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THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES.

ORIGIN OF
CULTIVATED PLAINTS.

BY

ALPHOXSE DE CANDOLLE,

FOKKIGN ASSOCIATE OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE INSTTTrTE OF FRANCE J
FOREIGN MEMBER OF THE EOTAL SOCIETIES OF LONDON, EDINBURGH,

AND DUBLIN ; OF THE ACADEMIES OF ST. PETEESBrRO,

STOCKHOLM, BERLIN, MUNICH, BRUP8EL8, COPENHAGEN, AMSTERDAM,

ROME, TURIN, MADRID, BOSTON, ETC.

NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON" AND COMPANY,

1, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET.

1890.

n

n

^/.

^

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

The knowledge of the origin of cultivated plants is
interesting to agriculturists, to botanists, and even to
historians and philosophers concerned with the dawnings
of civilization,

I went into this question of origin in a chapter in my
work on geographical botany; but the book has become
scarce, and, moreover, since 1855 important facts have
been discovered by travellers, botanists, and archse-
ologists. Instead of publishing a second edition, I have
drawn up an entirely new and more extended work,
which treats of the origin of almost double the number of
species belonging to the tropics and the temperate zones.
It includes almost all plants which are cultivated, either
on a large scale for economic purposes, or in orchards and
kitchen gardens,

I have always aimed at discovei-ing the condition and
the habitat of each species before it was cultivated. It
was needful to this end to distinguish from among
innumerable varieties that which should be regarded as
the most ancient, and to find out from what quarter of

vi author's preface.

the globe it came. The problem is more difficult than it
appears at first sight. In the last century and up to
the middle of the present authors made little account
of it, and the most able have contributed to the pro-
pagation of erroneous ideas. I believe that three out
of four of LinnfBUs' indications of the original home of
cultivated plants are incomplete or incorrect. His state-
ments have since been repeated, and in spite of what
modern writers have proved touching several species,
they are still repeated in periodicals and popular works.
It is time that mistakes, which date in some cases from
the Greeks and Romans, should be corrected. The actual
condition of science allows of such correction, provided
we rely upon evidence oi varied character, of which
some portion is quite recent, and even unpublished ; and
this evidence should be sifted as we sift evidence in his-
torical research. It is one of the rare cases in which
a science founded on observation should make use of
testimonial proof. It will be seen that this method
leads to satisfactory results, since I have been able tc
determine the origin of almost all the species, sometimes
with absolute certainty, and sometimes with a high
degree of probability.

I have also endeavoured to establish the number of
centuries or thousands of years during which each
species has been in cultivation, and how its culture
spread in different directions at successive epochs.

A few plants cultivated for more than two thousand
years, and even some others, are not now known in a

AUTHORS PREFACE. vii

spontaneous, that is, wild condition, or at any rate this
condition is not proved. Questions of this nature are
subtle. Tlie}'', like the distinction of species, require
much research in books and in herbaria. I have even
been obliged to appeal to the courtesy of travellers or
botanists in all parts of the world to obtain recent
information. I shall mention these in each case with
the expression of my grateful thanks.

In spite of these records, and of all my researches,
there still remain several species which are unknown
wild. In the cases where these come from regions
not completely explored by botanists, or where they
belong to genera as yet insufficiently studied, there is
hope that the wild plant may be one day discovered.
But this hope is fallacious in the case of well-known
species and countries. We are here led to form one of two
hypotheses ; either these plants have since history began
so changed in form in their wild as well as in their
cultivated condition that they are no longer recognized
as belonging to the same species, or they are extinct
species. The lentil, the chick-pea, probably no longer
exist in nature ; and other species, as wheat, maize, the
broad bean, earth amine, very rarely found wild, appear
to be in course of extinction. The number of cultivated
plants with which I am here concerned bein<r two hun-
dred and forty-nine, the three, four, or five species, extinct
or nearly extinct, is a large proportion, representing a
thousand species, out of the whole number of phane-
rogams. This destruction of forms must have taken

VIll AUTHORS PREFACE.

place during the short period of a few hundred centuries,
on continents where they might have spread, and under
circumstances which are commonly considered unvarying.
This shows how the history of cultivated plants is allied
to the most important problems of the general history of
organized beings.

Geneva, 1882.

CONTENTS.

PAET I.
GENERAL REMARKS.

CPAPTEB PAGE

I. In what Manxer and at what Epochs Cultivation began

IN Different Cointries ... ... ... ... 1

II. Methods for discovering or proving the Origin of Species 8

PAET II.

OX THE STUDY OF SPECIES, CONSIDERED AS TO THEIR
ORIGIN, THEIti EARLY CULTIVATION, AND THE
PRINCIPAL FACTS OF THEIR DIFFUSION.

I. Plants cultivated for their Subterranean Parts, such

AS Roots, Tubercles, or Bulbs ... ' ... ... 29

II. Plants cultivated for their Stems or Le:aves... ... 83

III. Plants cultivated for their Flowers, or for the Organs

which envelop them ... ... ... ... 161

IV. Plants cultivated for their Fruits ... ... ... 168

V. Plants cultivated for their Seeds ... .., ... 313

PAET III.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION.

L General Table op Species, with their Origin and the

Epoch op their Earliest Cultivation ... ... 436

XL General Observations and Conclusions ... ... 447

Index ... ... ... ... ■•• ..• ■•• 463

ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

PAKT L
General Remarks.

CHAPTER L

IN WHAT MANNER AND AT WHAT EPOCHS CULTIVATION
BEGAN IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES.

The traditions of ancient peoples, embellished by poets,
have commonly attributed the first steps in agriculture
and the introduction of useful plants, to some divinity, or
at least to some great emperor or Inca. Reflection shows
that this is hardly probable, and observation of the
attempts at agriculture among the savage tribes of our
own day proves that the facts are quite otherwise.

In the progress of civilization the beginnings are
usually feeble, obscure, and limited. There are reasons
why this should be the case with the first attempts at
ao-riculture or horticulture. Between the custom of
gathering wild fruits, grain, and roots, and that of the
regular cultivation of the plants which produce them,
there are several steps. A family may scatter seeds
around its dwelling, and provide itself the next year
with the same product in the forest. Certain fruit trees
may exist near a dwelling without our knowing whether
they were planted, or whether the hut was built beside

2 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

them in order to profit by them. War and the chase
often interrupt attempts at cultivation. Rivalry and
mistrust cause the imitation of one tribe by another to
make but slow progress. If some great personage com-
mand the cultivation of a plant, and institute some cere-
monial to show its utility, it is probably because obscure
and unknown men have previously spoken of it, and
that successful experiments have been already made.
A longer or shorter succession of local and short-lived
experiments must have occurred before such a display,
which is calculated to impress an already numerous public.
It is easy to understand that there must have been de-
termining causes to excite these attempts, to renew them,
to make them successful.

The first cause is that such or such a plant, offering
some of those advantages which all men seek, must be
within reach. The lowest savages know the plants of their
country ; but the example of the Australians and Patago-
nians shows that if they do not consider them productive
and easy to rear, they do not entertain the idea of culti-
vating them. Other conditions are suflBciently evident : a
not too rigorous climate; in hot countries, the moderate
duration of drought ; some degree of security and settle-
ment ; lastly, a pressing necessit}^ due to insufficient
resources in fishing, hunting, or in the production of
indigenous and nutritious plants, such as the chestnut,
the date-palm, the banana, or the brealfruit tree. When
men can live without work it is what they like best.
Besides, the element of hazard in hunting and fishing
attracts primitive, and sometimes civilized man, more
than the rude and regular labour of cultivation.

I return to the species which savages are disposed to
cultivate. They sometimes find them in their own
country, but often receive them from neighbouring
peoples, more favoured than tliemselves by natural con-
ditions, or already possessed of some sort of civilization.
When a people is not established on an island, or in
some place difficult of access, they soon adopt certain
plants, discovered elsewhere, of which the advantage is
evident, and are thereb}^ divert3d from the cultivation of

PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE. 3

the poorer species of their own country. History shows
us that wheat, maize, the sweet potato, several species of
the genus Panicum, tobacco, and other plants, especially
annuals, were widely diffused before the historical period.
These useful species opposed and arrested the timid
attempts made here and there on less productive or
less agreeable plants. And we see in our own day, in
various countries, barley replaced by wheat, maize pre-
ferred to buckwheat and many kinds of millet, while some
vegetables and other cultivated plants fall into disrepute
because other species, sometimes brought from a distance,
are more profitable. The difference in value, however
great, which is found among plants already improved by
culture, is less than that which exists between cultivated
plants and others completely wild. Selection, that great
factor which Darwin has had the merit of introducing
so happily into science, plays an important part when
once agriculture is established ; but in every epoch, and
especially in its earliest stage, the choice of species is
more important than the selection of varieties.

The various causes which favour or obstruct the
beginnings of agriculture, explain why certain regions
have been for thousands of years peopled by husbandmen,
while others are still inhabited by nomadic tribes. It is
clear that, owing to their well-known qualities and to the
favourable conditions of climate, it was at an early period
found easy to cultivate rice and several leguminous plants
in Southern Asia, barley and wheat in Mesopotamia and
in Egypt, several species of Panicum in Africa, maize,
the potato, the sweet potato, and manioc in America.
Centres were thus formed whence the most useful species
were diffused. In the north of Asia, of Europe, and of
America, the climate is unfavourable, and the indigenous
plants are unproductive ; but as hunting and fishing-
offered their resources, agriculture must have been intro-
duced there late, and it was possible to dispense with the
good species of the south without great sufi'ering. It
was difi'erent in Australia, Patagonia, and even in the
south of Africa. The plants of the temperate region in
our hemisphere could not reach these countries by

4) ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

reason of the distance, and those of the intertropical
zone were exchidcd by pjreat droufrlitor by the absence of
a hi^h teinporature. At the same time, tlic indigenous
species are very pooi'. It is not merely the ^vant of
intelligence or of security "which lias prevented the in-
habitants from cultivating them. The nature of the
indigenous Hora has so much to do with it, that the
Europeans, established in these countries for a hundred
years, have only cultivated a single species, the Tctva-
(jonla, an insignificant green vegetable. I am aware
that Sir Joseph Hooker^ has CTnunerated more than a
liundred Australian si)ecies which may be used in some
"way; but as a matter of lact they were not cultivated
by the natives, and, in spite of the improved methoils of
the English colonists, no one does cultivate them. This
clearly tlemonstiates the ])rinciple of which I spoke just
now, that the choice of species is more important tlian
the selection of varieties, and that there must be valuable
qualities in a wild plant in order to lead to its cultivation.
In s])ite of the obscurity of the beginnings of culti-
vation in each region, it is certain that they occurred at
very different periods. One of the most ancient examples
of cultivated i>lants is in a drawinir reiiresentincf iiL's,
found in Egypt in the pyramid of Ciizeh. The epoch of
the construction of this monument is unceitain. Authors
have assigned a date varying between fifteen hundred and
four thousaml two hundred years before the Christian era.
Sujiposing it to l)e two thousand years, its actual age
would be four thousand years. !Now, the construction
of the pyramids could oidy have been the work of a
numerous, oi'ganized people, possessing a certain degree of
civilization, and conseipiently an established agriculture,
dating from some centuries back at least. In China, two
thousand seven hundred years before Christ, the Emperor
Chenming instituted the ceremony at which every year
five species of useful ])lants ai'e sown — rice, sweet potato,
wheat, and two kinds of millet.'^ These plants must

ITookor, Flora Taamaniiv, \. p. ex.
• BiolBclinoidLT, On the Sduhj and Value of Chinese Butanical Works,
p. 7.

PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE. 6

have been cultivated for some time in ci'itaiu localities
before they attracted the emperor's attention to such a
degree. Agriculture aii])ears, then, to be as ancient in
China as in Egypt. The constant relations between
Kgypt and Mesoi)otamia lead us to suppose that an
almost contemporaneous cultivation existed in the valleys
of the Euphrates and the ISile. And it may have been
(Minally early in India and in the Malay Archipelago.
The history of the Uravidian and Malay peoples does
not reacli far back, and is suthciently obscure, but there
is no reason to believe that cultivation has not been
known among them for a very long time, particularly
alouii the banks of the rivers.

The ancient Egyi)tians and the Phoenicians propa-
gated many plants in the region of the Mediterranean,
a!ul the Aryan nations, whose migrations towards Europe
began about 2500, or at latest 2000 years B.C., carried
with them several species already cultivated in Western
Asia. We shall see, in studying the history of several
species, that some plants were probably cultivated in
Europe and in the north of Africa prior to the Aryan
migration. This is shown by names in languages more
ancient than the Aryan tongues; for instance, Finn,
Has(jue, Berber, and the speech of the Guanchos of the
Canary Isles. However, the remains, called kitchen-
middens, of ancient Danish dwellings, have hitherto
furnished no proof of cultivation or any indication of the
possession of metal. ^ The Scandinavians of that period
lived principally by fishing and hunting, and perhaps
eked out their subsistence by indigenous plants, such as
the cabbage, the njiture of which does not admit any
renniant of traces in the dung-heaps and rubbish, and
which, moreover, did not require cultivation. The absence
of metals does not in these northern countries argue a
greater antiquity than the age of Pericles, or even the
palmy days of the Roman republic. Later, when bronze

' De Nai'laillac, Les Premiers Hommes et Ics Temps Prt^istoriqnes,
i. pp. 266, 208. The absence of traces of agi-icuUure among these
remains is, moreover, corroborated by Ueer and Cartailhac, both well
versed in the discoveries of archseology.

6 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

was known in Sweden — a region far removed from the
then civilized countries — agriculture had at length been
introduced. Among the remains of that epoch was
found a carving of a cart drawn by two oxen and driven
by a man.^

The ancient inhabitants of Eastern Switzerland, at a
time when they possessed instruments of poHshed stone
and no metals, cultivated several plants, of which some
were of Asiatic origin. Heer^ has shown, in his admirable
work on the lake-dwellings, that the inhabitants had
intercourse with the countries south of the Alps. They
may also have received plants cultivated by the Iberians,
who occupied Gaul before the Kelts. At the period
when the lake-dwellers of Switzerland and Savoy pos-
sessed bronze, their agricultui-e was more varied. It
seems that the lake-dwellers of Italy, when in possession
of this metal, cultivated fewer species than those of
Savoy,^ and tliis maybe due either to a greater antiquity
or to local circumstances. The remains of the lake-
dwellers of Laybach and of the Mondsee in Austria
prove likewise a completely primitive agriculture ; no
ceieals have been found at Laybach, and but a single
grain of wheat at the Mondsee.^ The backward conditfon
of agriculture in this eastern part of Europe is contrary
to the hypothesis, based on a few words used by ancient
historians, that the Aryans sojourned first in the region
of the Danube, and that Thrace was civilized beibre
Greece. In spite of this example, agriculture appears
in general to have been more ancient in the temperate
parts of Europe than we should be inclined to believe
from the Greeks, who were disposed, like certain modern

* M. Montelius, from Cartailhac, Revue, 1875, p. 2:57.

* Heer, Lie I'Jlanzen der P/ahlbauten, in 4to, Zurich, 18C5. See the
article on " Flax."

* Perrin, Etude Pr^istorique de la Savoie, in 4to, 1870 ; Castelfranco,
Notizte tntorno alia Stazione lacustre di Lagozza ; and SordcUi, Sulle
■pxante della torbiera della Lagozza, in the Acies de la Soc. Ital. des Scien.
Nat., 1880.

« Much, Mittheil d. Anthropol. Ges. in Wien, vol. vi. ; Sacken, Sitzler.
Akad. Wien., vol. vi. Letter of Heer on these works and analysis of
thera in Naidaillac, i. p. 247.

PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE. 7

writers, to attribute the origin of all progress to their
own nation.

In America, agriculture is perhaps not quite so
ancient as in Asia and Egypt, if we are to judge from
the civilization of Mexico and Peru, which does not date
even from the first centuries of the Christian era. How-
ever, the widespread cultivation of certain plants, such
as maize, tobacco, and the sweet potato, argues a con-
siderable antiquity, perhaps two thousand years or there-
abouts. History is at fault in this matter, and we can
only hope to be enlightened by the discoveries of archaeo-
logy and geology.

y

CHAPTER II.

METHODS FOR DISCOVERING OR PROVING THE ORIGIN OF

SPECIES,

1. General reflections. As most cultivated plants have
been under culture from an early period, and the manner
of their introduction into cultivation is often little known,
different means are necessary in order to ascertain their
origin. For each species w^e need a research similar to
those made by historians and archaeologists — a varied
research, in which sometimes one process is employed,
sometimes another ; and these are afterw^ards combined
and estimated according to their relative value. The
naturalist is here no longer in his ordinary domain of
observation and description; he must support himself
by historical proof, which is never demanded in the
laboratory; and botanical facts are required, not with
respect to the physiology of plants — a favourite study of
the present day — but with regard to the distinction of
species and their geographical distribution.

I shall, therefore, have to make use of methods of
which some are foreign to naturalists, others to persons
versed in historical learning. I shall say a few words
of each, to explain how they should be employed and
what is their value.

2. Botany. One of the most direct means of dis-
covering the geographical origin of a cultivated species,
is to seek in what country it grows spontaneously, and
without the help of man. The question appears at the
first glance to be a simple one. It seems, indeed, that

METHODS FOR PROVING ORIGIN OF SPECIES. [)

by consulting floras, works upon specif s in general,
or herbaria, we ought to be able to solve it easily in
each particular case. Unfortunately it is, on the contrary,
a question which demands a special knowledge of botany,
especially of geographical botany, and an estimate of
botanists and of collectors, founded on a long experience.
Learned men, occupied with history or with the inter-
pretation of ancient authors, are liable to grave mistakes
when they content themselves with the first testimony
they may happen to light upon in a botanical work.
On the other hand, travellers who collect plants for a
herbarium are not always sufficiently observant of the
places and circumstances in which they find them.
They often neglect to note down what they have
remarked on the subject. We know, however, that a
plant may have sprung from others cultivated in the
neighbourhood ; that birds, winds, etc., may have borne
the seeds to great distances; that they are sometimes
brought in the ballast of vessels or mixed with their
caT'goes. Such cases present themselves with respect
to common species, much more so with respect to culti-
vated plants which abound near human dwellings. A
collector or traveller had need be a keen observer to
judge if a plant has sprung from a wild stock belonging
to the flora of the country, or if it is of foreign origin.
When the plant is growing near dwellings, on walls,
among rubbish-heaps, by the wayside, etc., we should be
cautious in forming an opinion.

It may also happen that a plant strays from cultiva-
tion, even to a distance from suspicious localities, and
has nevertheless but a short duration, because it cannot
in the long run support the conditions of the climate or
the struggle with the indigenous species. This is what
is called in botany an adventive species. It appears
and disappears, a proof that it is not a native of the
country. Every flora offers numerous examples of this
kind. When these are more abundant than usual, the
public is struck by the circumstance. Thus, the troops
hastily summoned from Algeria into France in 1870,
disseminated by fodder and otherwise a number of

10 OPvIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

African and southern species whicTi excited wonder, but
of which no trace remained after two or three winters.

Some collectors and authors of floras are very careful
in noting these facts. Thanks to personal relations
with some of them, and to frequent references to their
herbaria and botanical works, I flatter myself I am
acquainted with them. I shall, therefore, willingly
cite their testimony in doubtful cases. For certain
countries and certain species I have addressed myself
directly to these eminent naturalists. I have appealed
to their memory, to their notes, to their herbaria, and from
the answers they have been so kind as to return, I have
been enabled to add unpublished documents to those
found in works already made public. My sincere thanks
are due for information of this nature received from
Mr. C. B. Clarke on the plants of India, from ^L Boissier
on those of the East, from M. Sagot on the species of
French Guiana, from M. Cosson on those of Algeria, from
MM. Decaisne and Bretschneider on the plants of China,
from M. Pancic on the cereals of Servia, from Messrs.
Bentham and Baker on the specimens of the herbarium
at Kew, lastly from M. Edouard Andre on the plants of
America. This zealous traveller was kind enouoh to
lend me some most interesting specimens of species
cultivated in South America, which he found presenting
every appearance of indigenous plants.

A more difficult question, and one which cannot be
solved at once, is whether a plant growing wild, with
all the appearance of the indigenous species, has existed
in the country from a very early period, or has been
introduced at a more or less ancient date.

For there are naturalized species, that is, those that
are introduced among the plants of the ancient flora, and
which, although of foreign origin, persist there in such a
manner that observation alone cannot distinguish them, so
that historical records or botanical considerations, whether
simple or geogra])hical, are needed for their detection.
In a very general sense, taking into consideration the
lengthened periods with which science is concerned, nearly
all species, especially in the regions lying outside the

METHODS FOR PROVING ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 11

ti'ojncs, have been once naturalized ; that is to say, they
liave, from gecgrapbical and physical circumstances,
passed from one region to another. When, in 1855, I
piit forward the idea that conditions anterior to our
epoch determined the greater number of the facts of the
actual distribution of plants — this was the sense of
several of the articles, and of the conclusion of m}^ two
volumes of geographical botany ^ — it was received with
considerable surprise. It is true that general considera-
tions of palaeontology had just led Dr. Unger,^ a German
savant, to adopt similar ideas, and before him Edward
Forbes had, with regard to some species of th3 southern
counties of the British Isles, suggested the hypothesis
of an ancient connection with Spain.^ But the proof
that it is impossible to explain the habitations of the
whole number of present species by means of the con-
ditions existing for some thousands of years, made a
greajcr impression, because it belonged more especially
to the department of botanists, and did not relate to
only a few plants of a single country. The hypothesis
suggested by Forbes became an assured fact aui capable
of general application, and is now a truism of science. All
that is written on geographical or zoological botany rests
upon this basis, which is no longer contested.

This principle, in its application to each country and
each species, presents a number of difficulties ; for when
a cause is once recognized, it is not always easy to dis-
cover how it has affected each particular case. Luckily,
so far as cultivated plants are concerned, the questions
wliich occur do not make it necessary to go back to
very ancient times, nor to dates wdiich cannot be defined
by a given number of years or centuries. No doubt the
modern specific forms date from a period earlier than
the great extension of glaciers in the northern hemi-

' Alph. de Candolle, Geographie Botanique Eaisonn^e, chap. x. p.
1055 ; chap, xi., xix., xxvii.

^ Unger, Versuch einer Geschichte der PJlanzenwelt, 1852.

^ Porbss, On the Connection between the Distribution of the Existing
Funna and Flora of the British Isles, ivith the Geological Changes which
]inrp affected their Area, in 8vo, Memoirs of the Geological Surrey, vol. i.
18 i6. '"

12 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

sphere — a ])lienomenon of several thousand years' duration,
if we are to judge from the size of the deposits transported
by the ice ; but cultivation began after this epoch, and
even in many instances within historic time. We have
little to do with previous events. Cultivated species
may have changed their abode before cultivation, or in
the course of a longer time they may have changed their
form ; this belongs to the general study of all organized
life, and we are concerned only with the examination
of each species since its cultivation or in the time
immediately before it. This is a great simplification.

