Page:Textile fabrics; a descriptive catalogue of the collection of church-vestments, dresses, silk stuffs, needle-work and tapestries, forming that section of the Museum (IA textilefabricsde00soutrich).pdf/167

 Though unable to identify among the plants of Asia, which was the "hom" or tree of life, held so sacred by the Assyrians and later Persians, we know enough about that king of fruits—the "pine-apple"—as to correct a great mistake into which those have fallen who hitherto have had to write about the patterns figured on ancient or mediæval textiles. In their descriptions, we are perpetually told of the pine-apple appearing there; and at a period when the Ananas, so far from having been even once beheld in the old world, had never been dreamed of. Among the Peruvians our pine-apple, the "Nanas," was first found and seen by Europeans. Hardly more than two hundred years ago was a single fruit of it brought to any place in the old world. A little over a century has it been cultivated here in England; and, as far as our memory goes, a pine-apple, fifty years ago, had never been planted in any part of Italy or Sicily, nor so much as seen. Writing, October 17, 1716, from Blankenburg, and telling her friend all about a royal dinner at which she had just been, Lady Mary Wortley Montague says:—"What I thought worth all the rest (were) two ripe Ananasses, which, to my taste, are a fruit perfectly delicious. You know they are naturally the growth of Brazil, and I could not imagine how they came here, but by enchantment. Upon enquiry, I learned that they have brought their stoves to such perfection, &c. I am surprised we do not practise in England so useful an invention." As turnips grow in England, so do artichokes all over middle and south Italy, as well as Sicily, large fields are full of them. Put side by side with the pine-apple, and its narrow stiff leaves, the artichoke in bloom amid its graceful foliage, shows well; and every artistic eye will see that the Sicilian weaver, so fond of flowers and nice foliage for his patterns, must have chosen his own vegetable, unfolding its beauties to him at every step he took, and not a fruit of which he had never heard, and which he had never looked upon.

In his description of fruits or flowers woven on a textile, let not the youthful or unwary writer be led astray by older men with a reputation howsoever high for learning other than botanical. Some years ago we were reading with great delight a tale about some things that happened in the third century, and near Carthage. Though avowedly a fiction, most of its incidents were facts, so admirably put together that they seemed to have been drawn by the pen of one who had lived upon the spot. But taking one of his personages to a walk amid the hills running down to the shores of North Africa, the writer leads him through a narrow glen tangled over head, and shaded with sweet smelling creepers and