“In confirmation of the hypothesis of a Chinese origin, it may be added that the peach was introduced into Cochin-China from China,[1106] and that the Japanese give the Chinese name _Tao_[1107] to the peach. M. Stanislas Julien was kind enough to read to me in French some passages of the Japanese encyclopædia (bk. lxxxvi. p. 7), in which the peach tree _tao_ is said to be a tree of Western countries, which should be understood to mean the interior of China as compared to the eastern coast, since the passage is taken from a Chinese author. The _tao_ occurs in the writings of Confucius in the fifth century before the Christian era, and even in the _Ritual_ in the tenth century before Christ. Its wild nature is not specified in the encyclopædia of which I have just spoken; but Chinese authors pay little attention to this point.” After a few details about the common names of the peach in different languages, I went on to say, “The absence of Sanskrit and Hebrew names remains the most important fact, whence we may infer an introduction into Western Asia from a more distant land, that is to say, from China. “The peach has been found wild in different parts of Asia; but it is always a question whether it is indigenous there, or whether it sprang from the dispersion of stones produced by cultivated trees. The question is the more necessary since the stones germinate easily, and several of the modifications of the peach are hereditary.[1108] Apparently wild peach trees have often been found in the neighbourhood of the Caucasus. Pallas[1109] saw several on the banks of the Terek, where the inhabitants give it a name which he calls Persian, _scheptata_.[1110] Its fruit is velvety, sour, not very fleshy, and hardly larger than a walnut; the tree small. Pallas suspects that this tree has degenerated from cultivated peaches. He adds that it is found in the Crimea, to the south of the Caucasus, and in Persia; but Marshall, Bieberstein, Meyer, and Hohenacker do not give the wild peach in the neighbourhood of the Caucasus. Early travellers, Gmelin, Guldenstadt, and Georgi, quoted by Ledebour, mentioned it. C. Koch[1111] is the only modern botanist who said he found the peach tree in abundance in the Caucasian provinces. Ledebour, however, prudently adds, Is it wild? The stones which Brugnière and Olivier brought from Ispahan, which were sown in Paris and yielded a good velvety peach, were not, as Bosc[1112] asserted, taken from a peach tree wild in Persia, but from one growing in a garden at Ispahan.[1113] I do not know of any proof of a peach tree found wild in Persia, and if travellers mention any it is always to be feared that these are only sown trees. Dr. Royle[1114] says that the peach grows wild in several places south of the Himalayas, notably near Mussouri, but we have seen that its culture is not ancient in these regions, and neither Roxburgh nor Don’s _Flora Nepalensis_ mention the peach.