better able to do, since they found the vine wild in several of these regions. The records of the cultivation of the grape and of the making of wine in Egypt go back five or six thousand years.[943] In the West the propagation of its culture by the Phœnicians, Greeks, and Romans is pretty well known, but to the east of Asia it took place at a late period. The Chinese who now cultivate the vine in their northern provinces did not possess it earlier than the year 122 B.C.[944] It is known that several wild vines exist in the north of China, but I cannot agree with M. Regel in considering _Vitis Amurensis_, Ruprecht, the one most analogous to our vine, as identical in species. The seeds drawn in the _Gartenflora_, 1861, pl. 33, differ too widely. If the fruit of these vines of Eastern Asia had any value, the Chinese would certainly have turned them to account. +Common Jujube+—_Zizyphus vulgaris_, Lamarck. According to Pliny,[945] the jujube tree was brought from Syria to Rome by the consul Sextus Papinius, towards the end of the reign of Augustus. Botanists, however, have observed that the species is common in rocky places in Italy,[946] and that, moreover, it has not yet been found wild in Syria, although it is cultivated there, as in the whole region extending from the Mediterranean to China and Japan.[947] The result of the search for the origin of the jujube tree as a wild plant bears out Pliny’s assertion, in spite of the objections I have just mentioned. According to plant collectors and authors of floras, the species appears to be more wild and more anciently cultivated in the east than in the west of its present wide area. Thus, in the north of China, de Bunge says it is “very common and very troublesome (on account of its thorns) in mountainous places.” He had seen the thornless variety in gardens. Bretschneider[948] mentions the jujube as one of the fruits most prized by the Chinese, who give it the simple name _tsao_. He also mentions the two varieties, with and without thorns, the former wild.[949] The species does not grow in the south of China and in India proper, because of the heat and moisture of the climate. It is found again wild in the Punjab, in Persia, and Armenia. Brandis[950] gives seven different names for the jujube tree (or for its varieties) in modern Indian languages, but no Sanskrit name is known. The species was therefore probably introduced into India from China, at no very distant epoch, and it must have escaped from cultivation and have become wild in the dry provinces of the west. The Persian name is _anob_, the Arabic _unab_. No Hebrew name is known, a further sign that the species is not very ancient in the west of Asia.