214 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



country, we shall at once see how their introduction 

 has accompanied the great changes in its social state. 

 Before the invasion of the Romans, the natives of 

 these islands probably possessed no other than the 

 wild fruits of Northern Europe, the crab, the sloe, 

 the hazel-nut and the acorn. The Romans themselves 

 had, but a few centuries before, obtained their prin- 

 cipal fruits from the countries of the East, and from 

 Greece and its islands. Hirschfield and Sickler, 

 laborious writers on the history of cultivated vege- 

 tables, are of opinion that the Romans derived the 

 fig from Syria, the orange or citron from Media, 

 the peach from Persia, the apricot from Epirus, 

 the pomegranate from Africa, the plum, the cherry, 

 the apple, and the pear from Armenia. Pliny men- 

 tions that they had twenty-two sorts of apples; 

 thirty of pears; three of quinces; a variety of plums 

 and cherries; peaches, nectarines, apricots, and 

 almonds; and various sorts of olives. And yet, 

 under the reign of the first Tarquin, the olive did 

 not exist in Italy, although Homer and Hesiod men- 

 tion it as cultivated hi Greece.* A cherry tree laden 

 with fruit adorned the triumph of Lucullus; the 

 dictator had brought the plant to Rome as a precious 

 memorial of his victory over Mithridates, in whose 

 province of Pontus he had found the treef . In less 

 than a century, the same species of cherry was com- 

 mon in France, hi Germany, and in England, where 

 the conquerors had introduced it, imparting some 

 few blessings while they inflicted countless miseries 

 in their progress to universal dominion. Thus, the 

 cherry, and in all probability the peach, the plum, 

 the apple, and the pear of England, are evidences 

 that it was once a colony of Rome. Whatever are 

 the evils of war and conquest, and they are very great, 



* Humboldt, Geographic des Plantes. t See p. 312. 



