168 HISTORICAL NOTES ON 



We may iudeed safely give as tlie native country of the wild 

 chesnut, the south of Europe from Spain to the Caucasus. It 

 does not extend to East India. 



The larger fruited varieties which we import for eating, and 

 which are generally distinguished in France and Italy under the 

 name of marrons or viarrone, "were probahly those which 

 were first introduced from the East by the Romans. Pliny 

 enumerates eight different varieties. Micheli has forty-nine, 

 most of which, however, from his own specimens are, as in the 

 case of the other fruits mentioned in his manuscript, founded 

 upon distinctions too slight to be really available for their 

 separation. 



The Fuj (Ficus carica) is a native of the south of Europe, 

 including Greece and Italy, of Northern Africa and of Western 

 Asia. The wild type known in Italy by the name of Caprlfico, 

 has indeed been distinguished by Gasparrini not only as a species 

 but as a separate genus, but we cannot but concur with Prof. 

 Targioni in the opinion, confirmed by positive assertion on the 

 part of practical pomologists both ancient and modern, that our 

 garden figs are of the same species and have repeatedly been 

 raised from seeds of the wild caprifico. 



We find mention of the cultivation of figs, and of the high esti- 

 mation in which these fruits were held, in the very earliest writings, 

 in the Holy Scriptures, as in Homer's Iliad. Those of Athens 

 were celebrated for their exquisite flavour. Xerxes was tempted 

 by them to undertake the conquest of Attica, in the same way 

 that Cato urged the Piomans to that of Carthage, a fig in his hand. 

 The number of varieties, however, produced in ancient Italy were 

 not numerous. Six only were known in the time of Cato. Others 

 were afterwards introduced from Negropont and Scio, according 

 to Pliny, who gives a catalogue of thirty sorts. Their names are 

 mostly taken from the countries whence they had been brought, 

 such as the African, the Rhodiote, the Alexandrine, the Saguntine, 

 &c., or from some great personage who had introduced or 

 patronised them, such as the Pompeian from the great Pompey, 

 the Livian from Livia, the wife of Augustus, &c. Macrobius, 

 two centuries after Pliny, enumerates twenty-five, but generally 

 under names different from those of Pliny, Gallesio, in his 

 Pomona Italiana, has referred a few of those ancient names to 

 modern Italian varieties, as for instance : — 



The Alhkcrata to the white fig of the Italians. 



The Tlhnrtina to the gentile. 



