110 OUR COMMON FEUITS. 



or whether they were spared a second fractal temptation 

 by being left in ignorance of charms so powerfully seduc- 

 tive, we do not know; but if not antediluvian, it is recorded 

 to have been at any rate one of the first plants that 

 flourished in the rich mud left by the retiring JSToachian 

 Deluge, and to have proved to the patriarch and his family 

 a very " tree of the knowledge of good and evil," even as 

 it has been since to myriads of his descendants. That it 

 was a blessing which might readily become a bane may 

 have been the cause that among the Jews it ranked below 

 those trees whose produce could be less easily abused; 

 for in the earliest of fables we find Jotham representing 

 the sovereignty of the woods as being offered to the olive 

 and to the fig-tree before application was made to the 

 vine to assume the arboreal crown. But the etymology 

 of the name it now bears, derived from the Celtic gwyd, 

 tree, whence was borrowed (the Celts dropping the g in 

 pronunciation) the Latin vitis, Spanish vid, French vigne, 

 and English vine, shows that when later nations became 

 its sponsers they gave it a rank with regard to other 

 plants analogous to that which was assigned to the Scrip- 

 tures with regard to other writings, the vine being the 

 tree, even as the Eible was the Book. "Wherever it was 

 found among the Gentile nations of antiquity, its intro- 

 duction was always traced to a divinity ; and whether the 

 chubby Bacchus of the Greeks be really identical or not 

 with the awful Osiris of the Egyptians, in this point, at 

 least, their history agrees, that each was represented as 

 being the first vine-grower of his country, Bacchus, too, 

 being said to have taken the plant to India. Humboldt, 

 who affirms that the vine is not a native of Europe, says 

 that it grows wild in Asia Minor. Michaux found it wild 

 on the borders of the Caspian, and it is now generally 

 considered to be indigenous to Persia, whence it is thought 

 to have been taken to Egypt, Greece, and Sicily, and from 

 the latter place to have reached the other European coun- 

 tries. " Why did Bacchus go to India ?" asks Dr. Sick- 

 ler, the great German authority on ancient fruit culture. 

 " Not, assuredly," he replies, " to take the vine thither, 

 for it was already there, but rather to fetch it thence, to 



