BOOK XV. XIV. 47-xv. 50 



* Medic apples,' after their native country. Equally 

 forei^n are the jujube-tree and the tuber-apple, 

 which themselves also have only recently come into 

 Italy, the former from Africa and the latter from 

 Syria. Sextus Papinius, who was consul in our a.d. 23. 

 own day, introduced each of them in the last years of 

 the principate of his late Majesty Augustus, having 

 grown them in his camp from sHps ; the fruit is more 

 hke a berry than an apple, but the trees make a par- 

 ticularly good decoration for terraces — as nowadays 

 we have whole forests of vegetation growing even 

 over the roofs of our houses. There are two kinds of 

 tuber-apple, the white and the red Syrian, so called 

 from its colour. The fruit called wool-fruit, growing 

 in the district of Verona but nowhere else in Italy, is 

 virtually an exotic ; it is covered with a woolly down, 

 which grows also in very large quantities on the 

 sparrow-quince and the peach, but which has given 

 its name to this fruit in particular as it has no other 

 remarkable property to recommend it. 



X\'. Why should I hesitate to indicate by name Frmt trees 

 the remaining varieties of fruit, seeing that they have ducedfr^'^ 

 prolonged the memory of those who estabhshed them abroad. 

 for all time, as though on account of some outstanding 

 achievement in hfe ? Unless I am mistaken, the 

 recital will reveal the ingenuity exercised in grafting, 

 and will show that nothing is so trifling as to be 

 incapable of producing celebrity. Well then, there 

 are kinds of fruit that have their origin from Matius 

 and Cestius, from MalHus, and Hkewise from Scau- 

 dius ; and on the last a member of the Claudian 

 family named Appius grafted the quince, producing 

 the fruit called Appian ; this has the smell of a quince, 

 the size of a Scaudian apple, and a ruddy colour. 



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