Arbutus. 
appears to have been a common article of food. In Padua, 
and other Italian cities, they are still sold in the markets ; 
whilst the English and American confectioners are reported to 
use large quantities of the thyme-leaved arbutus-berries as a 
substitute for cranberries, which fruit they resemble. 
Horace has celebrated the arbutus in his odes, whilst his 
predecessor, Virgil, very frequently mentions it, and, in the 
“yEneid,” describes the bier of Evander’s son, young Pallas, 
as formed of arbutus rods and oaken twigs. Sannazaro speaks 
of the arbutus as employed, together with other symbolic trees 
and flowers, at the celebration of the festival in honour of Pales, 
a rural goddess of the Romans. 
In Barthelemy’s “Travels of Anacharsis the Younger,” this 
tree is spoken of as growing on Mount Ida—as attaining a 
considerable height, and, above all, being of such virtue that 
serpents ceased to be venomous after feeding upon its fruit, 
which fruit the neighbouring peasants consider exquisitely 
sweet. These trees, of course, belonged to the Oriental arbutus, 
or andrachne, as it is generally called. Dallaway speaks of it 
as abounding in the vicinity of the far-famed Miletus, and 
states that the fruit resembles a scarlet strawberry both in size 
and flavour. 
This same traveller states that it grows in wild luxuriance, 
amid myrtles and roses, about Belgrade—a place that Lady 
Mary Montague described in her charming letters as a perfect 
Paradise, but which modern progress has wonderfully trans¬ 
mogrified into something very different. 
Evelyn complained sadly in his time of the neglect shown 
to this lovely child of Nature, and at the present day he would 
scarcely find much to cause an alteration in his tone. 
