CHAPTER XVI. 

 APPLES OF SODOM. 



" For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of 

 Gomorrah ; their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are 

 bitter." DEUT. xxxii. 32. 



WHAT the apple of Sodom was we cannot tell 

 with certainty. A hundred conjectures have 

 been formed, and different kinds of fruit the gourd 

 of the colchicum, the Solatium melongena, and various 

 other bitter substances growing in the Jordan valley 

 and in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea have 

 been identified as this famous apple. By many it has 

 been classed in the list of vulgar fables, kept up from 

 age to age, like many other allusions inherently false, 

 as Lord Bacon says, because they serve for good 

 illustrations and help the poets to apt similitudes. 

 There can be no doubt, however, that this strange 

 fruit did actually exist ; for the accounts of various 

 travellers, and the descriptions of the naturalists Strabo 

 and Pliny, are too minute and circumstantial to permit 

 us to believe that it was a creation of the imagination 

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