THE STRAWBERRY-TRE3E 53 



feet relatively higher with regard to the sea, so that 

 there was a land connection between Ireland and 

 the Asturias, the Arbutus spread along this ancient 

 littoral, as it does along that of the Landes to-day, it 

 may never have spread as far eastward as Brittany or 

 Cornwall for the same reason as that for which it does 

 not grow at Paris to-day. Those places, now mari- 

 time, were then relatively Continental. 



Familiar in ancient Greece and Italy as in those 

 countries to-day, the Arbutus is frequently mentioned 

 by Classical writers. Theophrastus describes it, under 

 the name kom'aros, as a tree not growing to large 

 dimensions, possessing an edible fruit, called memai'- 

 kulon, a smooth bark, and a leaf intermediatfe between 

 the Oak and the Bay Laurel. Each blossom, he says, 

 equals in size and form a long Myrtle blossom, so that 

 it is formed like an egg-shell cut in half The fruit 

 takes a year to ripen, so that it is often found on the 

 tree when the new buds are appearing. Virgil, in his 

 third Eclogue, speaks of th« tree as pleasing food for 

 young kids, and also mentions it several times in the 

 Georgics ; Ovid celebrates its loads of " blushing 

 fruit"; and Horace, in his first Ode, expresses his 

 delight in lying " viridi membra sub Arbuto stratus " 

 (with limbs stretched beneath a green arbutus). 



That no monks seem to have succeeded in intro- 

 ducing the tree into England is rendered probable by 

 the entry, " arbutus, crab-tre," in a fifteenth century 

 vocabulary, and by WiUiam Turner's writing, in 1548, 

 "Arbutus groweth in Italy, but hath leaues like Quicke- 

 tree, a fruite lyke a strawbery, wherefore it may be 

 called in english strawbery tree, or an arbute tree." 



