38 



M. Regnier on the Country where the [Appendix. 



of Berikokka was preserved in Greece, for it occurs in the writings 

 of Galen. 



As Armenia, therefore., from its very climate, cannot have been 

 the native country of the Apricot tree, and not one of the ancient 

 writers has ever positively asserted that it came from thence, we 

 must travel for it into some other region. 



The early season in which its blossoms appear, first made me 

 suspect that it might have been introduced into Europe from 

 Africa ; and before I ascertained this to be a fact, I was struck 

 with its mode of growth in Egypt, where it was formerly brought 

 from a still more southern latitude. There, scarcely have its 

 leaves fallen off, before an ascending sap opens the blossoms, 

 without any chance of their suffering from cold. The name of 

 Berikokka, first given to it, even in Greece, approaches very near 

 to its Arabian name of Berkach, in the plural number Berikhach, 

 merely varying in aspiration. In reading and meditating on the 

 writings of Theophrastus with the attention they merit, I 

 noticed that he spoke of a fruit from a country dependant on 

 Thebes, which belongs to the genus * Kokhumelea, the stone of 

 which is round, and which is gathered and dried by the inhabi- 

 tants : he remarks, nevertheless, that it is evergreen, and flowers 

 in the month of November, two characters which do not corres- 

 pond with the Apricot tree ; but Theophrastus never saw the 

 tree himself, and his correspondent, from the short period of its 

 being without leaves in Africa, might have misled him. As for 

 the time of its blossoming, I have seen the Apricot tree in flower 

 at the end of December in Upper Egypt, and this, no doubt, takes 

 place sooner in latitudes still more southern. In a country where 

 so little change of climate has occurred, modern customs serve to 

 explain old ones. Accordingly the inhabitants of those fertile 



* This name of Kokhumelea is still given in Calabria to a species siPrunus grow- 

 ing wild, the bark of which is an active febrifuge, and employed there as such : 

 it will be published in the Flora Neapolitana by that name. 