The question of age, thus limited, may be approached
by means of historical or other records, of which I shall
presently speak, and by the principles of geographical
botany.

I shall briefly enumerate these, in order to show
in what manner they can aid in the discovery of the
geographical origin of a given plant.

As a rule, the abode of each species is constant, or
nearly constant. It is, however, sometimes disconnected ;
that is to say, that the individuals of which it is com-
posed are found in widely separated regions. These cases,
which are extremely interesting in the study of the
vegetable kingdom and of the surface of the globe, are
far from forming the majority. Therefore, when a culti-
vated species is found wild, frequently in Europe, more
rarely in the United States, it is probable that, in spite
of its indigenous appearance in America, it has become
naturalized after being accidentally transported thither.

The genera of the vegetable kingdom, although
usually composed of several species, are often confined
to a single region. It follows, that the more species
included in a genus all belonging to the same quarter
of the globe, the more probable it is that one of the
species, apparently indigenous in another part of the
world, has been transported thither and has become
naturalized there, by escaping from cultivation. This
is especially the case with tropical genera, because they
are more often restricted either to the old or to the new
world.

METHODS FOR PROVING ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 13

Geographical botany teaches us what countries have
genera and even species in common, in spite of a certain
distance, and what, on the contrar}^, are very different,
in spite of similarity of climate or inconsiderable dis-
tance. It also teaches us what species, genera, and
families are scattered over a wide area, and the more
limited extent of others. These data are of gi'eat assist-
ance in determining the probable origin of a given
species. Naturalized plants spread rapidly. I have
(juoted examples elsewhere^ of instances within the last
two centuries, and similar facts have been noted from
year to year. The rapidity of the recent invasion of
Anacharis Alsinastruvi into the rivers of Europe is well
known, and that of many European plants in New
Zealand, Australia, California, etc., mentioned in several
Horas or modern travels.

The great abundance of a species is no proof of its
anti(][uity. Agave Americana, so common on the shores
of the Mediterranean, although introduced from America,
and our cardoon, which now covers a great part of the
Pampas of La Plata, are remarkable instances in point.
As a rule, an invaaing species makes rapid way, while
extinction is, on the contrary, the result of the strife of
several centuries asjainst unfavourable circumstances.^

The designation which should be adopted for allied
species, or, to speak scientifically, allied forms, is a
problem often presented in natural history, and more
often in the category of cultivated species than in others.
These plants are changed by cultivation. Man adopts
new and convenient forms, and propagates them by
artificial means, such as buddinfj, orraftinor the choice of
seeds, etc. It is clear that, in order to discover the origin
of one of these species, we must eliminate as far as possible
the forms which appear to be artificial, and concentrate our
attention on the others. A simple reflection may guide
this choice, namely, that a cultivated species varies
chiefly in those parts for which it is cultivated. The
others remain unmodified, or present trifling alterations,

' A. de Candolle, Geographie Botanique Raisonnee, chap. vii. and x.

• Ibid., chap. viii. p. 8'I4.

14 OllIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

of wliicli the cultivator takes no note, because they are
useless to him. We may e.Kpoct, therefore, to find the
fruit of a wild fruit tree small and of a doubtfully
a(Treea1)le flavour, the cfrain of a cereal in its "wild state
small, the tubercles of a wild potato small, the leaves of
indigenous tobacco narrow, etc., without, however, goin<f
so far as to imagine that the species developed rapidly
under cultivation, for man would not have begun to
cultivate it if it had not from the beginning presented
some useful or agreeable qualities.

When once a cultivated plant has been reduced to
such a condition as permits of its being reasonably
compared with analogous spontaneous forms, we have
still to decide what group of nearly similar plants it is
])roper to designate as constituting a species. Botanists
alone are competent to pronounce an opinion on this
question, since they are accustomed to appreciate differ-
ences and resemblances, and know the confusion of
certain works in the matter of nomenclature. This is
not the place to discuss what may reasonably be termed
a species. I have stated in some of my articles the
principles which seem to me the best. As their applica-
tion would often require a study which has not been
made, I have thought it well occasionally to treat quasi-
specific forms as a group which appears to me to corre-
spond to a species, and I have sought the geographical
origin of these forms as though they were ret lly specific.

To sum up: botany furnisl es valuable means of
guessing or proving the origin of cultivated, plants and
for avoiding mistakes. We must, however, by no means
forget that practical observation must be supplemented
by research in the study. After gaining information
from the collector who sees the plants in a given s^)ot
or district, and who draws up a flora or a catalogu.' of
species, it is indispensable to study the known or probable
geographical distribution in books and in herbaria, and
to reflect upon the principles of geogianhical botany
and on the qiie=^tions of classification, wl ich cannot 1 e
done by travelling or collecting. Other researches, of
which I shall .speak presently, must be comLiaed with

Mh;TI10D3 FOR PROVING ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 15

those of botany if we would arrive at satisfactory con-
clusions.

3. Archccologj/ and Palceontology. The most direct
proof which can be conceived of the ancient existence
of a specie^ in a given country is to see its recognizable
fi-agments in old buildings or deposits, of a more or less
certain date.

The fruits, seeds, and different portions of plants
taken from ancient Egyptian tombs, and the drawings
which sun'ound them in the pyramids, have given rise
to most important researches, which I shall often have to
mention. Nevertheless, there is a possible source of error ;
the fraudulent introduction of modern plants into the
sarcophagi of the mummies. This was easily discovered
in the case of some grains of maize, for instance, a plant
of American origin, which were introduced by the Arabs ;
but species cultivated in Egypt within the last two or
three thousand years may have been added, which would
thus appear to have belonged to an earlier period. The
tumuli or mounds of North America, and the monuments
of the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians, have furnished
records about the plants cultivated in that part of the
world. Here we are concerned with an epoch subsequent
to the pyramids of Egypt.

The deposits of the Swiss lake-dwellings have been
the subject of important treatises, among which that of
Heer, quoted just now, holds the first place. Similar
works have been published on the vegetable remains
found in other lakes or peatmosses of Switzerland, Savoy,
Germany, and Italy. I shall quote them with reference
to several species. Dr. Gross has been kind enough to
send me seeds and fruits taken from the lake-dwellings
of Neuchatel; and my colleague, Professor Heer, has
favoured m^ with several facts collected at Zurich since
the publication of his work. I have already said that
the rubbish-heaps of the Scandinavian countries, called
kitchen-middens, have furnished no trace of cultivated
vegetables.

The tufa of the south of France contains leaves and
other remains of plants, which have been discovered by

IG ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

MM. Martins, Planchon, de Saporta, and other savants.
Th ir date is not, perhaps, always earlier than that of the
first lacustrine deposits, and it is possible that it agrees
with that of ancient Egyptian monuments, and of ancient
Chinese books. Lastly, the mineralogic strata, with
which geologists are specially concerned, tell us much
about the succession of vegetable forms in different
countries ; but here we are dealing with epochs far
anterior to acfriculture, and it would be a strange and
certainly a most valuable chance if a modern cultivated
species were discovered in the European tertiary epoch.
No such discovery has hitherto been made with any
certainty, though uncultivated species have been recog-
nized in strata prior to the glacial epoch of the northern
hemisphere. For the rest, if we do not succeed in
finding them, the consequences will not be clear, since
it may be said, either that such a plant came at a later
date fi-om a different region, or that it had formerly
another form which renders its recognition impossible
in a fossil state.

4. History. Historical records are important in order
to determine the date of certain cultures in each country.
They also give indications as to the geographical origin
of plants when they have been propa-^ated by the migra-
tions of ancient peoples, by travellers, or by military
expeditions.

The assertions of autliors must not, however, be
accepted without examination.

The greater number of ancient historians have con-
fused the fact of the cultivation of a species in a country
with that of its previous existence there in a wild state.
It has been commonly asserted, even in our own day,
that a species cultivated in America or China is a native
of America or China, A no less common error is the
belief that a species comes originally from a given
country becavise it has come to us from thence, and not
direct from the place in which it is really indigenous.
Thus the Greeks and Romans called the peach the
Persian apple, because they had seen it cultivated in
Persia, where it probably did not grow wild. It was a

METHODS FOll PROVING ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 17

native of China, as I have elsewhere shown. They called
the pomegranate, which had spread gradually from
garden to garden from Persia to Mauritania, the apple of
Carthage {Malum Funicum). Very ancient authors,
such as Herodotus and Berosius, are yet more liable to
error, in spite of their desire to be accurate.

We shall see, when we speak of maize, that historical
documents which are complete forgeries may deceive us
about the origin of a species. It is curious, for it seems
to be no one's interest to lie about such agTicultural facts.
Fortunately, facts of botany and archaeology enable us to
detect errors of this nature.

The principal difficulty, which commonly occurs in
the case of ancient historians, is to find the exact trans-
lation of the names of plants, which in their books
always bear the common names. I shall speak presently
of the value of these names and how the science of
language may be brought to bear on the questions with
which we are occupied, but I must first indicate those
historical notions which are most useful in the study of
cultivated plants.

Agriculture came originally, at least so far as the
principal species are concerned, from three great regions,
in which certain plants grew, regions which had no com-
munication with each other. These are — China, the south-
west of Asia (with Egypt), and intertropical America.
I do not mean to say that in Europe, in Africa, and
elsewhere savage tribes may not have cultivated a few
species locally, at an early epoch, as an addition to the
resources of hunting and fishing; but the great civiliza-
tions based upon agriculture began in the three regions
I have indicated. It is worthy of note that in the
old world acjiicultural communities established them-
selves along the banks of the rivers, whereas in America
they dwelt on the high lands of Mexico and Peru. This
may perhaps have been due to the original situation of
the plants suitable for cultivation, for the banks of the
Mississippi, of the Amazon, of the Oiinoco, are not more
unhealthy than those of the rivers of the old world.

A few words about each of the three regions.

18 OIIIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

China had ah'cady possessed for some thousands of
years a flourishing agriculture and even horticulture,
when she entered for the first time into relations with
Western Asia, by the mission of Chang-Kien, during the
reign of the Emperor Wu-ti, in the second century before
the Christian era. The records, known as Pent-sao,
written in our Middle Ages, state that he brought back
the bean, the cucumber, the lucern, the satii-on, the
sesame, the walnut, the pea, spinach, the water-melon,
and other western plants,^ then unknown to the Chinese.
Chang-Kien, it will be observed, was no ordinary ambas-
sador. He considerably enlarged the geogra])hical know-
ledge, and improved the economic condition of his
couutiymen. It is true that he was constrained to dwell
ten years in the West, and that he belonged to an already
civilized people, one of whose emperors had, 2700 B.C.,
consecrated with imposing ceremonies the cultivation of
certain plants. The Mongolians were too barbarous, and
came from too cold a country, to have been able to intro-
duce many useful species into China; but when we
consider the origin of the peach and the apricot, we shall
see that these plants were brought into China from
Western Asia, probably by isolated travellers, merchants
or other.s, who passed north of the Himalaj'as. A few
species spread in the same way into China from the
West before the embassy of Chang-Kien.

Kcoular communication between China and India
only began in the time of Chang-Kien, and by the cir-
cuitous way of Bactriana ; ^ but gradual transmissions
iVom place to place may have been effected through the
Malay Peninsula and Cochin-China. The writers of
Northern China may have been ignorant of them, and
especially since the southern provinces were only united
to the empire in the second century before Christ.^

Regular communications between China and Japan
only took place about the year 57 of our era, when
an ambassatlor Avas sent; and the Chinese had no real
knowle(.l<re of their eastern nei<rhbours until the third

o o

' Brctsclincitlor, On ilie Stxidy and Value, etc., p. 15.
■' Ibid. "» Ibid., p. 23.

