220 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



which can apply to such a fruit. Sometimes people have 

 thought they recognized it in the tuberes of which he 

 speaks. It was a tree imported from Syria in the time 

 of Augustus. There were both red and white tuberes. 

 Others (tuberes ? or mala ?) of the neighbourhood of 

 Verona were downy. Some graceful verses of Petronus, 

 quoted by Dalechamp, 1 clearly prove that the tuberes 

 of the Romans in Nero's time were a smooth-skinned 

 fruit; but this might be the jujube (Zizyphus'), 

 Diospyros, or some Cratcegus, just as well as the smooth- 

 skinned peach. Each author in the time of the Renais- 

 sance had his opinion on this point, or criticized that 

 of the others. 2 Perhaps there were two or three species 

 of tuberes, as Pliny says, and one of them which was 

 grafted on plum trees was the nectarine (?) 3 but I doubt 

 whether this question can ever be cleared up. 4 



" Even admitting that the Nucipersica was only intro- 

 duced into Europe in the Middle Ages, we cannot help 

 remarking that in European gardens for centuries, and 

 in Japan from time unknown, there was an intermix- 

 ture of all the principal kinds of peach. It seems that 

 its different qualities were produced everywhere from 

 a primitive species, which was probably the downy 

 peach. If the two kinds had existed from the beginning, 

 either they would have been in different countries, and 

 their cultivation would have been established separately, 

 or they would have been in the same country, and in 

 this case it is probable that one kind would have been 

 anciently introduced into this country and the other 

 into that." 



I laid stress, in 1855, on other considerations in support 

 of the theory that the nectarine is derived from the 

 common peach; but Darwin has given such a large 

 number of cases in which a branch of nectarine has 



1 Dalechamp, Hist., i. p. 358. 



2 Dalechamp, ibid.; Matthioli, p. 122; Csesalpinus, p. 107; J.Bauhin, 

 p. 163, etc. 



3 Pliny, lib. xvii. cap. 10. 



4 I have not been able to discover an Italian name for a glabrons or 

 other fruit derived from tuier, or tuberes, which is singular, as the 

 ancient names of fruits are usually preserved under some form or other. 



