14 QUINCE CULTURE. 



it extensively as a preserve. Its botanical name, Cydo- 

 nia, comes from Cydon, a city on the island of Crete, 

 where it grew abundantly. They found it then, as now, 

 "both toothsome and wholesome." A writer in the sev- 

 enth volume of Putnam's Magazine tells how the ancients 

 testified to their appreciation of this fruit by dedicating 

 it to Venus. They regarded it as the emblem of both 

 love and happiness. With it they decorated the temples 

 of Cyprus and Paphos. It was the chosen ornament of 

 the statues of Hymen. In the garden of the Tuilleries 

 there is a figure of Hercules holding quinces in his hand. 

 According to Plutarch, Solon enacted a law that this 

 fruit should be the invariable feast of each newly- wedded 

 pair before they retired to their nuptial couch. Homer, 

 the Asiatic Greek and father of epic poetry, three thou- 

 sand years ago described a garden in his Odyssey with 

 such classic beauty, and sympathy with the real life of 

 the people of that age, that we almost wish we had lived in 

 his Smyrnian home to regale ourselves with the luscious 

 quinces and other fruits there grown in their perfection. 



From the classic plains of Greece, where it may have 

 formed the sacred shade of Academus, this golden fruit, 

 in genial fellowship with literature and the arts, traveled 

 into Italy, where Virgil, the prince of Latin poets, threw 

 over its own inherent charms the rhythmic spell of his 

 enchanting lays. One of the magic effusions of his genius 

 appears in the beautiful lament of the shepherd Da- 

 mon, in the VIHth Eclogue, where he honors the quince 

 by placing it among the select exponents of a higher 

 order of nature, hypothetically conceived to illustrate the 

 irremediable determination of the lover's despair. 



The quince was, according to Goropius, the golden apple 

 of the Hesperides. Columella, the most elegant and ex- 

 tensive agricultural and horticultural writer of his time, 

 "who scattered incense upon the altar of its virtues," 

 extolled it as the promoter of both health and pleasure. 



