224 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



in the open air, wherever oaks thrive.* As we pro- 

 ceed farther north, the apple is scarcely known. The 

 people of Lapland shewed Linnaeus what they called 

 an apple-tree, which, they said, bore no fruit, because 

 it had been cursed by a beggar-woman, to whom the 

 owner of the tree had refused some of its produce. 

 The naturalist found that it was the common elm, a 

 tree also rare in that severe climate. "f" The apple 

 as well as most other European fruits, which now 

 appear indigenous, is probably a native of the East. 

 The Prophet Joel, enumerating the trees of Syria, 

 says, " the vine is dried up, and the fig-tree lan- 

 guisheth; the pomegranate-tree, the plum-tree also 

 and the apple-tree, even all the trees of the field, are 

 withered." The cultivated apple was probably scarce 

 at Rome, in the time of Pliny; for he states that 

 there were some apple-trees in the villages near the 

 city which yielded more profit than a small farm. The 

 art of grafting was at that period either very recently 

 discovered, or comparatively little known. This 

 practice must evidently have belonged to an advanced 

 state of civilization. It is remarkable that Moses, in 

 his directions to the Israelites when they " shall 

 come into the land, and shall have planted all man- 

 ner of trees for food,"J makes no mention of the art 

 of grafting. Hesiod and Homer, in like manner, 

 have no allusion to a practice which would naturally 

 have formed part of their subject had it existed when 

 they wrote. The art of grafting, as well as that 

 of pruning, has been ascribed to an accidental origin. 

 The more vigorous shooting of a vine, after a goat 

 had broused on it, is said to have suggested the one 

 great principle in the management of fruit trees; 



* Von Bach's Travels, p. 41. 4to. 



t Linnaeus's Tour in Lapland, vol. i., p. 23. 



| Leviticus, c. xix., v. 23. j SeeGoguet, Origine des Lois. 