METHODS FOR PROVING ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 19

century, when the Chinese character was introduced
into Japan.^

The vast region which stretches from the Ganges to
Armenia and the Nile was not in ancient times so
isolated as China. Its inhabitants exchanged cultivated
plants with great facility, and even transported them
to a distance. It is enough to remember that ancient
migrations and conquests continually intermixed the
Turanian, Aryan, and Semitic peoples between the
Caspian Sea, Mesopotamia, and the Nile. Great states
were formed nearly at the same time on the banks of
the Euphrates and in Eg3'pt, but they succeeded to
tribes which had already cultivated certain plants. Agri-
culture is older in that region than Babylon and the first
Egyptian dynasties, which date from more than four
thousand years ago. The Assyrian and Egyptian em-
pires afterwards fought for supremacy, and in their
struggles they transported whole nations, which could
not fail to spread cultivated species. On the other hand,
tlic Aryan tribes who dwelt originally to the north of
Mesopotamia, in a land less favourable to agriculture,
spread westward and southward, driving out or subju-
gating the Turanian and Dravidian nations. Their speech,
and those which are derived from it in Europe and Hin-
dustan, show that they knew and transported several
useful species.^ After these ancient events, of which the
dates are for the most part uncertain, the voyages of the
Phoenicians, the wars between the Greeks and Persians,
Alexander's expedition into India, and finally the Roman
rule, completed the spread of cultivation in the interior
of Western Asia, and even introduced it into Euroj)e and
the north of Africa, wherever the climate permitted.

Later, at the time of the crusades, very few useful
]ilants yet . remained to be brought from the East. A

* Atsuma-gusa. Recueil pour sen-ir a la connaissance de I'extrSme
Orient, Turretini, vol. vi., pp. 200, 293.

* There are in the French lang^iage two excellent works, which pive
the sum of modern knowledge with regard to the East and Egypt. Ti;e
one is the Manuel de I'Histoire Ancienne de I'Orient, by Francjois Lenor-
mand, 3 vols, in 12mo, Paris, 1869; the other, L'Hisfoire Ancienne da
Peuples de VOrient, by Muspero, 1 vol. iu 8vo, Paris, 1878.

20 OUIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

few varieties of fruit trees which the Romans did not
possess, and some ornamental plants, were, however, then
brought to Europe.

The discovery of America in 1492 was the last great
event which caused the diffusion of cultivated plants
into all countries. Tlio American species, such as the
potato, maize, the prickly pear, tobacco, etc., were first
imported into Europe and Asia. Then a number of
species from tlie old world were introduced into America.
The voyage of Magellan (1520-1521) was the first direct
communication between South America and Asia. In the
same century the slave trade multiplied communications
between Africa and America. Lastly, the discovery of
the Pacific Islands in the eighteenth century, and the
growing facility of the means of communication, combined
with a general idea of improvement, produced that more
general dispersion of useful plants of which we are
witnesses at the present day.

5. Philology. The common names of cultivated plants
are usually well known, and may afford indications touch-
ing the history of a species, but there are examples
in which they are absurd, based upon errors, or vague
and doubtful, and this involves a certain caution in
their use.

I couhl quote a number of such names in all languages;
it is enough to mention, in French, hie de Turquie, maize,
a plant which is not a wheat, and which comes from
America; in English, Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus
tiiberosus), which does not come from Jerusalem, but
from North America, and is no artichoke.

A number of names given to foreign plants by
Europeans Avhcn they are settled in the colonies, ex-
press false or insignificant analogies. For instance, the
A^eiu Zealand Jiax resembles the true flax as little as
possible ; it is merely that a textile substance is obtained
from its leaves. The mahogany apple (cashew) of the
French West India Isles is not an apple, nor even the
fruit of a poma?eous tree, and has nothing to do with
mahogany.

Sometimes the common names have changed, in

METHODS FOR PROVING ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 21

passing from one language to another, in such a manner
as to give a false or absurd meaning. Thus the tree of
Judea of the French (Cercis Siliquastrmn) has become
the Judas tree in English. The fruit called by the
Mexicans ahuaca, is become the avocat (lawyer) of the
French colonists.

Not unfrequently names of plants have been taken
by the same people at successive epochs or in different
provinces, sometimes as generic, sometimes as specific
names. The French word ble, for instance, may mean
several species of the genus Triticum, and even of very
different nutritious plants (maize and wheat), or a given
species of wheat.

Several common names have been transferred from
one plant to another through error or ignorance. Thus
t]ie confusion made by early travellers between the
sweet potato {Convolvulus Batatas) and the potato
(Solanum tuberosum) has caused the latter to be called
potato in English and po^tutas in Spanish.

If modern, civilized peoples, who have great facilities
for comparing species, learning their origin and verifying
their names in books, have made such mistakes, it is
probable that ancient nations have made many and
more grave errors. Scholars display vast learning in
explaining the philological origin of a name, or its
modifications in derived languages, but they cannot
discover popular errors or absurdities. It is left for
botanists to discover and point them out. We may note,
in passing, that the double or compound names are the
most doubtful. They may consist of tw^o mistakes ; one
in the root or principal name, the other in the addition
or accessory name, destined almost always to indicate
the geographical origin, some visible quality, or some
comparison with other species. The shorter a name
is, the better it merits consideration in questions of
origin or antiquity ; for it is by the succession of years,
of the migrations of peoples, and of the transport of
plants, that the addition of often erroneous epithets takes
place. Similarly, in symbolic writing, like that of the
Chinese and the Egyptians, unique and simple signs

22 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

indicate lojT^^-lsnown species, not imported from foreign
countries, while complicated signs are doubtful or indi-
cate a foreiun origin. We must not for^ret, however, that
the signs have ol'ten been rebuses, based on chance
resemblances in the words, or on superstitious and fanciful
ideas.

The identity of a common name for a given species
in several languages may have two very ditlerent ex-
])lanatiuns. It may be because a plant has been spread
by a people which has been dispersed and scattered. It
may also result from the transmission of a plant from
one people to another "with the name it bore in its original
liome. The first case is that of the hemp, of which the
name is similar, at least as to the root, in all the tongues
derived from the primitive Aryan stock. The second is
seen in the American name of tobacco, the Chinese of
tea, which have spread into a number of countries,
without any philological or ethnographic filiation. This
case has occurred often er in modern than in ancient
times, because the rapidity of communications allows of
the simultaneous introduction of a plant and of its name,
even where the distance is great.

The diversity of names for the same species may also
spring from various causes. As a rule, it indicates an
early existence in difierent countries, but it may also
arise from the mixture of races, or from names of varieties
which take the place of the original name. Thus in
Eniiland we find, according to the county, a Keltic,
Saxon, Danish, or Latin name ; and fiax bears in Germany
the names of Jlachs and kin, words wdiich are evidently of
different orio-in.

When we desire to make use of the common names
to gather from them certain probabilities regarding the
origin of species, it is necessary to consult dictionaries
and the dissertations of philologists; but we must take
into account the chances of error in these learned men,
who, since they are neither cultivators nor botanists, may
have made mistakes in the application of a name to a
species.

The most considerable collection of common names is

METHODS FOR PEOVING ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 23

that of Neninicli, published in 1793.^ I have another in
manuscript which is yet more complete, drawn up in
our library by an old pupil of mine, Moritzi, by means of
floras and of several books of travel written by botanists.
There are, besides, dictionaries of the names of the species
in given countries or in some special language. This kind
of glossary does not often contain explanations of etymo-
logy ; but in spite of what Hehn ^ may say, a naturalist
possessed of an ordinary general education can recognize
the connection or the fundamental differences between
certain names in different languages, and need not con-
found modern with ancient languages. It is not necessary
to be initiated into the mysteries of suffixes or affixes,
of dentals and labials. No doubt the researches of a
philologist into etymologies are more profound and valu-
able, but this is rarely necessary when our researches
have to do with cultivated plants. Other sciences are
more useful, especially that of botany ; and philologists
are more often deficient in these than naturalists are
deficient in philology, for the very evident reason that
more place is given to languages than to natural history
in general education. It appears to me, moreover, that
philologists, notably those who are occupied with San-
skrit, are always too eager to find the etymology of
every name. They do not allow sufficiently for human
stupidity, which has in all time given rise to absurd
words, without any real basis, and derived only from
error or superstition.

The filiation of modern European tongues is known
to every one. That of ancient languages has, for more
than half a century, been the object of important labours.
Of these I cannot here give even a brief notice. It is
sufficient to recall that all modern European languages
are derived from the speech of the Western Aryans, who
came fi*om Asia, with the exception of Basque (derived
from the Iberian language), Finnish, Turkish, and Hun-

* Nemnich, AVgemeiiies polyglotten-Lexicon der Naturgeschichte, 2 voh.
iu 4to.

* Hehn, Kulturpflanzen und Hausthiere in ihren Uebergang aus Asien,
in 8vo, 3rd edit. 1877.

24 ORIGIN OF CULilVATEB PLANTS.

garian, into which, moreover, words of Aryan origin
have been introduced. On the other hand, several modern
languages of India, Ceylon, and Java, are derived from
the Sanskrit of the Eastern Aryans, who left Central
Asia after the Western Aryans. It is supposed, with
sufficient probability, that the first Western Aryans
came into Europe 2500 B.C., and the Eastern Aryans
into India a thousand years later.

Basque (or Iberian), the speech of the Guanchos of
the Canary Isles, of which a few plant names are known,
and Berber, are probably connected with the ancient
tongues of the north of Africa.

Botanists are in many cases forced to doubt the
common names attributed to plants by travellers, his-
torians, and philologists. This is a consequence of their
own doubts respecting the distinction of species and of
the well-known difficulty of ascertaining the common
name of a plant. The uncertainty becomes yet greater
in the case of species which are more easily confounded
or less generally known, or in the case of the languages
of little-civilized nations. There are, so to speak, degrees
of languages in this respect, and the names should be
accepted more or less readily according to these degrees.

In the first rank, for certainty, are placed those
languages which possess botanical Avorks. For instance,
it is possible to recognize a species by means of a Greek
description by Dioscorides or Theophrastus, and by the
less complete Latin texts of Cato, Columella, or Pliny.
Chinese books also give descriptions. Dr. Bretschneider,
of the Russian legation at Pekin, has written some
excellent papers upon these books, from which I shall
often quote. ^

The second degi'ee is that of languages possessing
a literature composed only of theological and poetical
works, or of chronicles of kings and battles. Such works

' Brefsclincidor, On the Study and Value of Chinese Botanical Works,
with Notes on the History of Plants and Geographical Botany from Chinese
8(yurces, in 8vo, 51 pp., with illustrations, Foochoo, -without date, but the
preface boars the date Dec. Ib70. Notes on Some Botanical Questions,
in 8vo, 14 pp., 1880.

METHODS FOR PROVING ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 25

make mention here and there of plants, with epithets or
reflections on their mode of flowering, their ripening,
their use, etc., which allow their names to be divined,
and to be referred to modern botanical nomenclature.
With the added help of a knowledge of the flora of the
country, and of the common names in the languages
derived from the dead language, it is possible to discover
approximately the sense of some words. This is the case
with Sanskrit,^ Hebrew,^ and Armenian.^

Lastly, a third category of dead languages offers no
certainty, but merely presumptions or hypothetical and
rare indications. It comprehends those tongues in which
there is no written work, such as Keltic, with its dialects,
the ancient Sclavonic, Pelasgic, Iberian, the speech of
the primitive Aryans, Turanians, etc. It is possible to
guess certain names or their approximate form in these
dead languages by two methods, both of which should
be employed with caution.

