d to have contended for it, dragons
were set to watch it, and heroes were employed to pluck it.

The tree is mentioned in at least three places in the Old Testament,
and its fruit in two or three more. Solomon sings,--"As the apple-tree
among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons." And
again,--"Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples." The noblest part
of man's noblest feature is named from this fruit, "the apple of the
eye."

The apple-tree is also mentioned by Homer and Herodotus. Ulysses saw in
the glorious garden of Alcinoues "pears and pomegranates, and apple-trees
bearing beautiful fruit" ([Greek: kahi maeleai aglaokarpoi]). And
according to Homer, apples were among the fruits which Tantalus
could not pluck, the wind ever blowing their boughs away from him.
Theophrastus knew and described the apple-tree as a botanist.

According to the Prose Edda, "Iduna keeps in a box the apples which
the gods, when they feel old age approaching, have only to taste of
to become young again. It is in this manner that they will be kept in
renovated youth until Ragnaroek" (or the destruction of the gods).

I learn from Loudon that "the ancient Welsh bards were rewarded for
excelling in song by the token of the apple-spray;" and "in the
Highlands of Scotland the apple-tree is the badge of the clan Lamont."

The apple-tree (_Pyrus malus_) belongs chiefly to the northern temperate
zone. Loudon says, that "it grows spontaneously in every part of Europe
except the frigid zone, and throughout Western Asia, China, and Japan."
We have also two or three varieties of the apple indigenous in North
America. The cultivated apple-tree was first introduced into this
country by the earliest settlers, and it is thought to do as well or
better here than anywhere else. Probably some of the varieties which are
now cultivated were first introduced into Britain by the Romans.

Pliny, adopting the distinction of Theophrastus, says,--"Of trees there
are some which are altogether wild (_sylvestres_), some more civilized
(_urbaniores_)." Theophrastus includes the apple among the last; and,
indeed, it is in this sense the most civilized of all trees. It is as
harmless as a dove, as beautiful as a rose, and as valuable as flocks
and herds. It has been longer cultivated than any other, and so is more
humanized; and who knows but, like the dog, it will at length be no
longer traceable to its wild original? It migrates with man, like th