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40 FRUITS IN THEIR SEASON.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
T. Pacts And Fictions Co^Stceening Pigs....
was attributed tlie lionor of having * first taught agriculture in Italy , was represented crowned with new figsand a large fig-tree grew
"before his temple in Home , on the removal , of which to build a chapel in its placeit was held necessary for the Yestals to offer an
, expiatory sacrifice . Another famous tree had sprung up spontaneously in the centre of the Fommon the spot where Curtius
consummated his patriotic self-sacrifice , . Finally , in Bacchanalian processions a basket of figs was carried next to a vessel of wine ;
the jolly god being thought to owe his jolliness as much to the figs on which he fed as to the grape juice which he imbibed . Pliny , who
enumerates twenty-nine varieties of the _Hg as known in his day , relates with much force the anecdote of Cato one . day bringing a
ripe one into the senate-house , and asking the assembled council how long ago they _supjDOsed it to have been gathered . Seeing its
perfect freshness , it was unanimously pronounced to have been very lately taken from the tree . _" Know then" was the rejoinder " that
it was plucked . at Carthage but the day , before yesterday : so , near is the enemy to our walls . " Where " Delenda est Carthago" had
been reiterated till every one was weary of the sound , yet the words had been heard in vain , a single glance at this fruit sufficed to
prevail , and the third Punic war was immediately begun , and ended not till Carthage was no more . " Thus" as Pliny observes " did
,, this iig * effect that which neither Trebia nor Thrasimenus , not Cannae itself , graced with the entombment of the Roman renown , not the
Punic camp , entrenched within three miles of the city , —not even the disgrace of seeing Hannibal riding up to the Colline gatecould
suggest the means of accomplishing . It was left for a fig , in the hands of Cafco to show how near was Carthage to the gates of Rome . "
When dried , the fruit was extensively used at Rome instead of bread , and indeedas a general article of provisionsometimes taking the
place of all , other kinds , and proving no ineffectu , al substitute ; for it is said that on one occasion the army of Philip of Macedon owed
its preservation to the figs brought to it , when naught else was available , by the Magnesians .
Nor is it . only in Scripture or in mythologic lore that the fig-tree has met with honorable mentionfor in later days the Mussulmans
have not been behindhand in rendering , their tribute of respect to it ; one chapter of the Koran being entitled "The Fig" while Allah
himself is represented as swearing by it and by the olive , , because , say the commentators , of the great uses and virtues of these two fruits .
In our own country the records of £ . g cultivation might almost j _> ass for a page out of ecclesiastical history , so intimately , and
almost exclusively , are all early notices of it connected with clerical names , A couple of treeswhich have long enjoyed the credit of
having been the first grown , in England , are said to have been brought here from Italy by Cardinal Polein 1548 when they were
, , planted against * the walls of the archiepiscopal palace at Lambeth ,
and grew eventually to cover a space of fifty feet high , and forty
40 Fruits In Their Season.
40 FRUITS IN THEIR SEASON .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), March 1, 1861, page 40, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01031861/page/40/
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