240 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



they exclaimed, " It is no place of seed, or of figs or 

 of vines or of pomegranates." On the borders of 

 the promised land, Moses described it as "a land of 

 wheat, and barley, 'and vines, and fig-trees, and 

 pomegranates; a land of oil-olive, and honey." In 

 the Canticles, Solomon speaks of " an orchard of 

 pomegranates, with pleasant fruits." A tree, there- 

 fore, which partakes of the antiquity of the vine, the 

 fig, and the olive, and which, in point of utility, is 

 numbered with the grain-bearing plants, and with 

 honey, all constituting the principal food of the 

 nations of antiquity, in their early stages of civiliza- 

 tion, must possess a considerable historical interest. 

 It is probable that the pomegranate, differing from 

 the stone fruits, travelled from the West to the East. 

 Pliny says that it is a native of Carthage, as its name 

 (Punica Granalutn) imports. Yet as it is found 

 wild in the same botanical regions of Europe, that 

 is, in countries having the same temperature as the 

 northern coasts of Africa, it is probably indigenous 

 there also. It is still common in Barbary, (where, ac- 

 cording to Shaw, the fruit often weighs a pound, and 

 is three or four inches in diameter,*) in the south of 

 France, in Italy, in Spain, and throughout the East. 

 The Jews employ the fruit in their religious ceremo- 

 nials; and it has entered into the heathen mytho- 

 logy for in the isle of Eubcea there was formerly a 

 statue of Juno, holding in one hand a sceptre, and 

 in the other a pomegranate. 



This general diffusion of the pomegranate through- 

 out the climates suited to it, implies that it possesses 

 highly valuable properties. In hot countries its utility 

 is incontestable; for its juice is most grateful to the 

 palate, and assuages thirst in a degree quite peculiar 

 to it from its pleasant acid an acid so soft, that the 



* Travels, vol. i. 



