associated with our own religious books which contain the very earliest traditions, and which record the Fall as resulting from what amounts to a theft of fruit, which has become popularly associated with the apple, lies in the very midst of the geographical route just considered. This tradition may have ramified east and west.

This ramification is probable from the ancient application of terms. Although trees were distinguished by names, a general term was originally applied to their fruit, as in the early Hebrew, "and the fruit-tree yielded fruit after his kind;" "We may eat of the fruit of the trees," &c. So the Greek mēlon, unλov, the Latin mālum, and the Latin pōmum often comprehended fruit generally; and later on, when it was desirable to distinguish fruits, was still retained, as Malum præcox, the apricot :

λov included sheep and cattle generally, and even beasts of the chase, in the plural unλa,-in short, special food, animal or vegetable, apart from grain ; and even, it is now thought by students of mythology, rain-clouds, as the givers of such fruits and food. We probably obtain our "melon" and "mellow" from this word; and mel, sweet,-perhaps even "meal," food.

Taking, then, a term so general, the sacred conelooking fruit just plucked from the sacred tree by the Assyrian priests was also the melon, mālum, pōmum; while we have seen that the cultivation of the apple and pear, pure and simple, was a very early and wide-spread custom.

I have placed the Assyrian fruit emblem first, because it might be supposed from its form to be

an exception; not because the illustrations are not found in India. I have in my possession several

Palyanga Bhavani, holding the fruit of Rama.

examples of the same kind in the Hindu hierarchy; not only deities holding pomaceous-shaped fruit in their hands, and in one case the god Ganesa eating such fruit, but I find the fruit actually so described by Mr. Edward Moor, F.R.S., thus:

Ramphul. This fruit grows to the size of our largest pear, but is not so pointed, and the stalk is inserted at its base; in shape it forms a cone, and is, I imagine, hence sacred to 'Siva,' as, placed on its base, it resembles a pyramid." "This species is called Ramphul, or the fruit of Rama."

"Another species is named Sitaphul, after Sita, spouse of Rama; in shape it is not so conical as the other." *

I am under the impression that the current idea that the Assyrian priests hold the fir cone in their hands is wrong; not only because the fir cone would be difficult for them to obtain, and because the sacred tree of Assyria is not a fir or pine, really resembling an espalier-trained apple or pear tree, but also because I find in the hand of the Hindu deity Palyanga Bhavani (an example being in my possession) the same form, evidently about to be eaten, the description being that of the fruit of Rama just mentioned.

"Its coat is exceedingly rough, being divided into lozenges by lines deeply indented, drawn spirally right and

* A feature like that of the Daphnephoria is found in India. As the Greek ceremony represented the lesser deity carrying flowers to honour the fane of Zeus, so the Chinese writers, Fa Hian and Hwen Thsang, describe that at Râmagrâma there was sculptured the ceremony of a sacred herd of elephants, which carried in their trunks water to nourish the sacred trees, and garlands of flowers and perfumes to do honorable worship. Here no doubt the elephant god Ganesa, whose crown is made of flowers, is doing reverence to the supreme Brahm. As the Nagas were represented as serpent men, and Ganesa as an elephant man, so the elephants, i. e. elephant ministers, would have been the officiating priests of Ganesa; Cecrops and Erechtheus were both represented as having the Naga form, half man, half serpent or dragon-showing the introduction of serpent-worship with the sacred trees from India. The autochthonization of Cecrops by the Greeks was to cover one of their very common thefts of another nation's deity.