THE PEACH. 



HISTORY. 



The peach is mentioned by the earhest writers upon 

 Natural History, and always under a name that points 

 to Persia as the place of its origin. Thus, among 

 the Greeks, Dioscorides (1. i. c. 164,) calls it Fersi- 

 kon melon (the Persian apple) ; but the Persian or 

 Fersikon of Theophrastus (2 Hist. 3,) is, probably, 

 the Persea of modern botanists, and, if so, widely 

 differing from the peach. 



This fruit was not known to the earliest Roman 

 cultivators, for it is not mentioned by Cato in his 

 work Be Re Rustica,'' though he enters minutely 

 into the culture of other fruit trees ; but, in addition to 

 this negative evidence, we have the direct testimony 

 of Pliny, who wrote his Natural History in the first 

 century of the Christian era, and he there states 

 that the peach had been introduced about thirty 

 years. The first Roman writer who dwells upon the 

 culture of the peach, is Columella, who wrote, prob- 



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