34 FAMILIAR TREES 
different fruit-bearing plants, such as Thorn-apples 
and Love-apples. The Anglo-Saxon name for the 
Blackberry, for instance, was Bramble-apple; and 
that rare old traveller, Sir John Mandeville, speaking 
of the Cedars of Lebanon, says, “they beren longe 
Apples, and als grete as a man’s heved.” Though 
both Apples and apples of gold are spoken of in 
several parts of the Bible, the tree now so called is 
believed not to have been cultivated by the Hebrews, 
the Citron or some other fruit being referred to. 
Darwin propounds the suggestion that our cul- 
tivated varieties are derived from the wild Crab of 
the Caucasus; but this origin dates probably from a 
remote antiquity, before the time when perhaps the 
Druid cut with golden knife the mistletoe bough in 
the Ynys yr Avallon, the Island of Apples, afterwards 
known as Glastonbury; for its carbonised remains in- 
dicate the use of the Apple as food by the prehistoric 
inhabitants of the Swiss lake-dwellings. Just as the 
Romans used both the words malum and pomum for 
the fruit and for the tree, besides extending both 
terms to other fruits, so with us in a wild state the 
fruit of the Apple, or the tree itself, is known by the 
probably Keltic name “ crab” or “ crab-apple,” a name 
apparently having the original signification of sour. 
The Apple seldom occurs of a large size in a wild 
state in England, and is often exposed to the indignity 
of being cut down with the hedgerow. In our orchards 
the short stems slope in every direction, not being 
rooted in the ground with sufficient firmness to resist. 
being blown to one side by the gale—an accident to 
which they are rendered more liable by the custom 
