1 08 Fruits and Fruit- Trees. 



yards. Doubts exist, indeed, as to whether the vine, as 

 we have it to-day, may not be, after all, like the cultivated 

 pear, the outcome of the intermarrying, in the first 

 ages, of two or more ruder species. These, it is thought 

 possible, may be the Indian forms of Vitis named by 

 Roxburgh lattfolta, parvifolia, and lanata. 



The phrase "wild vine," it is important here to indi- 

 cate, has in the A.V. of the Old Testament a very 

 different signification. Nothing could be more natural 

 during the up -growth of language than that the word 

 " vine " should pass on from the grape-producing plant to 

 any other of similar habit constituted, that is, of long, 

 limp, and pliant shoots, and prone to mount into trees 

 and tall shrubs, either by spiral twining, after the manner 

 of the hop and the wild honeysuckle, or by means of the 

 " little strong embrace " of tendrils, as shown in passion- 

 flowers, the bryony, the melon, and the cucumber, which 

 last are by nature arboreal plants, and when cultivated in 

 frames, and prostrate upon the ground, are like the birds 

 of the woodland when imprisoned in cages. It is in 

 reference to a plant of the same family as the cucumber 

 namely, the colocynth that the phrase "wild vine" occurs 

 in the A.V., being applied to it in the famous narrative 

 of the gathering of the bitter fruit in 2 Kings iv. 



Apart altogether from its value as a source of fruit, the 

 vine is a singularly elegant plant. The height to which 

 the slim shoots can ascend has an image in the tree- 

 mantling ivy of old England. One of the branches of 

 the celebrated vine at Hampton Court reaches to the 



