^4 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTION'S VOL. 54 



like the sphericity of the apple, was called a kind of apple tree, a 

 member of the genus Malus, as it was called in Latin speech and 

 writing. Here is a partial list of the kinds of Malus, or apple tree, 

 that find record and description with several early authors; 

 excluding, however, the true apples, which were of many varieties 

 all with binary names. 



Malus Armeniaca Armeniaca vulgaris. 



Malus Persica Amygdalus Persica. 



Malus arantia Citrus aurantium. 



Malus limonia Citrus limonium. 



Malus medica Citrus medica. 



Malus cotonea ] 



Malus cydonia V Cydonia vulgaris. 



Malus aurea \ 



Punica granatum 



Malus Punica 



Malus granata 



Malus Indica Zizyphus jujuba. 



In outline, the history of the development of such a genus 

 Malus as the above is this. In primeval southern Europe they 

 had the common apple tree, Malus communis, and, from the 

 beginning of the historic period at least, they had it in many culti- 

 vated varieties. The fruit was malum with the Latins, the tree 

 malus. Then, as other kinds of trees were introduced from the 

 East having spherical or ovoid fruits not too small for apples, their 

 fruits were also designated as kinds of apples, and the trees as species 

 of malus. To us who, with also several generations of our botanical 

 ancestry, have become accustomed to a greatly improved classifica- 

 tion, such a piece of systematizing as the above list of apple-tree 

 species exemplifies cannot but seem absurd; but the presentation 

 of something of that kind was necessary, partly in order that we 

 might realize from what small and simple beginnings our later and 

 better systems of carpological classifying have been evolved; also 

 partly as demonstrating the groundlessness of the Linnasan hypo- 

 thesis that classification by fruit characters took its rise with 

 Cesalpino, and as late as the end of the sixteenth century. 



I am unwilling to dismiss the subject of early and practically 

 pre-Cesalpinian classifying by fruit without having given one 

 more illustration of it. For this purpose I shall again advert to 

 the taxonomic procedures of the early Virginian colonists. I have 

 cited the case of their having found there, in place of the English 

 Walnut, two allies of that tree, and that they named these new 



