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0093 Sino-Iranica : vol.1
Sino-Iranica : vol.1 / Page 93 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000248
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THE WALNUT   267

Juglans mandshurica. Manchu xôsixa designates the tree, while its fruit is called xôwalama or xôwalame usixa (-ixa being a frequent termination in the names of plants and fruits). The cultivated walnut is styled mase.' One of the earliest explorers of the Amur territory, the Cossack chieftain Poyarkov, who reached the Amur in 1644, reported that walnuts and hazel-nuts were cultivated by the Daur or Dahur on the Dseya and Amur.'

The same species is known to the aboriginal tribes of Yün-nan. The Pa-yi and an style its fruit twai;3 the Nyi Lo-lo, se-mi-ma; the Ahi Lo-lo, sa-mi. The Cun-kia of Kwei-cou call it dsao; the Ya-c'io Miao,

or .i; the Hwa Miao, klaeo; while other Miao tribes have the Chinese loan-word he-dao.4

The wild walnut has not remained unknown to the Chinese, and it is curious that it is designated . an hu t`ao !-Lt IA tit, the term an ("mountain") referring to wild-growing plants. The "wild Iranian peach" is a sort of linguistic anomaly. It is demonstrated by this term that the wild indigenous species was discovered and named by the Chinese only in times posterior to the introduction of the cultivated variety; and that the latter, being introduced from abroad, was not derived from the wild-growing species. The case is identical with that of the wild alfalfas and vines. C'en Hao-tse, who wrote a treatise on flowers in 1688,5 determines the difference between the cultivated and wild varieties thus: the former has a thin shell, abundant meat, and is easy to break ;13 the latter has a thick and hard shell, which must be cracked with a hammer, and occurs in Yen and Ts'i (Ci-li and San-tun). This observa-

1 K'ien-lure's Polyglot Dictionary, Ch. 28, p. 55.

2 L. y. SCHRENCK, Reisen and Forschungen im Amur-Lande, Vol. III, p. 160.

3 F. W. K. MÜLLER, T'oung Pao, Vol. III, 1892, p. 26. ' S. R. CLARKE, Tribes in South-West China, p. 312. Hwa kin, Ch. 3, p. 49 b.

6 According to the c i wu min Si t'u k'ao (Ch. 31, p. 3 b), the walnuts with thin shells grow only in the prefecture of Yun-p`in k T. in ti-li, being styled lu gait

ho t'ao   In C'ai -li, which belongs to this prefecture, these nuts have
been observed by F. N. MEYER (Agricultural Explorations in the Orchards of China, p. 51), who states, "Some trees produce small hard-shelled nuts of poor flavor, while others bear fine large nuts, with a really fine flavor, and having shells so thin that they can be cracked with the fingers like peanuts. Between these extremes one finds many gradations in hardness of shell, size, and flavor." " In England the walnut presents considerable differences, in the shape of the fruit, in the thickness of the husk, and in the thinness of the shell; this latter quality has given rise to a variety called the thin-shelled, which is valuable, but suffers from the attacks of titmice" (DARWIN, Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, Vol. I, p. 445). A variety of walnut with thin shells grows on the Greek Island Paros (T. V. HELD-REICH, Nutzpflanzen Griechenlands, p. 59).