“A pillared shade High over-arched, with echoing walks between.”--_Milton._ The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Tree of Knowledge, in the opinion of some commentators, was so called, not because of any supernatural power it possessed of inspiring those who might eat of it with universal knowledge, as the serpent afterwards suggested, but because by Adam and Eve abstaining from or eating of it after it was prohibited, God would see whether they would prove good or evil in their state of probation. The tradition generally accepted as to the fruit which the serpent tempted Eve to eat, fixes it as the Apple, but there is no evidence in the Bible that the Tree of Knowledge was an Apple-tree, unless the remark, “I raised thee up under the Apple-tree,” to be found in Canticles viii., 5, be held to apply to our first parents. Eve is stated to have plucked the forbidden fruit because she saw that it was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and that the tree which bore it was “to be desired to make one wise.” According to an Indian legend, it was the fruit of the Banana tree (_Musa paradisiaca_ or _M. sapientum_) that proved so fatal to Adam and Eve. We read in Gerarde’s ‘Herbal,’ that “the Grecians and Christians which inhabit Syria, and the Jewes also, suppose it to be that tree of whose fruit Adam did taste.” Gerarde himself calls it “Adam’s Apple-tree,” and remarks of the fruit, that “if it be cut according to the length oblique, transverse, or any other way whatsoever, may be seen the shape and forme of a crosse, with a man fastened thereto. My selfe have seene the fruit, and cut it in pieces, which was brought me from Aleppo, in pickle; the crosse, I might perceive, as the forme of a spred-egle in the root of Ferne, but the man I leave to be sought for by those which have better eies and judgement than my selfe.” Sir John Mandeville gives a similar account of the cross in the Plantain or “Apple of Paradise.” In a work by Léon, called ‘Africa,’ it is stated that the Banana is in that country generally identified with the Tree of Adam. “The Mahometan priests say that this fruit is that which God forbade Adam and Eve to eat; for immediately they eat they perceived their nakedness, and to cover themselves employed the leaves of this tree, which are more suitable for the purpose than any other.” To this day the Indian Djainas are by their laws forbidden to eat either Bananas or Figs. Vincenzo, a Roman missionary of the seventeenth century, after stating that the Banana fruit in Phœnicia bears the effigy of the Crucifixion, tells us that the Christians of those parts would not on any account cut it with a knife, but always broke it with their hands. This Banana, he adds, grows near Damascus, and they call it there “Adam’s Fig Tree.” In the Canaries, at the present time, Banana fruit is never cut across with a knife, because it then exhibits a representation of the Crucifixion. In the island of Ceylon