88 Fruits and Fruit-Trees. 



THE ALMOND ( ' Amygdalus communis)* 



THE almond, like the apple, is one of the very ancient 

 fruits. The history of it is bound up with that of events 

 recorded in connection with the nations of over three 

 thousand years ago, as in the touching old story narrated 

 in Genesis xliii., when Jacob directs his sons to " carry 

 down the man a present, a little balm, and a little honey, 

 spices, and myrrh, nuts, and almonds," articles, all of 

 them, at that period no doubt greatly esteemed in the 

 land of the Pharaohs. The tree producing this fruit is so 

 very nearly allied to the peach, the general figure and 

 the foliage corresponding almost exactly, that by some 

 botanists the last-named is thought to be no more than 

 an immensely improved descendant of the almond. 

 Plenty of support may be found for this conjecture if we 

 set out predisposed in its favour. There seems, however, 

 no necessity to assume the identity. A very marked dis- 

 tinction is found in the circumstance already mentioned 

 in regard to the bursting open of the husk when ripe. 

 The native countries of the two trees are also geographi- 

 cally so far asunder as to imply, it would seem, a specific 

 difference from the very beginning. The primitive home 

 of the peach appears to have been China : the almond 

 seems to belong to those parts of Europe, warm and dry, 

 which are bathed by the Levantine Mediterranean, reach- 

 ing thence into western temperate Asia. Upon Hermon 



* In the Hooker and Bentham classification, Prunus Amygdalus. 



