THE PEACH. 81 



But what, then, is left for the other and "better half" 

 of the New World to wreathe round the staff of its star- 

 spangled banner ? and wherewith shall the country which 

 " flogs creation" scourge us into a sense of her superiority 

 in " fruit notions" as well as in all else beneath the sun ? 

 An answer is not lacking, for Pomona has vindicated her 

 impartiality in bestowing upon the "States" one of her 

 choichest gifts, and though not native to their soil, it has 

 proved so good a foster-mother to the fruit, that the Peach 

 is now in America what the orange has become in Spain 

 or the Azores, at once the commonest and the best of its 

 fruits. 



A true child of the sun, the origin of the peach is dis- 

 tinctly traced through its ancient title, " Apple of Persia," 

 to that land of the far East a derivation the memory of 

 which is still preserved in its botanical name Persica, the 

 generic prefix being the same as the almond, Amygdalus. 

 An old tradition asserted that being originally of a poi- 

 sonous nature, causing dreadful tortures to any who ate 

 it, it was sent from Persia to Egypt with the malicious 

 view of injuring the inhabitants of that country, who, it 

 was supposed, would be tempted by the beauty of the new 

 introduction to partake of what would prove to them a 

 fatal banquet a wicked design, which was unexpectedly 

 frustrated by the beneficent Egyptian soil working so 

 wondrous a change in the plant that its produce, gathered 

 there, proved as harmless as delicious. In reference to 

 this, Dr. Sickler considers that the peach might have been 

 at least unwholesome in Media, and have become good 

 and salubrious as it gained increased pulpiness when 

 transferred to the rich alluvial soil of Egypt; and our 

 own Knight suggests, as the most probable solution of the 

 bane having thus become a blessing, that the Median fruit 

 spoken of might have been really an almond, the flesh of 

 which contains a considerable quanty of prussic acid, and 

 is to this day held to be poisonous in some parts of the 

 Continent, but which, transplanted to Egypt, might have 

 become modified into a true peach ; indeed, he charac- 

 terizes the latter fruit as neither more nor less than an 

 improved or fleshy almond, or rather " an almond swollen 



