32 HISTORY OF FRUITS. 



*' There are apples," says Pliny, " that have ennobled the 

 countries from whence they came ; and many apples have 

 immortalized their first founders and inventors. Our 

 best apples/' continues he, " will honour the first grafters 

 forever; such as took their names from Matius, Cestius, 

 Manlius, and Claudius," This author particularizes the 

 quince apples, that came from a quince grafted upon an 

 apple stock, which, he says, smell like the quince, and 

 were called Appiana, after Appius, who was of the 

 Claudian house, and who was the first that practised 

 this grafting. " Some apples," says he, " are so red 

 that they resemble blood, which is caused by their being 

 at first grafted upon a mulberry stock." But of all the 

 apples he mentions, he says the one which took its 

 name from Petisius, who reared it in his time, was the 

 most excellent for eating, both on account of its sweet- 

 ness and agreeable flavour. He mentions nine-and- 

 twenty kinds of apples as being cultivated in Italy at 

 about the commencement of the Christian era. The 

 grafting of trees was carried to its greatest extent about 

 this time. " I have seen," says Pliny, " near Thuliae, in 

 the country of the Tiburtines, a tree grafted and laden with 

 all manner of fruits, one bough bearing nuts, another 

 berries; here hung grapes, there figs; in one part you 

 might see pears, in another pomegranates ; and, to con- 

 clude, there is no kind of apple or other fruit but there 

 it was to be found : but this tree did not live long." 

 Modern grafters will condemn this account as fabulous or 

 exaggerated ; but what reason can we have to doubt the 

 authority of a man, whose life was spent to the benefit 

 of mankind, and whose death was caused by his perse- 

 verance in the research after truth in the wonderful works 

 of nature ? Let those who dispute this account be able to 

 tell us why a graft, taking nourishment from a crab-stock, 

 shall have a fruit more noble than its nurse and parent. 



