PEACHES. 267 



Columeila tells us that when the peach was first intro- 

 duced into the Roman Empire from Media, during the 

 reign of the Emperor Claudius, it was possessed of ex- 

 tremely injurious qualities. 



Somehow the Chinese, in the "good olden times," even 

 more than in the present, seemed to take hold of every 

 new plant or discovery with a zest that soon carried them 

 beyond the nations of Christendom, so it was with the 

 peach ; although a native of Persia, its first visit to foreign 

 lauds and the first true appreciation it met with was on 

 Chinese soil, and there we find it flourishing and at home 

 almost as early as it was noted in its native land. Thence 

 it spread to Asiatic Turkey, where the natives regarded it 

 with deep veneration, and even connected various super- 

 stitions with the tree and its fruit, at least so Pliny and 

 other classical writers tell us. 



That the peach was one of the ' ' trees in the Garden of 

 Eden " there can be no doubt, and surely God could have 

 placed there, for the comfort of our first parents, no more 

 delicious fruit than this ; and perhaps it was for this rea- 

 son that after their fall it was withdrawn from the knowl- 

 edge of their descendants; for, curiously enough, we find 

 no mention of the peach in the Bible, although its con- 

 gener, the almond, is mentioned even as far back as in the 

 time of Jacob, for we read that when preparing his gift 

 for the Governor of Egypt, he commanded his sons to 

 take "myrrh, nuts, and almonds," thus showing the high 

 esteem in which these three articles were held. And yet 

 again in the minute directions for making the golden can- 

 dlestick we find mentioned, among the chief ornaments, 

 the myrtle and almonds ; again and again the almond you 

 sec, yet never once the peach ; hence it is quite safe to 

 infer that to the Israelites the peach was an unknown 

 fruit, although the almond is so nearly identical with it. 



