Cultivated plants and domestic animals in their migration from Asia to Europe / by Victor Hehn ; edited by James Steven Stallybrass.
- Victor Hehn
- Date:
- 1891
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Cultivated plants and domestic animals in their migration from Asia to Europe / by Victor Hehn ; edited by James Steven Stallybrass. Source: Wellcome Collection.
459/530 page 459
![the northern tribes of the Balkan peninsula, which passed the word on to them. To say m for b was a barbarism (Steph. Byz. : ’Afiavng' to Af3avria 6t]Xvk6v, 07rep /card (3ap(3ctpua)v rpoiriiv rov (3 tig p ’Apavria kXexdr) napa ’ Avriyovip iv MaKeSoviKtj TTtpnjyi)ov). So ‘Apvbtov (a town of the Paeonians already in Homer) alternated with Af3vSu)v, the 'AAprjvi) ill Ptolemy is perhaps for Albania, the river Boyypog in Herodotus is afterwards called Margus, now Morawa, Bellerophontes in Italian becomes Melerpanta, etc. Also ft and v become tn: a-n-aXog was called in Macedonian apaXog, the river Tilaventum is the modern Tagliamento, etc. So the original digamma in <jvkov might meet the Goths when they came to the Danube in the shape of an m, with the auxiliary vowel a. The Wends, who lived next behind the Goths, could have only received the fig, in a dried state of course, from the Goths ; therefore the Slavic name (Old Slav, smokuvi, smoky, smokva) was merely borrowed from the Gothic at a time when the assimilation of kv into kk had not yet taken place. We must add that the wild fig-tree tpiveog, from which the cultivated fig cannot be derived, is heard of already in Homer, and that its name is perhaps etymologically identical with that of the fruit,. oXwQug. Note 34, page 99. A. de la Marmora {Itineraire de rile de Sardaigne, 2, p. 353, Turin, i860) says of the Sardinian olive : “ On s'exprimerait mal, d ?non avis, si Von voulait ftarler de Vintroduction qu'on y aurait faite de cette ftlante, ftuisque ce pays est visiblement sa ftatrie naturelle.” This remark of the eminent naturalist, though historically incorrect, proves how luxuriantly the tree thrives in its newly-conquered European sphere of culture. In Corsica too there are splendid groves of olives now, and yet the Romans had much trouble in transplanting the tree thither. Nay, if we may believe Seneca’s rhetoric, there was no cul- tivation of it at all in the wild island in his time (Eftigr. super exilio, 2, 3, 4: “ Non ftoma auctumnus, segetes non educat aestas, Canaque Palladio munere bruma caret”). Even in Sardinia the government found it advisable to promise a title to any one who should cultivate a number of olive-trees, just as the Venetians were obliged to encourage the same cultivation in their Greek possessions by rewards. The wild olive-tree, says La Marmora in another place (Voyage en Sardaigne, 1, 164, ed. 2), covers immense spaces in the hilly region of the island, and only awaits inoculation to bear splendid fruit. But, we may ask, Is the tree really wild there, or](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24874309_0459.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
