206 THE NUT CULTUKIST. 



scent of the foliage, and from this name Nuttall coined 

 his word, Carya, for our indigenous hickories, as ex- 

 plained in the preceding chapter. It should also be 

 noted here that the elder Michaux, in 1782-4, was the 

 first modem botanist to visit the province of Ghilan, and 

 he determined, by personal investigation, that this spe- 

 cies of the walnut was really indigenous to that region 

 of country, along with the peach and apricot. 



Earlier European authors claim that the walnut 

 was first introduced into Italy by Vitellius (emperor) 

 early in the first century of the Christian Era, — but this 

 is uncertain, — the Romans giving it the name of Ju- 

 glandes, or the nut of Jove or Jupiter, both being the 

 same mythical personage. The nuts, at this early day, 

 were highly prized, and also the wood of the tree, the 

 latter being even more valuable than that of the citron 

 (orange and lemon). Ovid wrote a poem about these 

 nuts, entitled De Nuce, from which we learn that boys 

 were employed to, or did of their own accord, knock off 

 these nuts ; and that at marriages walnuts were thrown 

 by the bride and bridegroom among the children, a 

 ceremony which was supposed to indicate that the 

 bridegroom had left off his boyish amusements, and 

 that the bride was no longer a votary of Diana, and 

 it is quite probable that the French word for nuptials, 

 des noces, was derived from this ancient custom. 

 The ancients also believed that walnuts possessed pow- 

 erful medicinal properties, even to the curing of hydro- 

 phobia; but in these latter days they have lost most 

 of their curative virtues, in the opinion of the medical 

 fraternity. " 



As with the chestnut, the planting of the walnut 

 extended northward into Gaul (France), hence the 

 earlier name of Gaul nuts, which became corrupted into 

 walnuts by the English-speaking people. The Italian 

 name is Noci; in France, Noyer ; and the Germans, 



