The apricot is not mentioned in Japan, or in the basin of the river Amoor.[1079] Perhaps the cold of the winter is too great. If we recollect the absence of communication in ancient times between China and India, and the assertions that the plant is indigenous in both countries, we are at first tempted to believe that the ancient area extended from the north-west of India to China. However, if we wish to adopt this hypothesis, we must also admit that the culture of the apricot spread very late towards the West.[1080] For no Sanskrit or Hebrew name is known, but only a Hindu name, _zard alu_, and a Persian name, _mischmisch_, which has passed into Arabic.[1081] How is it to be supposed that so excellent a fruit, and one which grows in abundance in Western Asia, spread so slowly from the north-west of India towards the Græco-Roman world? The Chinese knew it two or three thousand years before the Christian era. Chang-kien went as far as Bactriana, a century before our era, and he was the first to make the West known to his fellow-countrymen.[1082] It was then, perhaps, that the apricot was introduced in Western Asia, and that it was cultivated and became naturalized here and there in the north-west of India, and at the foot of the Caucasus, by the scattering of the stones beyond the limits of the plantations. +Almond+—_Amygdalus communis_, Linnæus; _Pruni species_, Baillon; _Prunus Amygdalus_, Hooker. The almond grows apparently wild or half wild in the warm, dry regions of the Mediterranean basin and of western temperate Asia. As the nuts from cultivated trees naturalize the species very easily, we must have recourse to various indications to discern its ancient home. We may first discard the notion of its origin in Eastern Asia. Japanese floras make no mention of the almond. That which M. de Bonge saw cultivated in the north of China was the _Persica Davidiana_.[1083] Dr. Bretschneider,[1084] in his classical work, tells us that he has never seen the almond cultivated in China, and that the compilation entitled _Pent-sao_, published in the tenth or eleventh century of our era, describes it as a tree of the country of the Mahometans, which signifies the north-west of India, or Persia. Anglo-Indian botanists[1085] say that the almond is cultivated in the cool parts of India, but some add that it does not thrive, and that many almonds are brought from Persia.[1086] No Sanskrit name is known, nor even any in the languages derived from Sanskrit. Evidently the north-west of India is not the original home of the species.