The first and best is to consult the languages derived,
or which we believe to be derived, directly from the
ancient tongues, as Basque for the Iberian language,
Albanian for the Pelasgic, Breton, Erse, and Gaelic for
Keltic. The danger lies in the possibility of mistake in
the filiation of the languages, and especially in a mistaken
belief in the antiquity of a plant-name which may have

• Wilson's dictionary contains names of plants, bnt botanists have
more confidence in the names indicated by Roxburgh in his Flora
Indica (edit, of 1832, 3 vols, in 8vo), and in Piddingtou's English Index
to the Plants of India, Calcutta, 1832. Scholai-s find a greater number
of words in the texts, but they do not give sufficient proof of the sense
of these words. As a rule, we have not in Sanskrit what we have in
Hebrew, Greek, and Chinese — a quotation of phrases concerning each
word translated into a modem language.

' The best work on the plant-names in the Old Testament is that of
Rosenmiiller, Handhuch der hihlischen Alterkundfi, in 8vo, vol. iv., Leipzig,
1830. A good short work, in French, is La Botanique de la Bible, by
Fred. Hamilton, in 8vo, Nice, 1871.

* Reynier, a Swiss botanist, who had been in Egypt, has given the
sense of many plant-names in the Talmud. See his volumes entitled
Economie Publiqve et Eurale des Arabes et des Juifs, in 8vo, 1820 ;
and Economie Publique et Rurale des Egyptiens et des Carthaginois,
in 8vo, Lausanne, 1823. The more recent works of Duschak and Low
are not based upon a knowledge of Eastern plants, and are unintelligible
to botanists because of names in Syriac and Hebrew chaiacters.

26 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

been introduced by another people. Thus the Basque
language contains many words which seem to have been
taken from the Latin at the time of the Roman rule.
Berber is full of Arab words, and Peisian of words of
every origin, which probably did not exist in Zend.

The other method consists in reconstructing a dead
language which had no literature, by means of those
which are derived from it; for instance, the speech of
the Western Aryans, by means of the words common to
several European languages which have sprung from it.
Fick's dictionarv will hardlv serve for the words of
ancient Aryan languages, fur he gives but few plant-
names, and his arraniirement renders it unintelligible to
those who have no knowledge of Sanskrit. Adolphe
Pictet's work ^ is far more important to naturalists, and
a second edition, augmented and improved, has been
published since the author's death. Plant-names and
agi'icultural terms are explained and discussed in this
work, in a manner all the more satisfactory that an
accurate knowledge of botany is combined with philology.
If the author attributes parhaps too much importance
to doubtful etymologies, he makes up for it by other
knowledge, and by his excellent method and lucidity.

The plant-names of the Euskarian or Basque language
have been considered from the point of view of their
probable etymology by the Comte de Charencey, in Les
Ades de la Societe Fhilologiqiie (vol. i. No. 1, 1869). I
shall have occasion to quote this work, of which the
difficulties were gi'eat, in the absence of all literature
and of all derived languages,

6. The necessity for comhimng the different methods.
The various methods of which I have spoken are of
unequal value. It is clear that when we have archfeo-
logical records about a given species, like those of the
Egyptian monuments, or of the Swiss lake-dwellings,
these are facts of remarkable accuracy. Then come
the data furnished by botany, especially those on the
spontaneous existence of a species in a given country.

• Adolphe Pictet, Les Origine^, de,- Peuples Indo-Europ^ens, 3 vols, in
8vo, Paris, 1878.

METHODS FOE PEOVING OEIGIN OF SPECIES. 27

Tliese, if examined with care, may be very important.
The assertions contained in the works of historians or
even of naturalists respecting an epoch at which science
was only beginning, have not the same value. Lastly,
the common names are only an accessory means, especially
in modem languages, and a means which, as we have
seen, is not entirely trustworthy. So much may be
said in a general way, but in each particular case one
method or the other may be more or less important.

Each can only lead to probabilities, since we are
dealing with facts of ancient date which are beyond
the reach of direct and actual observation. Fortunate, ly,
if the same probabiUty is attained in three or four
different ways, we approach very near to certainty. The
same rule holds good for researches into the history of
plants as for researches into the history of nations. A
good author consults historians who have spoken of
events, the archives in which unpublished documents are
found, the inscriptions on ancient monuments, the news-
])apers, private letters, finally memoirs and even tradition.
He gathers probabilities from every source, and then
compares these probabilities, weighs and discusses them
before deciding. It is a labour of the mind which requires
intelligence and judgment. This labour differs widely
from observation employed in natural histoiy, and from
pure reason which is proper to the exact sciences.
Nevertheless, when, by several methods, we reach the
same probability, I repeat that the latter is very nearly
a certainty. We may even say that it is as much a
certainty as historical science can pretend to attain.

I have the proof of this when I compare my present
work with that which I composed by the same methods
in 1855. For the species which I then studied, I have
now more authorities and better authenticated facts,
but my conclusions on the origin of each species have
scarcely altered. As they were already based on a
combination of methods, probabilities have usually
become certainties, and I have not been led to conclusions
absolutely contrary to those previously formed.

Archaeological, philological, and botanical data become

28 OKIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

more and more numerous. By their means the history
of cultivated plants is perfected, while the assertions of
ancient authors lose instead of gaining in importance.
From the discoveries of antiquaries and philologists,
moderns are better acquainted than the Greeks with
Chaldea and ancient Egypt. They can prove mistakes
in Herodotus. Botanists on their side connect Theo-
phrastus, Dioscorides, and Pliny from their knowledge of
the flora of Greece and Italy, while the study of classical
authors to which learned men have applied themselves
for three centuries has already furnished all that it has to
give. I cannot help smiling when, at the present day,
savants repeat well-known Greek and Latin phrases, and
draw from them what they call conclusions. It is trying
to extract juice from a lemon which has already been
repeatedly squeezed. We must say it frankly, the works
which repeat and commentate on the ancient authors
of Greece and Rome without gi'V'ing the first place to
botanical and archaeological facts, are no longer on a
level with the science of the day. Nevertheless, I could
name several German works which have attained to the
honour of a third edition. It would have been better to
reprint the earlier publications of Fraas and Lenz, of
Targioni and Heldreich, which have always given more
weight to the modern data of botany, than to the vague
descriptions of classic authors; that is to say, to facts
than to words and phrases.

PART II.

On the Study of Species, considered as to their Origin,
their early Cultivation, and the Principal Facts of their
Diffusion.^

CHAPTER L

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS,
SUCH AS ROOTS, TUBERCLES, OR BULBS.^

Radish. — Raphanus sativits, Liniifeus.

The radish is cultivated for what is called the root,
which is, properly speaking, the lower part of the stem
with the tap root.^ Every one knows how the size, shape,
and colour of those organs which become fleshy vary
according to the soil or the variety.

There is no doubt that the species is indigenous in
the temperate regions of the old world ; but, as it has
been cultivated in gardens from the earliest historic
times, from China and Japan to Europe, and as it sows

* A certain number of species whose oriorin is well known, sncli as
the carrot, sorrel, etc., are mentioned only in the summary at the begin-
ning of the last part, with an indication of the principal facts concerning
them.

'■^ Some species are cultivated sometimes for their roots and some-
times for their leaves or seeds. In other chapters will be found species
cultivated sometimes for their leaves (as fodder) or for their seeds, etc.
I have classed them according to their commonest use. The alpha-
betical index refers to the place assigned to each species.

' See the young state of the plant when the part of the stem below
the cotyledons is not yet swelled. Turpin gives a drawing of it in the
Annales des Sciences Naturelles, series 1, vol. xxi. pi. 5.

30 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

itself frequently round cultivated plots, it is difTicult to
fix upon its starting-point.

Formerly Raphanus satlrus was confounded with
kindred species of the Mediterranean region, to whicli
certain Greek names were attributed ; but Gay, the
botanist, who has done a good deal towards eliminat-
ing these analogous forms,^ considered R. so.tivas as a
native of the East, perhaps of China. Linnunis also sup-
posed tliis plant to be of Chinese origin, or at least that
variety which is cultivated in China for the ^ake of ex-
tractincr oil from the seeds.^ Several floras of the south
of Europe mention the species as subspontaneous or
escaped from cultivation, never as spontaneous. Lede-
bour had seen a specimen found near Mount Ararat, had
sown the seeds of it and verified the species.^ However,
Boissier,^ in 18G7, in his Eastern Flora, says that it is
only subspontaneous in the cultivated parts of Anatolia,
near Mersivan (according to Wied), in Palestine (on his
own authority), in Armenia (according to Ledebour), and
probably elsewhere, which agrees with the assertions
found in European fioras.^ Buhse names a locality, the
Ssahend mountains, to the south of the Caucasus, which
appears to be far enough from cultivation. The recent
Flora of British India^ and the earlier Flora of Cochin-
Ghina by Loureiro, mention the radish only as a culti-
vated species. Maximowicz saw it in a garden in the
north-east of China.'^ Thunberg speaks of it as a plant
of general cultivation in Jaj)an, and growing also by
the side of the roads,® but the latter fact is not repeated
by modern authors, who are probably better informed.^

Herodotus (Hist., 1. 2, c. 125) speaks of a radish which
he calls surmaia, used by the builders of the pyramid of

* In A. de Candolle, Gdogr. li^'t. Baisonnce, p. 826.

* Linnaeus, Sjicc. Plant, p. O'Mi.

* liedobour, Fl. Ross., i. p. 225.

* Biiissicr, Fl. Orient, i. p. 400.

6 Biilise, Au''zahluvg TranscaiiraMen, p. 30.
6 HookiT, Flora of British India, i. p. I'SlJ.
' Maximowicz, PriinitiiX} Florai A>nurensi-!, p. 47.
8 Tliniil.erfr, FL Jap., p. 2(\3.

* Fraiichet aud Savatier, Enum. Phi)if. Jcp., i. p. 3D.

PLiNTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERTIANEAN PARTS. 31

Cheops, according to an inscription upon the monument,
Uno-er ^ copied from Lepsius' work two drawings from
the temple of Karnak, of which the first, at any rate,
appears to represent the radish.

From all this we gather, first, that the species
spreads easily from cultivation in the west of Asia and
the south of Europe, while it does not appear with cer-
tainty in the flora of Eastern Asia ; and secondly, that
in the regions south of the Caucasus it is found without
any sign of culture, so that we are led to suppose that
the plant is wild there. From these two reasons it
appears to have come originally from Western Asia
between Palestine, Anatolia, and the Caucasus, perhaps
also from Greece ; its cultivation spreading east and west
from a very early period.

The common names support these hypotheses. In
Europe they offer little interest when they refer to the
quality of the root (radis), or to some comparison with
the turnip {ravanello in Italian, rabica in Spanish, etc.),
but the ancient Greeks coined the special name raphanos
(easily reared). The Italian word ramoraccio is derived
from the Greek avmoracia, which was used for R. sativus
or some allied species. Modern interpreters have erro-
neously referred this name to Cochlearia Armoracia or
horse-radish, which I shall come to presently. Semitic'-^
languages have quite difierent names (fugla in Hebrew,
fiiil, fidget, jigl, etc., in Arab.). In India, according to
Roxbvirgh,^ the common name of a variety with an
enormous root, as large sometimes as a man's leg, is
moola or inoolee, in Sanskrit mooluka. Lastly, for
Cochin-China, China, and Japan, authors give various
names which differ very much one from the other. From
this diversity a cultivation which ranged from Greece to
Japan must be very ancient, but nothing can thence be
concluded as to its original home as a spontaneous plant.

