The pomegranate grows wild in stony ground in Persia, Kurdistan, Afghanistan, and Beluchistan.[1181] Burnes saw groves of it in Mazanderan, to the south of the Caspian Sea.[1182] It appears equally wild to the south of the Caucasus.[1183] Westwards, that is to say, in Asia Minor, in Greece, and in the Mediterranean basin generally, in the north of Africa and in Madeira, the species appears rather to have become naturalized from cultivation, and by the dispersal of the seeds by birds. Many floras of the south of Europe speak of it as a “subspontaneous” or naturalized species. Desfontaines, in his _Atlantic Flora_, gives it as wild in Algeria, but subsequent authors think[1184] rather it is naturalized.[1185] I doubt its being wild in Beluchistan, where the traveller Stocks found it, for Anglo-Indian botanists do not allow it to be indigenous east of the Indus, and I note the absence of the species in the collections from Lebanon and Syria which Boissier is always careful to quote. In China the pomegranate exists only as a cultivated plant. It was introduced from Samarkhand by Chang-Kien, a century and a half before the Christian era.[1186] The naturalization in the Mediterranean basin is so general that it may be termed an extension of the original area. It probably dates from a very remote period, for the cultivation of the species dates from a very early epoch in Western Asia. Let us see whether historical and philological data can give us any information on this head. I note the existence of a Sanskrit name, _darimba_, whence several modern Indian names are derived.[1187] Hence we may conclude that the species had long been known in the regions traversed by the Aryans in their route towards India. The pomegranate is mentioned several times in the Old Testament, under the name of _rimmon_,[1188] whence the Arabic _rumman_ or _rûman_. It was one of the fruit trees of the promised land, and the Hebrews had learnt to appreciate it in Egyptian gardens. Many localities in Palestine took their name from this shrub, but the Scriptures only mention it as a cultivated species. The flower and the fruit figured in the religious rites of the Phœnicians, and the goddess Aphrodite had herself planted it in the isle of Cyprus,[1189] which implies that it was not indigenous there. The Greeks were acquainted with the species in the time of Homer. It is twice mentioned in the _Odyssey_ as a tree in the gardens of Phæacia and Phrygia. They called it _roia_ or _roa_, which philologists believe to be derived from the Syrian and Hebrew name,[1190] and also _sidai_,[1191] which seems to be Pelasgic, for the modern Albanian name is _sige_.[1192] There is nothing to show that the species was wild in Greece, where Fraas and Heldreich affirm that it is now only naturalized.[1193]