THE ALMOND 409 



is said to be like pa-lan-tse. In the Gazetteer of C'en-te fu, pa-Ian %en 

 C is given as a variety of apricot. 1 



Ho Yi-hin, in his Cen SH wen, published in i884, 2 observes that "at 

 present the people of the capital style the almond pa-ta El 38, which is 

 identical with pa-tan EL JL. The people of Eastern Ts'i 3K ^ (San-tun) 

 call the almond, if it is sweet and fine, cen hin tit 1*F (hazel-nut apricot), 

 because it has the taste of hazel-nuts. 3 According to the Hian tsu pi ki 

 ^ SL ^ n, a certain kind of almond, styled 'almond of the I wu hui 

 Park' ^ % It ?E, is exported from Herat ^ 28!. At present it occurs 

 in the northern part of China. The fruit offered in the capital is large 

 and sweet, that of San-tun is small with thin and scant meat." 



The old tradition concerning the origin of the almond in Persia 

 is still alive in modern Chinese authors. The Gazetteer of San-se cou 

 in the prefecture of T'ai-p'in, Kwan-si Province, states that the 

 flat peach is a cultivation of the country Po-se (Persia). 4 The tree 

 is (or was) cultivated in that region. Also the Hwa mu siao li ffi /fC 

 *h nS (p. 29 b) 5 testifies to indigenous cultivation by saying that almond- 

 trees grow near the east side of mountains. It may be, of course, that 

 the almond has shared the fate of the date-palm, and that its cultiva- 

 tion is now extinct in China. 6 



1 O. FRANKE, Beschreibung des Jehol-Gebietes, p. 75. 



2 Ch. 12, p. 5 b (see above, p. 399). 



3 This observation is also made by Li Si-c"en. 



4 San-se cou ci _h & #| ;, Ch. 14, p. 7 b (published in 1835). 



5 Published in the 'un ts'ao fan tsi if IpL ^ jft during the period Tao-kwan 

 (1820-50). 



6 HAUER (Erzeugnisse der Provinz Chili, Mitt. Sem. or. Spr., 1908, p. 14) men- 

 tions almonds, large and of sweet flavor, as a product of the district of Mi-vim in Ci-H, 

 and both sweet and bitter almonds as cultivated in the district of Lwan-p'in in 

 the prefecture of C'en-te (Jehol), the annual outpu of the latter locality being 

 given as a hundred thousand catties, a hardly credible figure should almonds 

 really be involved. Hauer's article is based on the official reports submitted by the 

 districts to the Governor-General of the Province in 1904; and the term rendered 

 by him "almond" in the original is ta pien fen ^ JH ^ apparently a local or 

 colloquial expression which I am unable to trace in any dictionary. It is at any 

 rate questionable whether it has the meaning "almond. " O. FRANKE, in his description 

 of the Jehol territory, carefully deals with the flora and products of that region 

 without mentioning almonds, nor are they referred to in the Chinese Gazetteer 

 of C'en-te fu. 



