"Peaches, again, are more wholesome than plums; and the same is the case with the juice of the fruit, extracted, and taken in either wine or vinegar. Indeed, what known fruit is there that is more wholesome as an aliment than this? There is none, in fact, that has a less powerful smell, or a greater abundance of juice, though it has a tendency to create thirst. The leaves of it, beaten up and applied topically, arrest haemorrhage: the kernels, mixed with oil and vinegar, are used as a liniment for head-ache." One other consideration, and we are done with Pliny. In Chapter 13, quoted on page 28, we are told that the peach "has been only introduced of late years." This can hardly mean during the day of the author. The peach had probably been cultivated in ancient Rome for a considerable length of time before Pliny wrote. Vergil and Columella had mentioned it as a planted plant; Pliny, himself, speaks of the "popularia" as being grown "everywhere;" and the facts that it was a common article of food and used in medicine argue an earlier date of introduction than we might be lead to suppose from Pliny's statement "introduced of late years." Indeed, knowing the great length of time it takes in our days of rapid transportation and quick diffusion of knowledge to accustom ourselves to new food-plants and to persuade agriculturists to grow them, we should say that the peach must have been grown in Rome at least two or three centuries to have become so well known as it seems to have been in Pliny's time. The chief point established by these quotations is that the peach was well established in Italy at the beginning of the Christian era. After leaving Pliny there is a boundless, uncharted waste before we find another landmark in the history of the peach. In all matters relating to agriculture and natural history Roman writers for several centuries but copied the men from whom we have quoted and it was not until the Sixteenth Century that we have any substantial account of the further progress of this fruit. During this century, curiously enough, about the only books on botany and horticulture were commentaries on Dioscorides, the Greek botanist, who lived and made his reputation in Christ's time and who for 1600 years thereafter was the sole authority on botany. Of the ten or twelve commentaries, that of Matthiolus is most replete with information on the fruits of the times and especially in the matter of varieties, which he describes in greater detail than any other man since Pliny. It must be remembered that at this time, the closing years of the Middle Ages, there was a great awakening in agriculture and horticulture in southern and western Europe. As the second descriptive list of peaches we might well quote what Matthiolus wrote, but, as in Pliny, few of his varieties can be made out, and Gerarde, writing later in English, amplifies the Latin author so well that we shall wait for his account.