34 FAMILIAR TREES 



different fruit-bearing plants, such as Thorn-apples 

 and Love-apples. The Anglo-Saxon name for the 

 Blackberry, for instance, was Bramble-apple ; and 

 that rare old traveller, Sir John Mandeville, speaking 

 of the Cedars of Lebanon, says, "they beren longe 

 Apples, and als grete as a' man's heved." Though 

 both Apples and apples of gold are spoken of in 

 several parts of the Bible, the tree now so called is 

 believed not to have been cultivated by the Hebrews, 

 the Citron or some other fruit being referred to. 



Darwin propounds the suggestion that our cul- 

 tivated varieties are derived from the wild Crab of 

 the Caucasus ; but this origin dates probably from a 

 remote antiquity, before the time when perhaps the 

 Druid cut with golden knife the mistletoe bough in 

 the Ynys yr Avallon, the Island of Apples, afterwards 

 known as Glastonbury ; for its carbonised remains in- 

 dicate the use of the Apple as food by the prehistoric 

 inhabitants of the Swiss lake-dwellings. Just as the 

 Romans used both the words malum and jpomum for 

 the fruit and for the tree, besides extending both 

 terms to other fruits, so with us in a wild state the 

 fruit of the Apple, or the tree itself, is known by the 

 probably Keltic name " crab " or " crab-apple," a name 

 apparently having the original signification of sour. 



The Apple seldom occurs of a large size in a wild 

 state in England, and is often exposed to the indignity 

 of being cut down with the hedgerow. In our orchards 

 the short stems slope in every direction, not being 

 rooted in the ground with sufficient firmness to resist 

 being blown to one side by the gale an accident to 

 which they are rendered more liable by the custom 



