Pound, with care, two walnuts, two dried figs, twenty leaves of rue, and a grain of salt.[XIV_25] Swallow this mixture—precipitate it by the assistance of a little wine, and you have nothing to fear from the most active poison for the space of twenty-four hours.
NUT TREE.
The Greeks gave hazel nuts the name of “Pontic Nuts,” and Theophrastus calls them “Nuts of Heraclea,” because the territory of that capital of the kingdom of Pontus produced the best.[XIV_26]
The Latins, at first, retained the same designation for this fruit, but afterwards, the environs of Præneste and Avellinum supplying them with a great quantity of excellent nuts, they gave them the name of those two cities.[XIV_27] They employed also a diminitive[XIV_28] to indicate those which came from the first of these localities. The French Aveline (filbert), and Noisette (hazel nuts), are evidently borrowed from the Roman vocabulary.
The inhabitants of Præneste raised the nut tree to a sort of religious worship. This tree had preserved them from famine during the time Hannibal besieged their city,[XIV_29] and since that memorable epoch it had enriched them, for the ancients preferred hazel nuts to all other shell fruit, as possessing most wholesome and nourishing qualities.[XIV_30]
It was the custom in France, some centuries ago, at the time of the summer solstice (Midsummer eve), to take all the kitchen utensils and make the most frightful clatter by knocking them one against another. The simpletons of those times imagined that there were no better means of preventing the rain, which, in their opinion, was detrimental to filberts and hazel nuts.[XIV_31] Hospinian, who relates this ridiculous custom, does not tell us what results they obtained by all their racket.
PISTACHIO TREE.
This tree, esteemed by the Romans,[XIV_32] is a native of India.[XIV_33] Lucius Vitellius brought some plants of it from Syria to Rome, under the reign of Tiberius; a little time subsequently, a knight, named Flaccus Pompeius, introduced it also into Spain.[XIV_34]