The family Robinson Crusoe

by Johann David Wyss

Father.—Your remark is just; but I spoke only of our fruit-trees in Europe, where, almost without exception, the fruits require to be meliorated by a better soil, ingrafting, and culture. No doubt kind Providence has meant to indemnify these burning climes for many inconveniences, in bestowing on them palm-trees and other agreeable fruits that grow spontaneously and without trouble or labour on the soil.

Ernest.—I comprehend all this: yet one thing puzzles me; how were the scions and grafts of the best kinds first procured in Europe?

Jack.—What a question! From those who had them, certainly.

Ernest.—And what a reply! I answer. And where did those from whom they were obtained get them? I wish to know where the first branches of the best species were had, before any persons had undertaken the husbandry of trees, or thought of ingrafting them. All trees, I presume, were wild originally .....

Jack.—Indeed! ...... What think you then of the terrestrial paradise? Do you not believe that excellent fruits of all kinds were there? And might not the scions and grafts you are so puzzled about, have been taken there to any number?

Father.—My dear young pupil, if you had read the Bible with attention, you would have seen that our father Adam was driven out of the terrestrial paradise for having eaten of one of those goodly fruits, contrary to the positive prohibition of God; and as he and his wife Eve were then alone on the earth, none could go and take grafts in that beautiful garden, which moreover was not in Europe; therefore the inquiry of Ernest is just and sensible. Good fruit-trees are doubtless natives of some part of the earth, where they bear spontaneously, in their natural climate, as good fruits as those we raise in ours with care and art. Such trees were torn from their native soil when young, and transplanted into Europe, where, by the assiduous attentions of the gardener, they prospered, and furnished grafts for their multiplication; for the European climate is so little fitted to the natural production of good fruits, that the best tree, propagated from mere seed, soon resumes the wild state, and requires to be grafted. Gardeners usually collect a number of tender shoots or saplings in an inclosure, which they first raise by seed and afterwards ingraft; these inclosures are called nurseries, where such plants are purchased, and where all these shipped for our use were procured.

Fritz.—Do you know, father, the native country of all these trees?

Father.—Of most of them, I think. The vine I have ventured to plant near our tree at Falcon’s Stream, grows only in the temperate zone; it neither thrives in very cold countries nor under the torrid zone, though it generally prefers the south to the north. The vine is of antient date; for we find in the Bible that Noah was acquainted with the use of it. It seems then that the vine is a native of Asia Minor and Armenia; and it appears to have been brought at a very remote period into Egypt, Greece, and most parts of Europe. The fabulous accounts in mythology of Bacchus, relate, no doubt, to the propagation of the vine. Italy probably received it from the emigrant Greeks and from the Romans, who became masters of the known world; thence it was carried into Gaul, Spain, Germany, and those parts of Switzerland in which it promised to thrive: perhaps the Phoenicians too had previously transported it to some of the above mentioned countries.

The boys speaking together.—And the apple, pear, chesnut, walnut, almond, peach, and mulberry-trees?

Father.—Patience, patience, prattlers! Can I tell you every thing in a breath? And pray speak one after the other, gentlemen.—Fruits with shells or pods, such as the nut, almond, and chesnut, generally called glands or kernels by the Romans, come from the East; but that is too general a term,—for the East being the quarter in which the sun rises, includes too many regions. Chesnuts were called by the antients glandes Sardes, from Syria, a province of Asia Minor, and they received their present name from a Grecian town, near which they were cultivated in abundance. As to walnuts, they were formerly named glandes Jovis, (Jupiter’s acorns or kernels) by the Romans; they are originally from Persia, and were spread through Europe by the Roman conquests. The great filberd-tree, bearing the Portugal nut or filberd, is originally from Pontus, a country of Asia Minor, and has been transplanted in the same way as the preceding. The origin of the almond-tree is uncertain; it is found wild in Asia and Africa: its fruit bore the name of thalos in Greece, because it had been first transplanted from an island of that name in the Archipelago.