A totally different opinion exists on the latter point,

* Unger, Pflanzen des Alien ^gypfens, p. 51, fipfs. 24 and 29.

* In my manuscript dictionary of common names, drawn from the
floras of thirty years ago.

» Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., iii. p. 126,

32 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

which we must also examine. Several botanists* suspect
tliat RcvphaniJbs sativus is simply a particular condition,
with enlarged root and non-articulated fruit, of RajJti-
nus raphanistriiTn, a very common plant in the tem-
perate cultivated disti-icts of Europe and Asia, and
which is also found in a wild state in sand and light
soil near the sea — for instance, at St. Sebastian, in Dal-
matia, and at Trebizond.^ Its usual haunts are in deserted
fields; and many common names which signify wild
radish, show the affiaity of the two plaits. I should not
m.^i-st upon this point if their supposed identity wtre a
mere presum})tion, but it rests upon experiments and
observations which it is important to know.

In a. raphanistrum the siliqua is articulated, that
is to say, contracted at intervals, and the seeds placed
each in a division. In B. sativus the siliqua is con-
tinuous, and forms a single cavity. Some botanists had
made this difference the basis of two distinct genera,
Raphanistrum and Raphanus. But thi'ee accurate ob-
servers, Webb, Gay, and Spach, have noticed among
plants of Raphanus sativus, raised from the same seed,
both unilocular and articulated pods, some of them
bilocular, others plurilocular, Webb^ arrived at the
same results when he afterwards repeated these ex2:)eri-
ments, and he observed yet another fact of some import-
ance : the radish which sows itself by chance, and is
not cultivated, produced the siliqujB of Raphanistrum^
Another ditference between the two plants is in the
root, fleshy in R. sativus, slender in R. raphanis-
tiniTn ; but this changes with cultivation, as appears
from the experiments of Carriere, the head gardener of
the nurseries of the Natural History Museum in Paris.^
It occurred to him to sow the seeds of the slender-

' Webb, Phytngr. Canar., p. 83 ; Iter. Hisp., p. 71 ; Bontham, Fl.
Hnvg Kong, p. 17 ; Hooker, Fl. Brit. Ind., i. p. 1(3(5.

* Willkomrn and Lange, Prod. Fl. Hiip., iii. p. 71S; Viviaui, Flor.
Dalinaf.. iii. p. 104 ; Boissier, Fl. Orient., i. p. -iUl.

^ AVebb, Phytographia Canarieyisis, i. p. 83.

* Wi'bb, Iter. ni-<panien!=e, 1838. p. 72.

* Carrlfere, Orijine des Plantes Bomeiliiues d^imm.\\\: par la Ca'.lw"
du Itcdis Saurage, iu 8vo, -i pp., 18(59.

no

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS, o-i

rooted Raphanistrum in both stiff and light soil, and in
the fourth generation he obtained fleshy radishes, of
varied colour and form like those of our gardens. He
even gives the figures, which are really curious and con-
clusive. The pungent taste of the radish was not
wanting. To obtain these changes, Carriere sowed in
September, so as to make the plant almost biennial
instead of annual. The thickening of the root was the
natural result, since many biennial plants have fleshy
roots.

The inverse experiment remains to be tried— to sow
cultivated radishes in a poor soil. Probably the roots
would become poorer and poorer, while the siliqute would
bscome more and more articulated.

From all the experiments I have mentioned, Ra-
phanus sativus might well be a vaiiety of R. ra-
phanistrum, an unstable variety determined by the
existence of several generations in a fertile soil. We
cannot suppose that ancient uncivilized peoples made
essays like those of Carriere, but they may have noticed
plants of Raphanistrum grown in richly manured soil,
with more or less fleshy roots ; and this soon suggested
the idea of cultivating them.

I have, however, one objection to make, founded on
geographical botany. Raphanus raphanistrum is a
European plant which does not exist in Asia.^ It can-
not, therefore, be this species that has furnished the in-
habitants of India, China, and Japan with the radishes
which they have cultivated for centuries. On the other
hand, how could R. raphanistrum,, which is supposed
to have been modilied in Europe, have been transmitted
in ancient times across the whole of Asia ? The transport
of cultivated plants has commonly proceeded from Asia
into Europe. Cliang-Kien certainly brought vegetables
from Bacti-iana into China in the second century B.C.,
but the radish is not named among the number.

Horse-radish — Cochlearia Armoracla,, Linnceus.

This Crucifer, whose rather hard root has the taste of

' Ledebonr, F7. Boss. ; Bois-iier, Fl. Qyient. Works on tte flora of the
valley of the Amur.

34 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

mus«ard, was sometimes called in French cran, or cranson
(le Bretagne. 'i'liis was an error caused by the old
botanical name Arvioracia, Vv'hich was taken for a cor-
ruption of Armorica (Brittany). Armoracia occurs in
Pliny, and was applied to a crucifer of the Pontine
province, which was iperhstps BapJianiis sativus. After I
had formerly ^ pointed out this confusion, I expressed
myself as follows on the mistaken origin of the species : —
Cochlearia Armoracia is not wild in Brittany, a fact
now established by the researches of botanists in the
west of France. The Abbe Delalande mentions it in
his little work, entitled Hcedic et Houat,^ in which he
gives so interesting an account of the customs and pro-
ductions of these two little islands of Brittany. He
quotes the opinion of M. le Gall, who, in an unpublished
flora of Morbihan, declares the plant foreign to Brittany.
This proof, however, is less strong than others, since the
south coast of the peninsula of Brittany is not yet
sufficiently known to botanists, and the ancient Armorica
extended over a portion of Normandy where the wild
horee-radish is now found.^ This leads me to speak of
the original home of the species. English botanists
mention it as wihl in Great Britain, but are doubtful
about its origin. Watson ^ considers it as introduced by
cultivation. The difficulty of extirpating it, he says,
from places where it is cultivated, is well knoAvn to
gardeners. It is therefore not surprising that this plant
should take possession of wast3 ground, and persist there
so as to aj^pear indigenous. Babington ^ mentions only
one spot Mdiere the species apjiears to be really wild,
namely, Swansea. We will try to solve the problem by
further arguments.

Cochlearia Artnoracia is a plant belono;infj to the
temperate, and especially to the eastern regions of Europe.
It is difiused from Finland to Astrakhan, and to the

' A. de Candollo, G^ographie Botaniqite Rais(mn(fe, p. 654.

' Delalande, Hcedic et Hoiiat, 8vo pamphlet, Naut:^s, 1850, p. 109.

* Hardouin, Benou, and Leclerc, Catalogue du Calvadox, p. 85 ; Do
Brebisson, Fl. de Noi-inandie, p. 25.

* Watson, Cijhde, i. p. 15i).

* Babington, Manual of Biit. B)i., 2nd edit., p. 28.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 35

desert of Cimian.^ Giisebacli mentions also several
localities in Turkey in Europe, near Enos, for instance,
where it abounds on the sea-shore.^

The further we advance towards the west of Europe,
the less the authors of floras appear sure that the plant
is indigenous, and the localities assigned to it are more
scattered and doubtful. The species is rarer in Norway
than in Sweden,^ in the British Isles than in Holland,
where a foreign origin is not attributed to it.*

The specific names confirm the impression of its origin
in the east rather than in the west of Europe; thus the
name chren^ in Russia recurs in all the Sclavonic
languages, krenai in Lithuanian, chren in Illyrian,^ etc.
It has introduced itself into a few German dialects, round
Vienna,^ for instance, where it persists, in spite of the
spread of the German tongue. We owe to it also the
French names cran or cranson. The word used in
Germany, Meerretig, and in Holland, meer-radys, whence
the Italian Swiss dialect has taken the name meridi, or
meredi, means sea-radish, and is not primitive like the
word chren. It comes probably from the fact that the
plant grows well near the sea, a circumstance common to
many of the Cruciferce, and which should be the case
with this species, for it is wild in the east of Russia
where there is a good deal of salt soil. The Swedish
name 'peppar-rot^ suggests the idea that the species came
into Sweden later than the introduction of pepper by
commerce into the north of Europe. However, the name
may have taken the place of an older one, which has
remained unknown to us. The English name of horse-
radish is not of such an original nature as to lead to
a belief in the existence of the species in the country
before the Saxon conquest. It means a very strong

* Ledebour, 17. Ross., i. p. 159.

* Grisebach, Spicilegium Fl. Rumel., i. p. 265.
' Fries, Suninia, p. 30.

* Miquel, Disquisitio pi. regn. Batav.

' Moritzi, Diet. Ined. des Noms Vulgaires.

' Moritzi, ihid. ; Viviani, FL Dalmat,, iii. p. 3?.a.

» Neilreich, Fl. Wien, p. 502.

® Linnaeus, Fl. Siiecica, No. 540.

36 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

radish. The Welsli name rhuddygl maurth ^ is only the
translation of the English word, whence we may infer
that the Kelts of Groat Britain had no special name, and
were not acquainted with the species. In the west of
France, the name raifort, which is the commonest, merely
means strong root. Formerly it bore in France the
names of German, or Capuchin mustard, which sho^Ys
a foreign and recent origin. On the contrary, the word
chren is in all the Sclavonic languages, a wordv/hich has
penetrated into some German and French dialects under
the forms of hreen, cran, and cranson, and ^^'hich is
certainly of a primitive nature, and shows the antiquity
of the species in temperate Eastern Europe, It is
therefore most probable that cultivation has propagated
and naturalized the plant westward from the east for
about a thousand years.

Turnips — Brassica species et varietates radice in
crassata.

The innumerable varieties and sub varieties of the
turnip known as swedes, Kohl-rabi, etc., may be all attri-
buted to one of the four species of Linn^us — Brassica
napus, Br. oleracea, Br. rapa, Br. cartipestris — of which
the two last should, according to modern authors, be fused
into one. Other varieties of the species are cultivated for
the leaves (cabbages), for the inflorescence (cauliflowers),
or for the oil which is extracted from the seed (colza,
rape, etc.). When the root or the lower part of the stem ^
is iBleshy, the seed is not abundant, nor worth the trouble
of extracting the oil ; wdien those organs are slender, the
production of the seed, on the contrary, becomes more
important, and decides the economic use of the plant.
In other words, the store of nutritious matter is placed
sometimes in the lower, sometimes in the upper part of
the plant, although the organization of the flower and
fruit is similar, or nearly so.

' H. Davies, Weli<h, Botanology, p. G3.

* In turnips aud swedes the swelled part is, as in tlie radish, tho
lower part of the stem, below the cotyledons, with a more or less per-
ei tent part of the root. (See Torpin, Ann. Sc. Xatvr., ser. 1, vol. xxi.)
In the Kohl-rabi (Brassica oleracea caulo-rapa) it is the stem.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 37

Touching the question of origin, we need not occupy
ourselves with the botanical limits of the species, and
with the classification of the races, varieties, and sub-
varieties,^ since all the Brassicce are of European and
Siberian origin, and are still to be seen in these regions
wild, or half wild, in some form or other.

Plants so commonly cultivated and whose germina-
tion is so easy often spread round cultivated places ;
hence some uncertainty regarding the really wild nature
of the plants found in the open country. Nevertheless,
Linnaeus mentions that Brassica napus grows in the sand
on the sea-coast in Sweden (Gothland), Holland, and Eng-
land, which is confirmed, as far as Sweden is concerned,
by Fries,^ who, with his usual attention to questions of
this nature, mentions Br. CaTnpestris, L. (type of the
Rapa with slender roots), as really wild in the whole
Scandinavian peninsula, in Finland and Denmark.
Ledebour ^ indicates it in the whole of Russia, Siberia,
and the Caspian Sea.

