A legend, current in the Greek Church, claims the Olive as the Tree of Adam: this, perhaps, is not surprising considering in what high esteem the Greeks have always held the Olive. The legend tells how Seth, going to seek the oil of mercy in Paradise, in consequence of his father’s illness, was told by the angel that the time had not arrived. The angel then presented him with three branches--the Olive, Cedar, and Cypress: these Seth was ordered to plant over Adam’s grave, and the promise was given him that when they produced oil, Adam should rise restored to health. Seth, following these instructions, plaited the three branches together and planted them over the grave of his father, where they soon became united as one tree. After a time this tree was transplanted, in the first place to Mount Lebanon, and afterwards to the outskirts of Jerusalem, and it is there to this day in the Greek Monastery, having been cut down and the timber placed beneath the altar. From this circumstance the Monastery was called, in Hebrew, the Mother of the Cross. This same wood was revealed to Solomon by the Queen of Sheba, and Solomon therefore ordered it to be used in the foundation of a tower; but the tower having been rent in twain by an earthquake which occurred at our Saviour’s birth, the wood was cast into a pool called the _probatica piscina_, to which it imparted wonderful healing qualities.[4] [4] Sir John Maundevile, who visited Jerusalem about the middle of the fourteenth century, states that to the north of the Temple stood the Church of St. Anne, “oure Ladyes modre: and there was our Lady conceyved. And before that chirche is a gret tree, that began to growe the same nyght.... And in that chirche is a welle, in manere of a cisterne, that is clept _Probatica Piscina_, that hath 5 entreez. Into that welle aungeles were wont to come from Hevene, and bathen hem with inne: and what man that first bathed him aftre the mevynge of the watre, was made hool of what maner sykenes that he hadde.”