Earlier European authors claim that the walnut was first introduced into Italy by Vitellius (emperor) early in the first century of the Christian Era,--but this is uncertain,--the Romans giving it the name of _Juglandes_, or the nut of Jove or Jupiter, both being the same mythical personage. The nuts, at this early day, were highly prized, and also the wood of the tree, the latter being even more valuable than that of the citron (orange and lemon). Ovid wrote a poem about these nuts, entitled _De Nuce_, from which we learn that boys were employed to, or did of their own accord, knock off these nuts; and that at marriages walnuts were thrown by the bride and bridegroom among the children, a ceremony which was supposed to indicate that the bridegroom had left off his boyish amusements, and that the bride was no longer a votary of Diana, and it is quite probable that the French word for nuptials, _des nôces_, was derived from this ancient custom. The ancients also believed that walnuts possessed powerful medicinal properties, even to the curing of hydrophobia; but in these latter days they have lost most of their curative virtues, in the opinion of the medical fraternity. As with the chestnut, the planting of the walnut extended northward into Gaul (France), hence the earlier name of Gaul nuts, which became corrupted into walnuts by the English-speaking people. The Italian name is _Noci_; in France, _Noyer_; and the Germans, with their usual habit of compounding names, call it _walnuss-baum_ or walnut tree. Joannis De Loureiro, in his work on the plants of China, "Flora Cochinchinensis," published in 1790, claims that this Persian walnut is also a native of the northern provinces of China, with two other species which he describes (p. 573), adding, however, that one of these is cultivated in Cochin China, and the other is found wild in the mountains.