272 Sino-Iranica 



specific case apt to teach just the opposite: a wild walnut (probably in 

 several species) is indigenous to China, nevertheless the species culti- 

 vated in this area did not spring from domestic material, but from 

 seeds imported from Iranian and Tibetan regions of Central Asia. 

 The botanical dogma has been hurled against many deductions of 

 Hehn: botanists proclaimed that vine, fig, laurel, and myrtle have been 

 indigenous to Greece and Italy in a wild state since time immemorial; 

 likewise pomegranate, cypress, and plantain on the Aegean Islands 

 and in Greece; hence it was inferred that also the cultivations of these 

 plants must have been indigenous, and could not have been introduced 

 from the Orient, as insisted on by Hehn. This is nothing but a sophism: 

 the botanists still owe us the proof that the cultivated species were 

 really derived from indigenous stock. A species may indeed be indige- 

 nous to a certain locality; and yet, as brought about by historical 

 inter-relations of the peoples, the same or a similar species in the 

 cultivated state may have been introduced from an outside quarter. 

 It is only by painstaking historical research that the history of culti- 

 vated plants can be exactly determined. Engler (above, p. 258) doubts 

 the occurrence of the wild walnut in China, because a cultivated species 

 was introduced there from Tibet ! It is plain now where such logic will 

 lead us. Wilson deserves a place of honor among botanists, for, after 

 close study of the subject in China, he recognized that "it is highly 

 improbable that Juglans regia is indigenous to China." 



With reference to the walnut, conditions are the same in China as 

 in the Mediterranean region: there also Juglans regia grows spontane- 

 ously; still better, cultivated varieties reached the Greeks from Persia; 

 the Greeks handed these on to the Romans; the Romans transplanted 

 them to Gallia and Germania. Juglans regia occupies an extensive 

 natural area throughout the temperate zone, stretching from the 

 Mediterranean through Iran and the Himalaya as far as southern China 

 and the Chinese maritime provinces. Despite this natural distribution, 

 the fact remains that Iran has been the home and the centre of the 

 best-cultivated varieties, and has transmitted these to Greece, to India, 

 to Central Asia, and to China. 



Dr. T. Tanaka has been good enough to furnish the following infor- 

 mation, extracted from Japanese literature, in regard to the walnut. 



"Translation of the notice on ko-td {kurumi), 'walnut,' from a 

 Japanese herbal Yamato honzd ^C % P if ^, by Kaibara Ekken j| W* 

 ^ $f (Ch. 10, p. 23), published in 1709. 



"Kurumi t$ $iS {koto). There are three sorts of walnut. The first 

 is called oni-gurumi 3& #] #ii ('devil walnut'). It is round in shape, 



