In Germany, Alders have often a funereal and almost diabolic character. It is a popular belief that they commence to weep, to supplicate, and to shed drops of blood if there is any talk of cutting them down.----A legend of the Tyrol narrates how a boy who had climbed a tree, overlooked the ghastly doings of certain witches beneath its boughs. They tore in pieces the corpse of a woman, and threw the portions in the air. The boy caught one, and kept it by him. The witches, on counting the pieces afterwards found that one was missing, and so replaced it by a scrap of Alder-wood, when instantaneously the dead came to life again.----Of the wood of the Alder, Virgil tells us, the first boats were made:--_Tunc Alnos primum fluvii sensere cavatas._----The Alder, or Aller, is said to be a tree of Venus, under the celestial signs of either Cancer or Pisces. ALECOST.--See Costmary. ALEHOOF, Ground-Ivy.--See Ivy. =ALMOND.=--According to an ancient tradition mentioned by Servius, the origin of the Almond-tree is to be traced to Phyllis, a beautiful Thracian queen, who became enamoured of Demophoon, the son of Theseus and Phædra, and was wedded to him. Demophoon, who, whilst returning from the Trojan war, had been cast by a storm on the coast of Thrace soon after his marriage with the Queen, was recalled to Athens by his father’s death. He promised faithfully to return to his royal bride at the expiration of a month, but failed to do so, and Phyllis, distracted at his continued absence, after several futile visits to the sea-shore, expired of grief, and was transformed into an Almond-tree, which is called _Phylla_ by the Greeks. Some time after this metamorphosis the truant consort returned, and upon hearing of the untimely fate of Phyllis, he ran and clasped the tree in remorseful embrace. Loving even in death, his beautiful queen seems to have acknowledged his repentance, for the Almond-tree into which she had been transformed, although at that time stripped of its leaves, suddenly shot forth and blossomed, as if eager to show how unchangeable was poor Phyllis’s love.----A second account of the origin of the Almond-tree states that it sprang from the blood of the monster Agdistis, the offspring of Jupiter. This fable further narrates that the daughter of the river Sangarius fell in love with the beautiful tree, and after gathering its fruit, gave birth to a son named Atys.----A third account relates how Io, daughter of King Midas, was forsaken by Atys, whom she loved; and how Agdistis, on the death of Atys, mutilated his body, from which sprang the bitter Almond-tree, the emblem of grief.----Virgil made the flowering of the Almond a presage of the crop of Wheat. “With many a bud if flowering Almonds bloom, And arch their gay festoons that breathe perfume, So shall thy harvest like profusion yield, And cloudless suns mature the fertile field.”