common enough in Anjou, with berries the size of the hawthorn; also in Haute-Bretagne, where it is called poirasse, to distinguish it from the common wild pear. Decaisne states that the pears of the tree now spoken of are known in Brittany under the name of BESI, or Bezizolles. Durieu de Maisonneuve found this plant in the Girond near Canau, and also near Bordeaux. He states everything points to the conclusion that this is the original stock of certain cultivated trees.

Mr. Boswell Syme comments on a variety found by Mr. Briggs in Devonshire.

That climate sometimes may produce a difference is to be gathered from the foregoing. Boissier states,

"Valde singulare est hanc speciem in Gallia occidentali et, ut videtur, spontanée occurrere, specimina ex agro Andegavensi praeter pedunculos et petiolos juniores magis tomentosos Persicis quoad folia, et fructus similia videntur."

May not time, or climate, or culture have produced the change in the specimen found by me in Brittany?

But in addition to these evidences these trees are really nationalised. Professor Karl Koch, who travelled for four years in the Caucasus and Persia, divides the present pear trees into three originating species, one of which is Pyrus persica.

Decaisne considers that cultivation of the principal species of Pyrus produced certain secondary forms which were the progenitors of our present varieties, all of which he attributes to one original, which he subdivides into six races,-the Keltic, the Germanic,

the Hellenic, the Pontic, the Indian, and the Mongolic races (of trees).

Commenting on papers read by me before the British Association in September, 1875, and other learned societies in the same year, the article in question quotes an article in November of the same year on evidences adduced by me for the preoccupation of Western Gaul, and also Southwestern Britain, by a peculiar people having strong Oriental characteristics, anterior to the invasion by the Cymry. Since the reading of those papers I have pursued the subject by personal travel and investigation, and have followed the same evidences not only to the north and east and west coasts of Britain, but thence into the Mediterranean, to India and Persia.

Notwithstanding these evidences, let it be assumed for argument that the specimen which I discovered is not the actual one in question, and then, even assuming I had never found it, there is still ample evidence of the tree in question in the East and in Western Europe. Assuming, then, that the specimen in question is not the one it was first assumed to be, that in no way affects the historical points, as there are amongst the examples already referred to well-known specimens in the British Museum from Devonshire, and in the Kew Herbarium from the Girond in France, showing its localisation in Western Europe; while the same tree is found on Mount Elburz in North-east Persia, according to Bossier (Flora Orientalis,' vol. ii, p. 653). It was found there by Professor Buhse.

The articles already mentioned point out that in

3M "LANSPORTING,

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Bokazy vil pes, and this among the number, are ko: vi måer the name, already stated, of Besi, cr Biznes where the name Besi applied to cemain suinrated pears, and that it may very prolally be the omg of certain early apple-shaped plars. Its geographical distribution in Persia and in Western Europe was inexplicable, but now (referring to my information given to my friend subsequently to my receiving the above information from him, he says-"but now seems to be reasonably accounted for."

Abandoning as immaterial the question as to the plant I discovered being the actual one it was thought to be, the matter is merely introduced to show that my search led me to a peculiar fruit, the information respecting which led me to my -researches in the East. It was not likely to rest at this point with me. Instigated by my so far successful search, and the additional information kindly given me by my friend as to the investigation by others, I at once began to work up the Eastern part of the question, as it seemed to me this tree, apparently not indigenous to Western Europe, must have been imported from the East by Orientals migrating westward; perhaps-and it seems to my mind strongly confirmed--who were the introducers of the Arthurian legends. And if I may presume so far as the first of these opinions, I then find corroborative evidence in support of the latter; and if that can be only approximately established, we have one grand point in the ethnology of the primal races of Western Europe tolerably demonstrated.

* From σwλiv, from the shape.

In the first place, two towns in that part of France are still named Besse. Bayeau was, before the coming of the Normans, called Bessin, and on consulting Herodotus I find that, in his description of the march of Xerxes, book 7, ch. iii (cxi), he makes mention of the Sâtræ, who, he says, were of all the Thracians an unconquered and independent people, remarkable for their valour, inhabiting lofty mountains covered with snow, but abounding in all kinds of trees. On the summit of one of their highest hills they have an oracle to Bacchus. The interpreters of the revelations of this oracle are the Bessi a priestess makes the responses, as in the case of the Delphian Oracle, and in as ambiguous a manner (see next page). These Bessi of Bacchus are also mentioned by Ovid. On the route westward we find the same name in Besidiæ in Italy, closely similar to the Besada near the Ganges.

Now if these people came to the West they would bring their name and also their religion with them, as well as amongst their trees any seeming the most sacred.

One kind of tree, the apple, has from the earliest times of which we have any record been a sacred object for good and for evil, and so also has the serpent,—thus the Egyptians worshipped a good and an evil serpent deity; and although the historical apple may not have been the fruit we know by that name, the mere association with it indicates that the fruit we describe as the apple must have had a significant importance.

The apples of Merlin are clearly our apples, from