At very early times the quince, pomegranate, olive and grape were introduced from Persia, according to De Candolle, still our best authority, into Greece and Rome and even the cherry and plum, from countries to the north if not from Persia, reached southern Europe long before the peach. It seems certain, as De Candolle suggests,[1] that if the peach had been a native of Persia, had it existed there during all time, so beautiful and so delectable a fruit would have been taken earlier into Asia Minor and Greece. As gratifying to all the senses by which we judge fruits as any other product of the orchard, as easily transported and propagated as any--more so than most--it cannot be believed that the other fruits named would have been given preference over the peach by conquerors or travelers carrying Persian luxuries to westward countries. Moreover, as De Candolle further points out, the several Hebrew and Sanskrit peoples did not speak in sacred or vulgar writings of the peach as they did many times of the olive, quince, grape and pomegranate. Yet these peoples radiated from the valleys of the Euphrates and were at all times in close communication with Persia. Since, according to the authoritative De Candolle, Xenophon, who retreated with the ten thousand 401 B. C., does not mention the peach, this fruit probably did not reach Greece until Alexander's expedition and was first mentioned by Theophrastus 332 B. C. (if the fruit mentioned by Theophrastus is the peach) and did not reach Rome until after the beginning of the Christian era. The more one examines historical records the more evident it becomes that Greek and Roman writers assumed that the habitat of the peach, which they called the Persian apple, was Persia because it came thence to their countries. Ancient historians very commonly and very confusingly made the assumption that the region from which a plant product came to their country was its first habitat. The best means of establishing the origin of a plant is to discover in what country it grows spontaneously. This would be a simple matter, indeed, if one could be sure that a given plant found growing wild is not an escape from cultivation. Here is the trouble in the case of the peach. According to the botanists the tree is now growing wild in Persia, as it is in nearby countries, and for that matter in other parts of the Old World and in many places in the New World. The painstaking De Candolle, who has carefully sifted the evidence of the leading botanists until his time of writing, 1882, concludes that the peach has never been truly wild in Persia. An examination of the works of botanists writing since De Candolle's study of the subject does not show that any offers proof that the peach was originally wild in Persia.