What is the difference between "apply" and "mapcar" in Lisp

What are the similarities? Or, is there another question lurking here?

(Links from elisp, because that is what I know. The quotes are just excerpts and the links contain examples which may or may not be relevant in a particular "Lisp".)

mapcar

mapcar is a function that calls its first argument with each element of its second argument, in turn. The second argument must be a sequence.

apply (in Calling Functions)

apply calls function with arguments, just like funcall but with one difference: the last of arguments is a list of objects, which are passed to function as separate arguments, rather than a single list. We say that apply spreads this list so that each individual element becomes an argument.

Happy coding.

The describe-paths function (from the text based adventure game in Land of Lisp!) generates descriptions for the paths going from a given location. Page 74-77 in Land of Lisp explains the roles of mapcar and append in the example.

The (cdr (assoc location edges)) provides a list of all paths going from the location, such as these for the living-room location:

((GARDEN WEST DOOR)
 (ATTIC UPSTAIRS LADDER))

The mapcar calls the function describe-path for each of the paths, collecting the path descriptions into a list where each of the sublists is a path description:

((THERE IS A DOOR GOING WEST FROM HERE.)
 (THERE IS A LADDER GOING UPSTAIRS FROM HERE.)) 

Next the append function is applied to the list of path descriptions, concatenating it into a flat list:

(THERE IS A DOOR GOING WEST FROM HERE. THERE IS A 
  LADDER GOING UPSTAIRS FROM HERE.)