THE EARLY SUMMER FLOWERS. 193 
including many valuable cultivated plants. Here be- 
long the delicious fruits of the apple, pear, peach, plum, 
cherry, quince, apricot, strawberry, blackberry, rasp- 
berry, in their numberless varieties. What a space the 
word apple,— for we can hardly believe that it is always 
the fruit known to us by that name—holds in ancient 
literature! One illustration will suffice. In far-off Greek 
days, at the nuptial feast of Peleus and Thetis, to which 
all the gods and goddesses had been invited except Dis- 
cord, this divinity, out of revenge at her exclusion, threw 
a golden apple upon the board, with the inscription, 
‘‘For the most fair.” Out of this incident came a train 
of circumstances which led to the Trojan war and the 
Iliad and the Odyssey and the Afneid and, in fact, a 
whole cycle of ancient and modern poetry. Words- 
worth’s ‘“Laodamia,” Tennyson’s ‘“(énone,” Morris’s 
“The Death of Paris’’ show the influence of the old 
tale. 
Beauty and fragrance and worth are preéminent 
characteristics of this order, though not shared in by 
all its members equally. Many of the valuable species 
are at home in our county, either wild or cultivated. 
There is no fairer sight to be seen in mid-May than an 
apple-orchard in perfection of bloom; if there is, it 
must be the same orchard in perfection of fruit. 
Beside the two roses in the list, there are the 
meadow-sweet, a little shrub well worthy of cultivation, 
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