Carrying our researches eastward, we find that Anglo-Indian botanists[1073] are agreed in considering that the apricot, which is generally cultivated in the north of India and in Thibet, is not wild in those regions; but they add that it has a tendency to become naturalized, and that it is found upon the site of ruined villages. Messrs. Schlagintweit brought specimens from the north-west provinces of India, and from Thibet, which Westmael verified,[1074] but he was kind enough to write to me that he cannot affirm that it was wild, since the collector’s label gives no information on that head.
Roxburgh,[1075] who did not neglect the question of origin, says, speaking of the apricot, “native of China as well as the west of Asia.” I read in Dr. Bretschneider’s curious little work,[1076] drawn up at Pekin, the following passage, which seems to me to decide the question in favour of a Chinese origin:—“_Sing_, as is well known, is the apricot (_Prunus armeniaca_). The character (a Chinese sign printed on p. 10) does not exist as indicating a fruit, either in the _Shu-king_, or in the _Shi-king_, _Cihouli_, etc., but the _Shan-hai-king_ says that several _sings_ grow upon the hills (here a Chinese character). Besides, the name of the apricot is represented by a particular sign which may show that it is indigenous in China.” The _Shan-hai-king_ is attributed to the Emperor Yü, who lived in 2205-2198 B.C. Decaisne,[1077] who was the first to suspect the Chinese origin of the apricot, has recently received from Dr. Bretschneider some specimens accompanied by the following note:—“No. 24, apricot wild in the mountains of Pekin, where it grows in abundance; the fruit is small (an inch and a quarter in diameter), the skin red and yellow; the flesh salmon colour, sour, but eatable. No. 25, the stone of the apricot cultivated round Pekin. The fruit is twice as large as that of the wild tree.”[1078] Decaisne adds, in the letter he was good enough to write to me, “In shape and surface the stones are exactly like those of our small apricots; they are smooth and not pitted.” The leaves he sent me are certainly those of the apricot.
The apricot is not mentioned in Japan, or in the basin of the river Amoor.[1079] Perhaps the cold of the winter is too great. If we recollect the absence of communication in ancient times between China and India, and the assertions that the plant is indigenous in both countries, we are at first tempted to believe that the ancient area extended from the north-west of India to China. However, if we wish to adopt this hypothesis, we must also admit that the culture of the apricot spread very late towards the West.[1080] For no Sanskrit or Hebrew name is known, but only a Hindu name, _zard alu_, and a Persian name, _mischmisch_, which has passed into Arabic.[1081] How is it to be supposed that so excellent a fruit, and one which grows in abundance in Western Asia, spread so slowly from the north-west of India towards the Græco-Roman world? The Chinese knew it two or three thousand years before the Christian era. Chang-kien went as far as Bactriana, a century before our era, and he was the first to make the West known to his fellow-countrymen.[1082] It was then, perhaps, that the apricot was introduced in Western Asia, and that it was cultivated and became naturalized here and there in the north-west of India, and at the foot of the Caucasus, by the scattering of the stones beyond the limits of the plantations.