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Walnut

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Walnuts are probably intended in the , 'I went into the garden of nuts.' The Hebrew name (egoz) is evidently the same as the Persian gowz, which has been converted by the Arabs into jowz, by a process common in the case of many other words beginning with the interchangeable letters gaf and jim. In both languages these words, when they stand alone, signify the walnut, gouzbun being the walnut-tree: when used in composition they may signify the nut of any other tree; thus jouz-i-boa is the nutmeg, jouz-i-hindi is the Indian or cocoa-nut, etc. So the Greeks employed ά , and the Romans nux, to denote the walnut, which last remains in modern languages, as Italian noce, French noix, Spanish nuez, and German nusz. The walnut was also called royal nut, and also Persian, from having been so highly esteemed, and from having been introduced into Greece from Persia. That the walnut was highly esteemed in the East we learn from Abulpharagius, and that it is found in Syria has been recorded by several travelers. That it was planted at an early period is well known, and might be easily proved from a variety of sources.

The walnut-tree is well known as a lofty, wide-spreading tree, affording a grateful shade, and of which the leaves have an agreeable odor when bruised. The flowers begin to open in April, and the fruit is ripe in September and October. The tree is much esteemed for the excellence of its wood; and the kernel of the nut is valued not only as an article of diet, but for the oil which it yields. Being thus known to, and highly valued by, the Greeks in early times, it is more than probable that, if not indigenous in Syria, it was introduced there at a still earlier period, and that therefore it may be alluded to in the above passage, more especially as Solomon has said, 'I made me gardens and orchards, and planted trees in them of all kind of fruits' ().