1G4< HISTORICAL NOTES ON 



birth of Pliny, that is, about seven years before the Christian era, 

 and it appears that Columella was the first to treat of its cultiva- 

 tion there. According to Nicander it was brought to Greece by 

 the agency of Perseus from Cepheia, a locality affirmed by some 

 to have been in Persia, by others in iEthiopia or in Chaldsea, 

 The peach is also sj)oken of by Theophi'astus, Dioscorides, and 

 other (xreek writers. We must therefore conclude that this 

 fruit was well known in the East very long before its introduction 

 into Italy. Many ancient writers, including Athenteus and Pliny, 

 and some more recent ones, as, for instance, Marcellus Virgilius, 

 in his Commentaries on Dioscorides, confound the peach with 

 the 2^ersea, a fruit the identity of which is uncertain, some sup- 

 posing it to be a Cordia, others a Balanites. IMacrobius again 

 confounds the peach with the persicum of Suevius, which is the 

 walnut, and with that of Cloatius, which is the citron ; all fruits 

 resembling the peach in nothing but in the name, a clear proof 

 that it cannot have been in their days by any means a common 

 fruit. How few were the varieties of peach known to the ancients 

 appears from Dioscorides who only names two, from Pliny who 

 enumerates five, and Palladius four only, giving at the same time 

 accurate information on the mode of cultivating them. 



With regard to the introduction of the peach into Tuscany, it 

 appears that several varieties were known already in the days of 

 the Republic, but that the greater number were, as in the case of 

 other fruits, due to the exertions of the Medici sovereigns. 

 Matthioli, in the sixteenth century, enumerates a considerable 

 number as then in the possession of Tuscan cultivators ; Micheli, 

 under Cosmo III., has forty-three, and in the drawings of 

 Castello are represented about thirty. That called Po2)pe di 

 Vencre (the Late Admirahle of our Horticultural Catalogue) is 

 supposed to be one of the most ancient in Italy, and is mentioned 

 by Agostino del Pdccio and Micheli, under the name of Pesche 

 Lucvlicsi. 



Although all the evidence collected by Prof. Targioni tends to 

 show that the peach was originally brought from Persia, and he 

 therefore does not consider it necessary to proceed further with 

 the investigation, yet no traveller whom we can rely upon has 

 ever found it growing really wild there or anywhere else. We 

 are therefore left in doubt whether its native stations remain yet 

 to be discovered, or whether its original wild type must be sought 

 for in some species of Amygdalus known to be indigenous in the 

 East. It has been more than once suggested that this original 



