Our author’s remarks on the persica are taken from Galen. Seth calls them rhodacina, a term which is generally applied to them by the Byzantine writers, and also by Alexander Trallian. Seth says that they are cooling, diluent, and laxative, but difficult to digest. If not the same as the modern peach (which the commentators suspect), the persica was evidently a fruit nearly allied to it. It is highly probable, but not quite certain, that the præcocia, duracina, and armeniaca, were varieties of the apricot. Galen does not use the second of these terms, and mentions, that many held the first and the last to be exactly the same fruit; and he, himself, in another place, forgets the distinction which he had endeavoured to establish between them. Simeon Seth describes them by the name of βερίκοκκα, which appears to be a corruption of the Latin præcocia. See Geopon. (x, 73, and the note of Needham); Harduin (Notes on Pliny); J. Bruyer (de Re Cibaria, xi, 13); C. Avantius (Notæ in Cœnam); Baptist. (Fier. p. 6); Ludovicus Nonnius; and Sprengel (Dioscor. i, 165.) Seth says that they are fruits which soon spoil, and form bad blood. Mala was used by the ancients as a generic term, comprehending many species of fruit. See an interesting account of them in Pliny (xxiii, 5); Macrobius (Saturn, iii, 19); and Athenæus (Deipnos. iii), where Diphilus thus states their general characters as articles of food: “Green and unripe apples are unwholesome and unsavoury, swim in the stomach, form bile, and occasion diseases. Of the ripe, such as are sweet are more wholesome and more laxative from having no astringency; the acid are more unwholesome and constipating, but such as have also a certain degree of sweetness become more delicious, and are at the same time stomachic from having some astringency.” The ancients appear to have been well acquainted with the methods of making cider, perry, and the like. See Macrobius (Sat. vii, 6), and Pliny (H. N. xiv, 19.) The Arabian authors in general speak rather unfavorably of apples. Cornels, or the fruit of the _cornus mascula_, were in little request as articles of food, and yet Pliny mentions that they were sought after in his time. The cydonia or quinces were in great repute, not only as articles of food, but as medicines. When unripe they are very astringent and contain much acid, and hence they were used in such cases as those in which the mineral acids are now generally administered. (Pliny, H. N. xxxiii, 6.) They appear to be the “cana mala” of Virgil. Columella and Pliny describe three varieties, namely, the chrysomala, struthea, and mustea. These have not been satisfactorily determined. Some modern commentators have taken “the golden apples” of Theocritus and Virgil for oranges, but it is much more probable that they were a species of quince. No ancient author has noticed the orange.