Lettuce has always been loyal. Herodotus tells us that it was served at royal tables some centuries before the Christian era, and one of the Roman families ennobled its name with that of Lactucinü. So spinach, asparagus and celery have been held in high repute among the eastern nations, as with us. And the parable of the mustard seed shows that plant was known in Christ's time. The Greeks are said to have esteemed radishes so highly that, in offering oblations to Apollo, they presented them in beaten gold. And the Emperor Tiberius held parsnips in such high repute that he had them brought annually from the Rhine for his table. The beet is still prized, but the carrot has lost the reputation it had in Queen Elizabeth's time, the leaves being used in the head-dresses of the ladies of her court, from whence the epithet applied to the hair is derived. Peas had scarcely made their appearance at the tables of the court of Elizabeth, "being very rare," Fuller says, "in the early part of her reign, and seldom seen except they were brought from Holland, and these were dainties for ladies, they came so far and cost so dear." Nor did the currant appear much earlier in European gardens, coming first under the name of the Corinthian grape: Evelyn calls the berries Corinths. So the damson took its name from Damascus; the cherry from Cerasus, a city of Pontus; and the peach from Persia. The quince, first known as the Cydonian apple, was dedicated to the goddess of love; and pears, like apples, are from Paradise. The apple is the representative fruit, and owes most to culture in its ancient varieties of quince, pear, pomegranate, citron, peach; as it comprehended all originally. Of these, pears and peaches have partaken more largely of man's essence, and may be called creations of his, being civilized in the measure he is himself; as are the apple and the grape. These last are more generally diffused over the earth, and their history embraces that of the origin and progress of mankind, the apple being coeval with man; Eve's apple preserving the traditions of his earliest experiences, and the grape appears in connection with him not long after his story comes into clearness from the dimness of the past.