CULTIVATED PLANTS. 163 



Thassia picra, and amygdaleas. Pliny doubts whether almonds 

 were known in Cato's time, because he considers that the last- 

 named writer meant walnuts when speaking of Greek nuts, but 

 the majority of commentators agree in referring that name to 

 almonds. In modern days the varieties grown in Southern 

 Europe have become very numerous. Micheli describes ninety- 

 four, but his distinctions are very refined, and taken often from 

 accidental forms ; the specimens from which he described them 

 ai'e still preserved in Prof. Targioni's collections. 



Pliny, as well as Linnfeus and most modern botanists, includes 

 amongst plums the Apricot (Prunus armeniaca), a tree most 

 extensively cultivated, and which sows itself very readily in culti- 

 vated grounds over South-eastern Europe, Western Asia, and 

 East India, but its native country is very uncertain. Targioni 

 says, on the authority of Reyner, an Egyptian traveller, that it is 

 of African origin, but does not give the precise locality, and we 

 have neither seen nor heard of any really wild specimens. The 

 ancients called it Armeniaca as having been brought from Armenia 

 into Italy, where it is not indigenous ; also pracoca, pracoqua, and 

 prcBcocca ; and under one or other of these names it is mentioned 

 by Dioscorides, by Galen, by Columella (who is the first who 

 speaks of its cultivation), by Pliny, (who, about ten years after 

 Columella, asserts that it had been introduced into Rome thirty 

 years), by JMartial, &c. Democritus and Diophanes give it the 

 name of hericocca, analogous to the Arabian hcrkac and herikhach, 

 the probable origin of the Italian names of hacocca, albicocca, 

 and even, according to Cesalpin, haracocca ; and, lastly, Paolo 

 Egineta, according to Matthioli, has spoken of these fruits under 

 the name of fZorrtctrt. Although some of these names, even in 

 modern times, have been occasionally misapplied to a variety of 

 peach, yet they all properly designate the apricot, and show that 

 that fruit was known in very remote times. Having never been 

 much appreciated, except for its odour, there was not in former 

 days any great propagation of varieties of it, Micheli, however, 

 under the Medicis, enumerates thirteen among the fruits culti- 

 vated for the table of Cosmo III. 



The Peach (Amygdalus persica) is, according to the common 

 opinion, of Persian origin. Diodorus Siculus says that it was 

 carried from Persia into Egypt during the time that Cambyses 

 ruled over that country. It is supposed to have been transported 

 from thence into Greece, and, after a lapse of time, into Italy, 

 where it only began to be known about twenty years before the 



M 2 



