But, by whatever laws this branch of trade was regulated, no doubt can exist as to its extent and importance. For, as the population of Attica had, at a very early period, outgrown the means of subsistence supplied by the country itself, the republic found itself constrained to depend for the primary article of food upon the productions of foreign states, to the amount of nearly one-third of its whole consumption; that is to say, while there were grown at home two hundred and ninety-two thousand three hundred and ninety-two quarters, as may be proved by calculation,[1635] there were imported a hundred and eighteen thousand quarters in the age of Demosthenes. Earlier its importation of corn was still more considerable, when the greater part of the supply was obtained from Eubœa, by the way of Oropos and the pass of Deceleia.[1636] ----- Footnote 1635: Adv. Lept. § 9. Consult on this subject the note of Clinton. Fast. Hellen. t. ii. p. 392, seq. Footnote 1636: Thucyd. vii. 28. ----- Of the hundred and eighteen thousand quarters abovementioned, about sixty thousand were obtained from the countries on the Black Sea, chiefly from Theodosia, now Kaffa,[1637] in the Crimea, the remainder from Thrace, the islands of the Ægæan, Egypt, and Sicily.[1638] ----- Footnote 1637: Cf. Strab. vii. 4. t. ii. p. 95. Dem. adv. Lept. § 9. Herod. vii. 147. The climate of this country was regarded as extremely severe by the ancients, so that at Panticapæum, a city lying between the modern Kertsh and Yenikale, neither the myrtle nor the laurel would grow on account of the cold, though many attempts had been made to rear them for sacred purposes. And yet the laurel was found to brave the inclemencies of the season on Mount Olympos. Most fruit-trees, however, as apples, pears, figs, and pomegranates flourished in the Crimea abundantly, though the pomegranate required to be covered in winter, and all fruits ripened later. The usual timber trees of the country were the oak, the elm, and the ash; the pine, the silver-fir, and the pitch-tree, finding the climate uncongenial. Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 5. 3. The nitrous plains around Panticapæum are still bare of wood, though covered thickly by the harmala, a plant which grows spontaneously upon saltpetre grounds. Pallas, Travels in Southern Russia, iii. 356. Footnote 1638: Theoph. Hist. Plant. viii. 4. Lysias in Diogit. § 5. Athen. ii. 13. xiii. 50. -----