OF BRITISH PLANTS. 9 



exactly tallies. The remarkable coincidences of name, to 

 which allusion has been made, are due to the intimate con- 

 nection with each other of all the Ind-European nations 

 and their languages, from their having grown up in the 

 same nursery together in Upper Asia, and dispersed sub- 

 sequently to their becoming acquainted with this fruit; and 

 not to a mutual borrowing of it since their settlement in 

 Europe. Pyrus Malus, L. 



APRICOT, in Shakspeare (M.N.D. iii. 1) APRICOCK, in 

 older writers, ABRICOT and ABRECOCKE, It. albericocca and 

 albicocco, from Sp. albaricoque, Ar. al burquq or barkokon, 

 from Mod. Gr. @pKKoica, 0. Gr. of Dioscorides and Galen, 

 TrpcutcoKKia, L. prcecoqua or prcecoda, early, from the fruit 

 having been considered to be an early peach. A passage 

 from Pliny (Hist. Nat. xv. 12) explains its name. " Post 

 autumnum maturescunt Persica, sestate prcecocia, intra 

 xxx annos reperta." There is a good paper upon it in 

 Notes and Quteries, Nov. 23, 1850. " The progress of this 

 word," says the author, " from W. to E., and then from E. 

 to S.W., and thence to N., and its various changes in that 

 progress, are strange. One would have supposed that the 

 Arabs living near the region of which the fruit is a native, 

 might have either had a name of their own for it, or at 

 least have borrowed one from Armenia. But they have 

 apparently adopted a slight variation of the Latin. The 

 Spaniards must have had the fruit in Martial's time, [who 

 alludes to it in the words : 



' Vilia maternis fueramus praecoqua ramis, 

 Nunc in adoptivis persica cara sumus.' 



Lib. xiii. Ep. 46.] 



but they do not take the name immediately from the 

 Latin, but through the Arabic, and call it albaricoque. 

 The Italians again copy the Spanish, not the Latin, and 

 call it albicocco. The French from them have abricot. 

 The English, though they take their word from the French, 