The floras of temperate and southern Asia mention
rapes and turnips as cultivated plants, never as escaped
from cultivation.'* This is already an indication of foreign
origin. The evidence of philology is no less significant.

There is no Sanskrit name for these plants, but only
modern Hindu and Bengalee names, and those only for
Brassica rapa and B. oleracea.^ Kaempfer** gives Japanese
names for the turnip — busei, or more commonly aona —
but there is nothing to show that these names are ancient.
Bretschneider, who has made a careful study of Chinese
authors, mentions no Brassica. Apparently they do not
occur in any of the ancient works on botany and agricul-
ture,although several varieties are nowcultivated in China.

It is just the reverse in Europe. The old languages

* This classification has been the subject of a pnper by Aagnstin
Pyramus de Candolle, Transaciions of the Horticultural Society, vol. v.

* Fries, Summa Veget. Scand., i. p. 29.

* Ledeboar, Ft. Ross., i. p. 216.

* Boissier, Flora Orientalis ; Sir J. Hooker, Flora of British India;
Thunberg, Flora Japonica ; Franchet and Savatier, Enumeratio Plan-
Uirum Japonicarum.

* Piddington, Index. ' Kaempfer, Amcen., p. 822.

38 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

have a number of names which seem to be orisrinal
Brassica rapa is called meipen or erfinen^ in Wales;
repa and Hppa in several Slav tongues,^ which answers to
the Latin rapa, and is allied to the rseipKi of the Anglo-
Saxons. The Brassica. napus is in Welsh bresych yr yd ;
in Erse hraisscagh buigh, according to Threlkeld,^ who sees
in braisscagh the root of the Latin Brassica. A Polish
name, harpiele, a Lithuanian, jellazoji,^ are also given,
without speaking of a host of other names, transferred
sometimes in popular speech from one species to another.
I shall speak of the names of Brassica oleracea when I
come to vegetables.

The Hebrews had no names for cabbages, rapes, and
turnips,^ but there are Arab names : selgam for the Br.
napus, and subjuvi or subjumi for Br. rapa; words
which recur in Persian and even in Bengali, transferred
perhaps from one species to another. The cultivation of
these plants has therefore been diffused in the south-west
of Asia since Hebrew antiquity.

Finally, every method, whether botanical, historical,
or philological, leads us to the following conclusions : —

Firstly, the Brassicce with fleshy roots were originally
natives of temperate Europe.

Secondly, their cultivation was diffused in Europe
before, and in Asia after, the Aryan invasion.

Thirdly, the primitive slender-rooted form of Bras-
sica napus, called Br. cainijestris, had probably from
the beginning a more extended range, from the Scan-
dinavian peninsula towards Siberia and the Caucasus.
Its cultivation was perhaps introduced into China and
Japan, through Siberia, at an epoch which appears not
to be much earlier than Greco-Roman civilization.

Fourthly, the cultivation of the various forms or species
of Brassica was diffused throughout the south-west of
Asia at an epoch later than that of the ancient Hebrews.

* Davies, TTeZsTi Botanology , p. 65.

* Moritzi, Diet. MS., compiled from published firms.

* Threlkeld, Synopsis Stirpium Hibernicarum, 1 vol. in 8vo, 1727.

* Moritzi, Diet. MS.

* Eosenmiiller, Biblische Naturgeschichte, vol. i., gives none.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 39

Skirret — Slum Sisarum, Linnfeus,

This vivacious Umbellifer, furnished with several
fliverg-ing roots in the form of a carrot, is believed to come
from Eastern Asia. Linnaeus indicates China, doubtfully ;
and Loureiro,^ China and Cochin- China, where he says it
is cultivated. Others have mentioned Japan and the
Coiea, but in these countries there are species which it
is easy to confound with the one in question, particularly
Siimi Ninsi and Panax Ginseng. Maximowicz,^ who
has seen these plants in China and in Japan, and who
has studied the herbariums of St. Petersburcjh, recognizes
only the Altaic region of Siberia and the North of Persia
as the home of the wild Sium Sisarum. I am very
doubtful whether it is to be found in the Himalayas or
in China, since modern works on the resfion of the river
Amoor and on British India make no mention of it.

It is doubtful whether the ancient Greeks and Romans
knew this plant. The names Sisaron of Dioscorides, Siser
of Columella and of Pliny,^ are attributed to it. Certainly
the modern Italian name sisaro or sisero seems to confirm
this idea; but how could these authors have failed to
notice that several roots descend from the base of the stem,
whereas all the other umbels cultivated in Europe have
but a single tap-root ? It is just possible that the siser
of Columella, a cultivated plant, may have been the
parsnip ; but what Pliny says of the siser does not apply
to it. According to him it was a medicinal plant, inter
nnediea dicendum.^ He says that Tiberius caused a
quantity to be brought every year from Germany, which
pr jves, he adds, that it thrives in cold countries.

If the Greeks had received the plant direct from
Persia, Theophrastus would probably have known it. It
came perhaps from Siberia into Russia, and thence into
Germany, in which case the anecdote about Tiberius
might well apply to the skirret. I cannot find any

* Linnaeus, Species, p. 381; Loareiro, Fl. Cochin cUnensi?, p. 225.

* Masimowicz, Diagnoses Plantarum JaponiccB et Manshurice, in
Mdanges Biologiques du Bulletin de I' Acad., St. I*etersbiirg, decad 13, p. 18.

» D oscorides. Mat. Med., 1. 2, c. 139; Colamella, 1. 11, c, 3, 18, 35;
Lenz, Bat. der Alten, p. 560.

* Plinj, Hist. Plant., 1. 19, c. 6.

to ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Russian name, certainly, but the Germans have original
names, Krizel or Grizel, Gorlein or Gierlein, which
indicate an ancient cultivation, more than the ordinary
name Zuckertuurzel, or sugar-root.^ The Danish name has
the same meaning; — sokerot, whence the Encdish sJcirret.
The name sisaron is not known in modern Greece; nor
was it known there even in the Middle Ages, and the plant
is not now cultivated in that country.^ There are reasons
for doubt as to the true sense of the words sisaron and
siser. Some botanists of the sixteenth century thought
that sisaron was perhaps the jparsnip proper, and
Sprengel ^ supports this idea.

The French names chervis and girole^ v/ould perhaps
teach us something if we knew their origin. Littrd
derives chen-is from the Spanish chirivia, but the latter is
more likely derived from the French. Bauhin ^ mentions
the low Latin names servillmn, chervillum, or sei^illam,
words which are not in Ducange's dictionary. This may
well be the origin of chervis, but whence came servilluni
or cJiervilluni ?

Arracacha orArracacia — Arracachaescidenta,de Can-
dolle.

An umbel generally cultivated in Venezuela, New
Granada, and Ecuador as a nutritious plant. In the tem-
perate regions of those countries it bears comparison with
the potato, and even yields, we are assured, a lighter and
more agreeable fecula. The lower part of the stem is
SAvelled into a bulb, on which, when the plant thrives well,
tubercles, or lateral bulbs, form themselves, and persist
for several months, which are more prized than the central
bulb, and serve for future planting. "^

The species is probably indigenous in the region where

• Nemnich, Polygl. Lexicon, ii. p. 1313.

* Leiiz, Uof. dcrAlten, p. 560; Heldreich, Nutzpflanzen Griechenlandgj
Lau^kavel, Bot. der Spateren Griechen.

• Sprengel, Dioscoj-idis, etc., ii. p. 462.

•* Olivier de Serres, Theatre de I' Agriculture, p. 471.
' Bauhin, Hist. PL, iii. p. 154.

* The best information about the cultivation of this plant was given by
Bancroft to Sir W. Hooker, and may be found in the Botanical Magazine,
jil. 3092. A. P. de Candolle published, in La 5' Notice sur les Plavtes Rares
des Jardin Bot. de Genvt-e, an illustration show ng the principal bulb.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOE THEIR SUBTEREANEAX PARTS. 41

it is cultivated, but I do not find in any author a positive
assertion of the fact. The existing descriptions are drawn
from cultivated stocks. Grisebach indeed says that he
has seen (presumably in the herbarium at Kew) specimens
gathered in New Granada, in Peru, and in Trinidad,^ but
he does not say whether they were wild. The other
species of the same genus, to the number of a dozen, grow
in the same districts of America,, which renders the above-
mentioned origin more probable.

The introduction of the arracacha into Europe has
been attempted several times without success. The damp
climate of England accounts for the failure of Sir William
Hooker's attempts ; but ours, made at two different times,
under very different conditions, have met with no better
success. The latenal bulbs did not form, and the central
bulb died in the house where it was placed for the winter.
The bulbs presented to different botanical gardens in
France and Italy and elsewhere shared the same fate. It
is clear that if the plant is in America really equal to the
potato in productiveness and taste, this will never be the
case in Europe. Its cultivation does not in America
spread as far as Chili and Mexico, like that of the potato
and sweet potato, which confirms the difficulty of pro-
pagation observed elsewhere.

Madder — Ruhia tinctorum, Linn?eus.

The madder is certainly wild in Italy, Greece, the
Crimea, Asia Minor, Syria, Persia, Armenia, and near
Lenkoran.^ As we advance westward in the south of
Europe, the wild, indigenous nature of the plant becomes
more and more doubtful. There is uncertainty even in
France. In the north and east the plant appears to be
" naturalized in hedges and on walls," ^ or " subspon-
taneous," escaped from former cultivation.* In Provence
and Languedoc it is more spontaneous or wild, but here
also it may have spread from a somewhat extensive

' Grisebach, Flora of British West-India Islands.

* Bertoloni, Flora Italica, ii. p. 146 ; Decaisne, Rechercl>es sur la
Garance, p. 68; Boissier, Flora Orientalis, iii. p. 17; Ledebciur, Flora
Uossica, ii. p. 405.

* Cosson and Germain, Flore des Environs de Paris, ii. p. 365.

* Kirschleger, Flore d' Alsace, i. p. 359.

42 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

cultivation. In the Iberian peninsula it is mentioned as
"subspontaneous."^ It is the same in the north of Africa.^
Evidently the natural, ancient, and undoubted habitation
is western temperate Asia and the south-east of Europe.
It does not appear that the plant has been found beyond
the Caspian Sea in the land formerly occupied by the
Indo-Europeans, but this region is still little known.
The species only exists in India as a cultivated plant,
and has no Sanskrit name.^

Neither is there any known Hebrew name, while the
Greeks, Romans, Slavs, Germans, and Kelts had various
names, which a philologist could perhaps trace to one
or two roots, but which nevertheless indicate by their
numerous modifications an ancient date. Probably the
wild roots w^ere gathered in the fields before the idea of
cultivating the species was suggested. Pliny, however,
says * that it was cultivated in Italy in his time, and it
is possible that the custom Vv^as of older date in Greece
and Asia Minor.

The cultivation of madder is often mentioned in
French records oi the Mi<ldle Ages.^ It was afterwards
neglected or abandoned, until Althen reintroduced it
into the neighbourhood of Avignon in the middle of the
eighteenth century. It flourished formerly in Alsace,
Germany, Holland, and especially in Greece, Asia Minor,
and Syria, whence the exportation was considerable ; but
the discovery of dyes extracted from inorganic substances
has suppressed this cultivation, to the great detriment of
the provinces wdiich drew large profits from it.

Jerusalem Artichoke — Hcliantkus tuberosus, Linnreus.

