“Like to the apples on the Dead Sea’s shore, all ashes to the taste.”
The apple has indeed entered largely into history and legend. According to some writers the forbidden fruit of Eden was a kind of apple, and the pomum Adami in one’s throat may be accepted as a record of the old belief. “The fruit of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste brought death into the world, and all our woe.” Our readers, too, will recall the golden apple of discord that created strife alike on high Olympus and amongst the sons of men, and that led to the fall of Troy. On the other hand, we read of the apple of perpetual youth in Scandinavian mythology, the food of the gods; and in the “Arabian Nights” of the apples of Samarkand that would cure all diseases. The apples of Istkahar were all sweetness on one side, all bitterness on the other; while Sir John Mandeville tells us that the pigmies were fed with the odour alone of the apples of Pyban. Amidst this maze of fancy and legend it would perhaps be scarcely fair to even mention the more historic apple that fell at Woolsthorpe at the feet of Newton, and set his mind thinking on the problem of gravitation.[39]
[39] We remember some time ago an interesting article by Dr. Adolf Dux, entitled “La tombe du Savant” appearing in the “Pester Lloyd.” The savant was Bolyai, professor of mathematics and physics at Maros-Vásárhely. No statue, no marble mausoleum with sides covered with laudatory inscriptions, marks the place where he lies, but the tomb, by its occupant’s strict direction, is overshadowed by the boughs of an apple-tree—“En souvenir des trois pommes qui out joué un rôle si important dans l’histoire de l’humanité, et il désignait ainsi la pomme d’Ève, et celle de Pâris qui réduisirent la terre à l’esclavage, et la pomme de Newton, qui la replaça au rang des astres.” Strangely enough, when Dr. Dux visited the tomb there hung on the tree just three apples—“ni plus ni moins.” [Back]
At Crete our old author, Burton, finds a plant called Alimos, which it is only necessary to chew to take away all sense of hunger for a whole day; but this wonder pales before those of the flora of Nova Hispania, the country we now call Mexico. “Amongst the Rarities of Nova Hispania, though there be many Plants in it of Singuler Nature, is mentioned that which they call Eagney or Meto, said to be one of the principal: a Tree which they both Plant and Dress as we do our Vines; it hath on it 40 kinds of leaves, fit for several uses; for when they be tender they make of them Conserves, Paper, Flax, Mantles, Mats, Shoes, Girdles and Cordage, upon them they grow divers prickles so strong and sharp that the people use them instead of Staws.” What Staws may be we cannot say, so we must be content to know that Meto thorns make a very efficient substitute, and are for all practical purposes as good as having the real thing. “From the top of the Tree cometh a Juice like Syrrup, which if you Seeth it will become Honey; if purified, Sugar; the Bark of it maketh a good plaister and from the highest of the Boughs comes a kind of Gum, a Soveraigne Antidote against poysons.” The tree furnishes at once costume and confection, antidote and rope, and we can hardly wonder at the people of New Spain setting considerable store by it.
It would be curious to see the forms of the forty leaves; we can well imagine that a plant suggesting about equally by its foliage the rose, palm, bullrush, buttercup, cactus, horse-chestnut, and thirty-four other plants would give our botanists some little difficulty before it got definitely assigned its just place.
Brazil, like Mexico, is a very large place, and a very long way off, and two hundred years ago the Royal Mail Steam-Packet Company was a thing of the far future; there was therefore abundant room for play of the imagination; thus we read of a kind of corn “which is continually growing and always ripe; nor never wholly ripe, because always growing;” and of another plant that yields so sovereign a balm that “the very beasts being bitten by venomous Serpents resort to it for their cure.” It is interesting, amongst the other strange wonders, animal and vegetable, that are duly set forth, to come across a plant that must be very familiar to most persons, the sensitive plant, the Mimosa sensitiva of Brazil, though in his description of it our author cannot resist an added touch of the marvellous, imputing to it a power of observation that later writers would hesitate to confirm, for he says—“The herb Viva when roughly touched will close the leaves, and not open them again until the man that had offended it had got out of sight.” We must not, however, devote more attention to “R. B. Gent,” great as the temptation to do so may be, for his book is a perfect mine of the marvellous. Another curious old book to ponder over awhile is the English Dictionary of Henry Cockeram, as he certainly produces some extraordinary illustrations of unnatural history. The book was published in the year 1655, and did not profess to deal with scientific matters alone, but was, to use the author’s own language, “an interpreter of hard English words, enabling as well ladies and gentlewomen, young scholars, clerks, merchants, as also strangers of any nation, to the understanding of the more difficult authors already printed in our language, and the more speedy attaining of an elegant perfection of the English tongue.” Amongst these hard English words sadly needing an interpretation we will select but five as a sample of the whole:—“Achemedis, an herb which being cast into an army in time of battle causeth the soldiers to be in fear.” This probably would be some kind of runner. “Anacramseros, an herb, the touch thereof causeth love to grow betwixt man and man.” “Hippice, an herb borne in one’s mouth, keeps one from hunger and thirst.” “Ophyasta, an herb dangerous to look on, and being drunke it doth terrifie the inside with a sight of dreadful serpents, that condemned persons for fear thereof do kill themselves.” “Gelotaphilois, an herb drunk with wine and myrrh, causeth much laughter.”
