326 
PLINY-' 8 KATITEAL HISTOET. [Book XV. 
SO extremely penetrating, and tlie taste sour in the highest 
degree. Sometimes the sm.ell is of a more delicate nature, 
as in the quince, for instance ; while the % has no odour 
whatever. 
CHAP. 34. THE YAEIOUS NATUEES OP PEUIT. 
Thus much, then, for the various classes and kinds of fruit : 
it will be as well now to classify their various natures within 
a more limited scope. Some fruits grow in a pod which is 
sweet itself, and contains a bitter seed : whereas in most kinds 
of fruit the seed is agreeable to the palate, those w^hich grow 
in a pod are condemned. Other fruits are berries, with the 
stone within and the flesh without, as in the olive and the 
cherry : others, again, have the berry within and the stone 
without, the case, as we have already stated, with the berries 
that grow in Egypt. 
Those fruits, known as pomes,'' have the same character- 
istics as the berry fruits ; in some of them we find the body of 
the fruit within and the shell without, as in the nut, for ex- 
ample ; others, again, have the meat of the fruit without and 
the shell within, the peach and the plum, for instance : the 
refuse part being thus surrounded with the flesh, while in 
other fruits the flesh is surrounded by the refuse part.-^^ 
nuts are enclosed in a shell, chesnuts in a skin ; in chesnuts 
the skin is taken ofi*, but in medlars it is eaten with the rest, 
xicorns are covered with a crust, grapes with a husk, and 
pomegranates with a skin and an inner membrane. The mul- 
berry is composed of flesh and juice, while the cherry consists 
of juice and skin. In some fruits the flesh separates easily 
from the woody part, the walnut and the date, for instance ; 
in others it adheres, as in the case of the olive and the laurel 
berry : some kinds, again, partake of both natures, the peach, 
for example ; for in the duracinus^'' kind the flesh adheres to 
the stone, and cannot be torn away from it, while in the other 
The reading here should be " acutissimus," probably, instead of 
acerrimiis." The odour exists in the rind of the citron and in the outer 
coat of the quince ; if these are removed, the fruit becomes inodorous. 
"Tenuis." He may possibly mean faint." 
^2 The fruit of the ben, or myrobalanus, the Balanites ^gyptiaca. See 
B. xiii. cc, 17 and 19. 
^3 Yitium. Ilard-berry or nectarine. See c. 11. 
