18 



Of which lines I will offer you the rough translation — 



Need that man fear death's fatal rage 

 Whose garden yields the •wholesome sage ? 



Tes, for against death's mighty power 



No safety lies in herh or flower. 



The names of many of our fruits are very curious. " Apple " is a 

 word of which no one has yet been able to find the origin, or 

 meaning ; all that the learned can tell us is that the fruit has the 

 same name in all the northern languages. "Pear" comes, but not 

 directly, from the Latin pyrus. "Apricot" also comes to us from the 

 Latin proecox or proecoquus, but before it has arrived at " apricot" it 

 has gone through many changes, not only in its passage through 

 Italy, Spain, and France, but more especially as it went through 

 Arabia. The Peach, which is the fnalum persicum, or Persian 

 apple, goes through almost the same changes, and it is very 

 remarkable that both these fruits, which are indigenous to Persia 

 and Armenia, should have taken the Latin names and connipted 

 them, instead of giving to the Latins their proper indigenous 

 names, if they had any, 



" Strawben-y," "Gooseberry," "Raspberry " have never been satis- 

 factorily explained ; the "berry" is easy enough, but of the "straw," 

 the "goose," and the "rasp," we can only say with cei*tainty that they 

 have no connection with straw, geese, and rasps {i.e. files), and most 

 probably the strawberry is the berry that is strewn upon the 

 ground, lies prostrate ; and the gooseberry comes from its Dutch 

 name, which signifies cross-berry, from the three thorns which 

 take the form of a cross. This is Dr. Prior's interpretation, and he 

 is at present our safest authority on the subject. 



The "Cun-ant" is a clear corruption from " Corinth," as it was 

 supposed to be the same as the little Corinthian grape, which we 

 still call in grocers' language currants, though they are in fact 

 more properly raisins. 



"Nut " does not come to us from the Latin nvx, but from an older 

 word signifying anything hard and round. We have the same 

 word in " knot " or " knob," and it is most likely that the Latin nux 

 comes from the same root. 



But I must return to flowers, and what is more pretty than the 



