Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil 



the fruit of the wild form was sweeter and better. 

 It is good for preserving, but in my garden is usually 

 cut off by frost. 



Virgil's epithet cannot mean more than that the 

 fruit has a stone. He can hardly mean to speak ill 

 of it, for he says, though here he must be in error, 

 that it was sometimes grafted on the sloe. It is true 

 that in our first passage the marooned Achaemenides 

 complains that he had to live on 'victum infelicem, 

 bacas lapidosaque corna ' ; but it must be remem- 

 bered that he might regard even a fairly good fruit 

 as unnourishing when it was his only food. The 

 boy who plays the micher and eats blackberries, 

 though he likes them well enough, would be sulky if 

 on his coming home at night his mother said there 

 was nothing in the stew-pot. Pliny, indeed, had no 

 great fondness for cornels, for he says that they were 

 dried in the sun, like prunes, just to show that there 

 was nothing not created for man's belly. 



In the early days of Rome the stem of the tree, 

 ' bona bello cornus ' {Ge. ii. 448), was made into a 

 lance shaft. Hence in poetry ' cornus ' sometimes 

 means a lance {Ae. ix. 698, xii. 267). Better material, 

 such as the ash, was afterwards employed. Usually 

 the timber was too small for anything but wedges 

 and the spokes of wheels. For these its hardness 

 made it fit. 



Flower, February. 



Italian names, Cornioio and Crogniolo. 



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