Amidst the mist of error some few men declined to believe quite all that they were told, but exercised for themselves the right of individual judgment. The book we have just referred to was published, as we have seen, in the year 1655, and abounds in strange imaginings; yet five years before this we find a still better-known book, “the Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Enquiries into very many Received Tenants and commonly Presumed Truths” of Dr. Browne. The list of commonly presumed truths he ventures to dispute is a very long one, and includes such items of faith as that a diamond is made soft if placed in the blood of a goat, that a pailful of ashes will contain as much water as it would without them, that the two legs on one side of a badger are shorter than the two on the other side, and so on. As he approaches the vegetable kingdom he prefaces his remarks as follows:—“We omit to recite the many vertues and endlesse faculties ascribed unto plants which sometimes occurre in grave and serious authors, and we shall make a bad transaction for Truth to concede a verity in half. Swarms of others there are, some whereof our future endeavours may discover; common reason I hope will save us a labour in many whose absurdities stand naked in every eye, errors not able to deceive the Emblem of Justice and need no Argus to descry them. Herein there surely wants expurgatory animadversions whereby we might strike out great numbers of hidden qualities, and having once a serious and conceded list we might with more encouragement and safety attempt their Reasons.” On turning to the list of “vertues” in any old Herbal, we find, as Browne says, “endlesse faculties ascribed, and many of them of a character that woulde we should have imagined have been, during even the darkest ages, difficult or impossible of credence.” Thus in Gerarde’s herbal published in 1633, we find amongst our British plants one available “against the biting of the Sea-dragon,” two more “a remedy against the poyson of the Sea-hare,” one “against vaine imaginations,” another “an especial remedy against the nightmare,” and no less than thirty-eight preservatives “against the bitings of serpents.” We will, however, confine ourselves to three illustrative instances of the way in which the author of these inquiries into various received beliefs proceeds to demolish them. He says, in the first place, that “many things are delivered and believed of plants wherein at least we cannot but suspend. That there is a property in Basil to propagate scorpions and that by the smell thereof they are bred in the brains of men is a belief much advanced by Hollerius, who found this insect in the brains of a man that delighted much in this smell. Wherein besides that we finde no way to conjoin the effect unto the cause assigned herein the moderns speak but timorously, and some of the Ancients quite contrarily. For according unto Oribasius, physitian unto Julian, the Africans, men best experienced in poisons, affirm whosoever hath eaten Basil although he be stung with a Scorpion shall feel no pain thereby; which is a very different effect, and rather antidotally destroying than promoting its production.” Pliny and other ancient writers mention the old belief that the bay-tree, the tree of Apollo, was a preservative against thunder, or rather against lightning; hence Tiberius and some other of the Roman Emperors wore a wreath of bay as an amulet; and in an old English play we find the lines—
“Reach the bays,
I’ll tie a garland here about his head,
’Twill keep my boy from lightning.”
Browne discourses on the point as follows:—“That Bayes will protect from the mischief of lightning and thunder is a quality ascribed thereto, common with the fig tree, eagle and skin of a seale. Against so famous a quality Vicomercatus produceth experiments of a Bay-tree blasted in Italy, and therefore although Tiberius for this interest did wear a Laurell about his temples yet did Augustus take a more probable course, who fled under arches and hollow vaults for protection.” A most unimperial picture this, great Cæsar deserting his throne and shutting himself up in his wine-cellar when he heard the distant rumbling of the coming storm. “If we consider the three-fold effect of Jupiter’s Trisulk, to burn, discusse, and terebrate, and if that be true which is commonly delivered, that it will melt the blade yet passe the scabbard, dry up the wine yet leave the hog’s head entire, though it favour the amulet it may not spare us; it will be unwise to rely on any preservative, ’tis no security to be dipped in Styx or clad in the armour of Ceneus.”[40]