270 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
January 2. 
fifty two in the above-quoted manuscript list of fruits for the 
Grand Ducal table, and seventy-three in another of rare 
i plants cultivated in Tuscany. 
The Almond (Amygdalus communis) is said to be really 
indigenous in several of the floras of the Southern and 
Eastern Mediterranean regions, including Southern Italy 
and Sicily, but it is oxtensivcly cultivated and grows so 
readily over the whole of south Europe, that it may, in many 
instances, have spread from cultivation. It is, however, 
probably a true native, at least of Crete and Syria. It was 
well known to the ancients, and is supposed to bo the 
Scialcedin of Scripture, sent as a present to Joseph in Egypt, 
from the land of Canaan. Dioscoridos and Galenus speak 
of its medicinal properties under the name of Thassia picra, 
and amygdaleas. Pliny doubts whether almonds were known 
in Cato’s time, because ho considers that the last-named 
writer meant walnuts when speaking of Greek nuts, hut the 
majority of commentators agree in referring that name to 
almonds. In modern days the varieties grown in Southern 
Europe have become very numerous. Micheli describes 
ninety-four, but his distinctions are very refined, and taken 
often from accidental forms ; the specimens from which he 
described them are still preserved in Prof. Targioni’s col¬ 
lections. ) ) 
Pliny, as well as Linnfeus and most modern botanists, 
includes amongst plums the Apricot. (Prunus armenaica), a 
tree most extensively cultivated, and which sows itself very 
readily in cultivated grounds over South-eastern Europe, 
Western Asia, and East India, but its native country is very 
uncertain. Targioni says, on the authority of Reynor, an 
Egyptian traveller, that it is of African origin, but does not 
give the precise locality, and we have neither seen nor heard 
of any really wild specimens. The ancients called it Arme- 
niaca, as having been brought from Armenia into Italy, 
where it is not indigenous ; also preecoca, pnccoqua, and 
pracocca; and under one or other of these names it is 
mentioned by Dioscorides, by Galen, by Columella (who is 
the first who speaks of its cultivation), by Pliny (who, about 
ten years after Columella, asserts that it had been introduced 
into Rome thirty years), by Martial, Ac. Democritus and 
Diophanes give it the name of bericocca, analogous to the 
Arabian berkac and berihhach, the probable origin of the 
Italian names of bacocca, albicocca, and even, according to 
Cesalpine, barracocca ; and, lastly, Paolo Egineta, according 
to Matthioli, has spoken of these fruits under the name of 
doracia. Although some of these names, even in modem 
times, have been occasionally misapplied to a variety of peach, 
yet they all properly designate the apricot, and show that that 
fruit was known in very romote times. Having never been 
much appreciated, except for its odour, there was not in 
former days any great propagation of varieties of it. Michcli, 
however, under the Medicis, enumerates thirteen among the 
fruits cultivated for the table of Cosmo III. ' 
The Peach (Amygdalus persica) is, according to the 
the common opinion, of Persian origin. Diodorus Siculus 
says that it was carried from Persia into Egypt during the 
time that Cambyses ruled over that country. It is supposed 
to have been transported from thence into Greeco, and, after 
a lapse of time, into Italy, where it only began to bo known 
about twenty years before the birth of Pliny, that is, about 
seven years before the Christian era, and it appears that 
Columella was the first to treat of its cultivation there. 
According to Nicander it was brought to Greece by the 
agency of Perseus from Ceplieia, a locality affirmed by some 
to have been in Persia, by others in ^Ethiopia, or in Chaldea. 
The peach is also spoken of by Theophrastus, Dioscorides, 
and other Greek writers. We must therefore conclude that 
this fruit was well known in the East very long before its 
introduction into Italy. Many anciont writers, including 
Athenscus and Pliny, and some more recent ones, as, for 
instance, Marcellus Virgilius, in his Commentaries on Dios¬ 
corides, confound the peach with the perseu, a fruit the 
identity of which is uncertain, some supposing it to be a 
Cordia, others a Balanites. Macrobius again confounds the 
persicum of Suevius, which is the walnut, and with that of 
Cloatius, which is the citron ; all fruits resembling the peach 
in nothing but in the name, a clear proof that it cannot have 
been in their days by any means a common fruit. How few 
were the varieties of peach known to the ancients appears 
from Dioscorides who only names two, from Pliny who enu¬ 
merates five, and Palladius four only, giving at the same 
time accurate information on the mode of cultivating them. 
