple may not be without interest. Although the apple is now quite ex- 

 tensively cultivated in Mongolia and Thibet, there is no Sanscrit name for 

 it, according to DeCaudolle, and hence it is assumed that it was un- 

 known to the Eastern Aryans. On the other hand the Western Aryans 

 appear to have found it, either wild or cultivated, when they swarmed 

 toward the west, and we find applied to it the name they found or gave 

 it. The root of this name was ah, av, af, ap, giving aball in Erse ; afal 

 in Kymric ; apfal in old High German, and appel in old English. The 

 Greeks gave to it the name mailea or maila, and the Latins nialus, ma- 

 lum, words whose origin is uncertain. The scientific name of Pyrus 

 malus, or Mains mains, as the rules of nomenclature now require, is, of 

 course, from the Latin. 



It is said that there are between four and five thousand varieties of 

 apples known at the present time, but whatever the number, size, quality, 

 or appearance, they have all been derived from two stocks — the common 

 apples from Pyrus malus, and the crab apple from Pyrus haccata. The 

 apple, par excellence, is the fruit of Pyinis malus. It grows wild through- 

 out Europe, in the southern part of the Caucasus, and in some parts of 

 Persia. In the mountains of the northwestern portion of India it was 

 found by Sir Joseph Hooker in an apparently wild state, but it does not 

 appear to be found in Siberia, Mongolia or Japan. The cultivation 

 of the apple undoubtedly began in prehistoric times, as it is found abun- 

 dantly in the remains of the lake-dwellings of Switzerland and that 

 representing a time before the inhabitants possessed metals. Oswald 

 Heer, a celebrated student of fossil plants, has distinguished two varieties 

 of apples from the lake-dwellings. They were small fruits which were 

 cut in two lengthwise and dried, probably for winter use, by the inhabi- 

 tants. 



From Greek and Roman history we learn that the apple was early 

 known in these countries, having been introduced into Rome in the time 

 of Appius Claudius (449 B. C). According to Pliny the Younger, who 

 flourished during the end of the first and the beginning of the second 



