39 



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 Pliny, " 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 has mentioned, 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 sweetness and agreeable flavour. He 

 mentions nine-and-twenty kinds of apples as 

 being cultivated in Italy at about the com* 

 mencement of the Christian era. The graft- 

 ing of trees was carried to its greatest extent 

 about this time. " I have seen," says Pliny, 

 " near to Thulise, in the Tyburtines country, 

 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 pome- 

 granates; and, to conclude, no kind of 

 apple or other fruit but there it was to be 

 found : but this tree did not live long/' Mo- 

 dern grafters will condemn this account as 

 fabulous or exaggerated ; but what reason 

 can we have to doubt the authority of a 



