An Austrian legend records that the Angel Michael gave to Eve and her son Seth a spray with three leaves, plucked from the Tree of Knowledge, with directions to plant it on the grave of Adam. The spray took root and became a tree, which Solomon placed as an ornament in the Temple of Jerusalem, and which was cast into the _piscina probatica_, where it lay until the day of Christ’s condemnation, when it was taken out and fashioned into the Cross on which He suffered. A German legend narrates that Eve went with Seth to Paradise, where she encountered the serpent; but the Angel Michael gave her a branch of Olive, which, planted over the grave of Adam, grew rapidly. After the death of Eve, Seth returned to Paradise, and there met the Angel, who had in his hands a branch to which was suspended the half of the Apple which had been bitten by his mother Eve. The Angel gave this to Seth, at the same time recommending him to take as great care of it as of the Olive planted on Adam’s grave, because these two trees would one day become the means of the redemption of mankind. Seth scrupulously watched over the precious branch, and at the hour of his death bequeathed it to the best of men. Thus it came into the hands of Noah, who took it into the Ark with him. After the Deluge, Noah sent forth the dove as a messenger, and it brought to him a branch of the Olive planted on the tomb of Adam. Noah religiously guarded the two precious branches which were destined to be instrumental in redeeming the human race by furnishing the wood of the Cross. A second German legend states that Adam, when at the point of death, sent Seth to Paradise to gather there for him some of the forbidden fruit (probably this is a mistake for “some of the fruit of the Tree of Life”). Seth hesitated, saying as an excuse that he did not know the way. Adam directed him to follow a tract of country entirely bare of vegetation. Arrived safely at Paradise, Seth persuaded the angel to give him, not the Apple, but simply the core of the Apple tasted by Eve. On Seth returning home, he found his father dead; so extracting from the Apple-core three pips, he placed them in Adam’s mouth. From them sprang three plants that Solomon cut down in order to form a cross--the selfsame cross afterwards borne by our Saviour, and on which He was crucified--and a rod of justice, which, split in the middle, eventually served to hold the superscription written by Pilate, and placed at the head of the Cross.