With regard to-the introduction of the peach into Tuscany, 
it appears that several varieties were known already in the 
days of the Republic, but that the greater number were, as 
in the case of other fruits, due to the exertions of the 
Medici sovereigns. Matthioli, in the sixteenth century, 
enumerates a considerable number as then in the possession 
of Tuscan cultivators; Micheli, under Cosmo III., has forty - 
three, and in the drawings of Castollo are represented about 
thirty. That called Poppc di Vcncrc (the Late Admirable of 
our Horticultural Catalogue) is supposed to he one of the 
most anciont in Italy, and is mentioned by Agostino del 
Riccio and Micheli, under the name of Pesche Lucchesi. 
Although all the evidence collected by Prof. Targioni 
tends to shew that the peach was originally brought from 
Persia, and ho, therefore, doos not consider it necessary to 
proceed further with the investigation, yet no traveller whom 
wo can rely upon has ever found it growing really wild there 
or anywhere else. We arc, therefore, left in doubt whether 
its native stations remain yet to bo discovered, or whether its 
original wild typo must be sought for in some species of 
Amygdalus known to be indigenous in the East. It has 
been more than once suggested that this original parent is 
no other than the common almond, a conjecture founded 
perhaps on the similarity in the leaves, and in the per¬ 
forations of the cndocarp, but rejected as absurd by those 
who attach even generic importance to the succulence of the 
indehiscent pericarp. This point cannot be decided with 
any degree of plausibility, until wo have a better knowledge 
of the different forms which the fruits of wild Amygdali may 
assume under various circumstances; but wo may mention, 
as circumstances in some degree favouring the supposition 
that some kind of almond is the parent of the peach, the 
ancient tradition referred to by Targioni (with the remark 
that it is contradicted by Pliny, and common sense) that the 
peach in Persia was poisonous, and became innocuous when 
transported to Egypt, and the case quoted of a supposed 
hybrid raised in 1831 in Sig. Giuseppe Bartolucci’s garden, 
at Colle di Yal d’ Else, from a peach-stone, which produced 
fruits at first exactly like almonds, but which, as they 
ripened, assumed the appearance and succulence of peaches, 
whilst the kernel remained sweet and oily, like those of 
almonds. We might also refer to some bad varieties of 
peach with very littlo juice to their pericarps, although we 
do not know of any which assume the flattened form of our 
almond, a distinctive character which appears to us to be of 
considerable importance. The foliage and flowers of the 
two trees show little or no specific difference. 
The Jujube (Zizyphus vulgaris), a common tree in the 
Levant, is also now found wild in various parts of South 
Italy and Sicily, but Italian botanists are much divided in 
opinion as to whether it is really indigenous, or become 
naturalised only after cultivation. Prof. Targioni, after 
Bertoloni, adopts the former opinion, and considers that the 
erroneous belief in its exotic origin arises from a mistaken 
assertion of Pliny’s that jujubes did not exist in Italy prior 
to their importation from Syria by tho Consul Sextus 
Papinius towards tho end of the age of Augustus. Among 
the ancients, Hippocrates considered the fruits as medicinal; 
Galen depreciated them both ns medicine and as food. 
Modern cultivation has produced a few varieties, and there 
is a considerable consumption of them in some parts of tho 
south of Europe, either as an inferior raw fruit, or for the 
manufacture of the pectoral lozenges known as pdlc de jujube; 
but they are little appreciated in modern Italy, and were 
still loss so in earlier times. 
Wo learn from Pliny and Galen that the Pistachio-nut 
(Pistacia vera) is a native of Syria, and from the former 
writer, that it was first introduced into Italy towards the end 
of the reign of Tiberius (who died a.d. 37) by Lucius 
Vitellius, afterwards Emperor, and that at about tho samo 
time, it was carried into Spain by Flavius Pompeius, a 
Roman knight, companion in arms to Vitellius. Well known 
to tho ancients, it is supposed by some to be the batnim of 
Scripture, and generally believed to bo the Indian terebinth 
indicated by Theophrastus as a native of Bactria. It is 
mentioned by Nicander and Dioscorides under the name of 
pistacia , bistacia, and phistacia. In Sicily it is of very ancient 
cultivation, and there called fustucha or faslucu. It is now 
