^5^ STUDIES OF NATURE. 



and (hade of which are to this day fo delicious. 

 The names of thofe benefaâiors are, moft of them, 

 entirely unknown ; their benefits are, however, 

 perpetuated to us from age to age. The Romans 

 . did not ad in this manner. Pliny tells us, with no 

 fmall degree of feif- complacency, that of the eight 

 fpecies of cherry known at Rome in his time, one 

 was called the Plinian, after the name of one of 

 his relations, to whom Italy was indebted for it. 

 The other fpecies of this very fruit bore, at Rome, 

 the names of the moft illuftrious families, being 

 denominated the Apronian, the Aclian, the Cseci- 

 lian, the Julian. He informs us that it was Z-k- 

 cullits who, after the defeat of Mit bridâtes, tranf- 

 planted, from the kingdom of Pontus, the firft 

 cherry-trees into Italy, from whence they were pro- 

 pagated, in lefs than a hundred and twenty years, 

 all over Europe, England not excepted, which 

 was then peopled with barbarians. They were, 

 perhaps, the firft means of the civilization of that 

 Ifland, for the firft laws always fpring up out of 

 agriculture : and for this very reafon it is, that the 

 Greeks gave to Ceres the name of Legiflatrix. 



Pliny, in another place, congratulates Pompey 

 and Vejpafian on having difplayed, at Rome, the 

 ebony-tree, and that of the balm of Judea, in the 

 midft of iheir triumphal proceflions, as if they had 

 then triumphed, not only over the Nations, but 



over 



