ASSYRIAN MONUMENTS. 13 



apex. It is only by having now and then its charac- 

 teristic fruit on that anything can be made of these 

 bushes, as figured on the monuments. 



It is evident that this bush was plentiful in its 

 wild state, and was used for fire-wood, as men are 

 seen cutting it down near their camps. 



Prof. De Candolle says of it, at p. 237, " The pome- 

 granate grows wild in stony ground in Persia, Kurd- 

 istan, Afghanistan, and Beluchistan. Burnes saw groves 

 of it in Mazanderan, to the south of the Caspian Sea. 

 It appears equally wild to the south of the Cau- 

 casus. Westwards, that is to say, in Asia Minor, in 

 Greece, and in the Mediterranean basin generally, in 

 the North of Africa, and in Madeira, the species 

 appears rather to have become naturalized from culti- 

 vation, and by the dispersal of the seeds by birds. 

 .... The pomegranate enters into the myths and 

 religious ceremonies of the ancient Romans. Cato 

 speaks of its properties as a vermifuge.^ According 

 to Pliny, the best pomegranates came from Carthage, 

 hence the name Malum pnnicum . . . Very probably 

 the Phoenicians had introduced it at Carthage long 

 before the Romans had anything to do with this town, 

 and it was doubtless cultivated as in Egypt." 



^ It is still one of the Pharmacopeia remedies for tapeworm in Europe. 