It was in the year 1616 that European botanists first
mentioned this Composite, with a large root better
adapted for the food of animals than of man. Columna ^
had seen it in the garden of Cardinal Farnese, and called
it Aster peruanus tuberosus. Other authors of the same

' Winkotnm and Lanpe, Prodromus Florae Hispanicce, ii. p. 307.
« Ball, SpicUe'jium Florae Maroccartce, Tp. 483; Munby, Catal. Plant.
Alger., edit. 2, p. 17.

» Fiddinston, Jnd<fa). * Plinin=, lib. 19, cap. 3.

' Do Gasparin, Traits d' Agriculture, iv. p. 253.
• Columna, Ecphrasis, ii. p. 11.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 43

century gave it epithets showing that it was believed to
come irom Brazil, or from Canada, or from the Indies,
that is to say, America. Linnaeus^ adopted, on Parkinson's
authority, the opinion of a Canadian origin, of which,
however, he had no proof I pointed out formerly ^ that
there are no species of the genus Helianthus in Brazil,
and that they are, on the contrary, numerous in North
America.

Schlechtendal,^ after having proved that the Jeru-
salem artichoke can resist the severe winters of the
centre of Europe, observes that this fact is in favour of
the idea of a Canadian origin, and contrary to the belief
of its coming from some southern region. Decaisne*
has eliminated from the synonymy of H. tuherosus
several quotations which had occasioned the belief
in a South American or Mexican origin. Like the
American botanists, he recalls what ancient travellers
had narrated of certain customs of the aborigines of the
Northern States and of Canada. Thus Champlain, in
1603, had seen, "in their hands, roots which they cul-
tivate, and which taste like an artichoke." Lescarbot ^
speaks of these roots with the artichoke flavour,
which multiply freely, and which he had brought back
to France, where they began to be sold under the
name of topinamhaiix. The savages, he says, call them
chiquehi. Decaisne also quotes two French horticulturists
of the seventeenth century, Colin and Sagard, who
evidently speak of the Jerusalem artichoke, and say it
came from Canada. It is to be noted that the name
Canada had at that time a vague meaning, and compre-
hended some parts of the modern United States. Gookin,
an American writer on the customs of the aborigines,
says that they put pieces of the Jerusalem artichoke into
their soups.^

' Linnsens, Hortus Cliffortianus, p. 420.

' A. de Candolle, Geogr. Bot. Raisonnce, p. 824.

» Schlechtendal, Bot. 'Zeit. 1858, p. 113.

* Decaisne, Eecherches sur I'Origine de quelques-tines de nos Plantes
Alimenfaires, in Fl(yre des Serres et Jardiihi, vol. 23, 1881, p. 112.

* Lescarbot, Uistoire de la NouveUe France, edit. 3, 1618, t. vi. p. 931.

* Pickering, Chron. Arravg., pp. 749, 972.

H ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Botanical analogies and the testimony of con-
tempoi'aries agree, as we have seen, in considering this
plant to be a native of the north-east of Amsrica. Dr.
Asa Gray, seeing that it is not found wild, had formerly
supposed it to be a variety o^ H. doronicoides of Lamarck,
but he has since abandoned this idea (American Journal
of Science, 1883, p. 224). An author gives it as wild in
the State of Indiana.^ The French name tojnnamhour
comes apparently from some real or supposed Indian
name. The English name Jerusalem artichoke is a cor-
ruption of the Italian girasole, sunflower, combined with
an allusion to the artichoke flavour of the root.

Salsify — Tragopogon jporrifolmm, Linnseus.

The salsify was more cultivated a century or two ago
than it is now. It is a biennial composite, found wild
in Greece, Dalmatia, Italy, and even in Algeria.^ It
frequently escapes from gardens in the west of Europe,
and becomes half-naturalized.^

Commentators* give the name Tragopogon (goat's
beard) of Theophrastus sometimes to the modern species,
sometimes to Tragopogon crocifolium, which also grows
in Greece. It is difficult to know if the ancients culti-
vated the salsify or gathered it wild in the country. In
the sixteenth century Olivier de Serres says it was a
new culture in his country, the south of France. Our
word Salsifis comes from the Italian Sassefrica, that
which rubs stones, a senseless term.

Scorzonera — Scorzonera hisjxmica, Linnseus.

Tills plant is sometimes called the Spanish salsify,
from its resemblance to Tragopogon porrifolium ; but
its root has a brown skin, whence its botanical name,
and the popular name e'corce noire in some French
provinces.

It is wild in Europe, from Spain, where it abounds, the

' Catalogue of Indiana Plants, 1881, p. 15.

* Boissier, Ft. Orient, iii. p. 745; Viviani, Fl. Dalmaf., ii. p. 108;
Bertoloni, Fl. Ital, viii. p. 348; Gussone, Si/nopsis Fl. Siculce, ii. p. 384;
Munby, Catal. Alger., edit. 2, p. 22.

* A. de Candolle, Geogr. Bot. liaisonn^e, p. 671.

* Fraas, Synopsis Fl. Class., p. 196 ; Lenz, Bot. der Alten, p. 485.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 45

south of France, and Germany, to the region of Cau-
casus, and perhaps even as far as Siberia, but it is wanting
in Sicily and Greece.^ In several parts of Germany the
.species is probably naturalized from cultivation.

It seems that this plant has only been cultivated
v/ithin the last hundred or hundred and fifty years.
The botanists of the sixteenth century speak of it as
a wild species introduced occasionally into botanical
gardens. Olivier de Serres does not mention it.

It was formerly supposed to be an antidote against
the bite of adders, and was sometimes called the viper's
plant. As to the etymology of the name Scorzonera, it is
so evident, that it is difficult to understand how early
writers, even Tournefort,^ have declared the origin of the
word to be escorso, viper in Spanish or Catalan. Viper
is in Spanish more commonly vihora.

There exists in Sicily a Scorzonera deliciosa, Gussone,
whose very sugary root is used in the confection of
bonbons and sherbets, at Palermo.^ How is it that its
cultivation has not been tried ? It is true that I tasted
at Naples Scorzonera ices, und found them detestable, but
they were perhaps made of the common species {Scorzo-
nera hispanica).

Potato — Solanum tuberosum, Linnaeus.

In 1855 I stated and discussed what was then known
about the origin of the potato, and about its introduction
into Europe.* I will now add the result of the researches
of the last quarter of a century. It will be seen that the
data formerly acquired have become more certain, and that
several somewhat doubtful accessory questions have
remained uncertain, though the probabilities in favour
of what formerly seemed the truth have grown stronger.
V It is proved beyond a doubt that at the time of the
discovery of America the cultivation of the potato was

> Willkomm and Lange, Prodromus Florm Hispanicw, ii. p. 223;
De Candolle, Flore Franqaise, iv. p. 59 ; Koch, Syyiopsis Fl. Germ., edit.
2, p. 488; Ledebour, Fl. Ross., ii. p. 794; Boissier, Fl. Orientalis, iii. p.
767; Bertoloni, Fl.,Ital., viii. p. 365.

* Tournefort, Elements de Bofanique, p. 379.
' Gassone, Synopsis Florae Siculce.

* A. de Candolle, GSogr. Bot. Raisonnde, pp. 810, 816.

tG OIUGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

practised, with every appearance of ancient usage, in
the temperate regions extending from Chili to New
Granada, at altitudes varying with the latitude. ' This
appears from the testimony of all the early travellers,
among whom I shall name Acosta for Peru,^ and Pedro
Cieca, quoted by de I'Ecluse,^ for Quito.

In the eastern temperate region of South America,
on the heights of Guiana and Brazil, for instance, the
potato was not known to the aborigines, or if they
were acquainted with a similar plant, it was Solanum
Commersonii, which has also a tuberous root, and is
found wild in Montevideo and in the south of Brazil.
The true potato is certainly now cultivated in the latter
country, but it is of such recent introduction that it has
received the name of the English Batata.^ According to
Humboldt it was unknown in Mexico,* a fact confirmed
by the silence of subsequent authors, but to a certain
degree contradicted by another historical fact. It is said
that Sir Walter Raleigh, or rather Thomas Herriott, his
companion in several voyages, brought back to Ireland,
in 1585 or 1586, some tubers of the Virginian potato.^
Its name in its own country was oj^enaick. From
Herriott's description of the plant, quoted by Sir Joseph
Banks,^ there is no doubt that it was the potato, and not
the batata, which^ at that period was sometimes con-
founded with it, Z' Besides, Gerard' tells us that he
received from Virginia the potato which he cultivated
in his garden, and of which he gives an illustration
which agrees in all points with Solanum tuherosmn.
He was so proud of it that he is represented, in his
portrait at the beginning of the work, holding in his
hand a flowering branch of this plant.

' Acosta, p. 1G3, verso.

* Do I'Ecluse (or Clusius), Bariarum Plantarum Historice, 1601, lib.
4:. p. Ixxix., with illustration.

* De Martius, Flora Brat^il., vol. x. p. 12.

* Von Hnmboldt, Nouvelle Espagne, edit. 2, toI. ii. p. 451 j Essai sur la
G^rirjraphie des Plantes, p. 29.

* At that epoch Virginia was not distinguished from Carol'na.

* Banks, Trails. Hort. Soc, 1805, vol. i. p. 8.

' Gerard, Herbal, 1597, p. 781, with illustration.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 47

'( The species could scarcely liave been introduced into
Virginia or Carolina in Raleigh's time (1585), unless the
ancient Mexicans had possessed it, and its cultivation
had been diffused among the aborigines to the north of
Mexico. Dr. Roulin, who has carefully studied the works
on North America, has assured me that he has found
no signs of the potato in the United States before the
arrival of the Europeans. Dr. Asa Gray also told me so,
adding that Mr. Harris, one of the men most intmiately
acquainted with the language and customs of North
American tribes, was of the same opinion. I have read
nothing to the contrary in recent publications, and we
must not forget that a plant so easy of cultivation
would have spread itself even among nomadic tribes, had
they possessed it. It seems to me most likely that some
inhabitants of Virginia — perhaps English colonists —
received tubers from Spanish or other travellers, traders
or adventurers, during the ninety years which had elapsed
since the discovery of America. Evidently, dating from
the conquest of Peru and Chili, in 1535 to 1585, many
vessels could have cairied tubers of the potato as pro-
visions, and Sir Walter Raleigh, making war on the
Spaniards as a privateer, may have pillaged some vessel
which contained them. This is the less improbable, since
the Spaniards had introduced the plant into Europe
before 1585.

Sir Joseph Banks ^ and DunaP were right to insist
upon the fact that the potato was first introduced by the
Sjjaniard, since for a long time the credit was generally
given to Sir Walter Raleigh, who was the second intro-
ducer, and even to other Englishmen, who had introduced,
not the potato but the batata (sweet potato), which is
more or less confounded with it.^ VA celebrated botanist,
de I'Ecluse,* had nevertheless defined the facts in a

> Banks, Trans. Hort. Soc, 1805, voL i. p. 8.

' Dunal, Hist. Nat. des Solarium, in 4to.

' The plant imported by Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake
was c'early the sweet potato, Sir J. Banks says ; whence it results that
the questions discussed by Humboldt touching the localities visited by
these travellers do not apply to the potato.

♦ De I'Eclase, Rarlarum Plantarum Historia, 1601, lib. 4, p. Ixxviii.

48 OHIGIN OF CUI-TIVATED PLANTS.

reniai^kable manner. It is he who published the first
good description and illustration of the potato, under the
significant name of Papas Peruanorum. From what he
says, the species has little changed under the culture
of nearly three centuries, for it yielded in the beginning
as many as fifty tubers of unequal size, from one to
two inches long, irregularly ovoid, reddish, ripening in
November (at Vienna). The flower was more or less
pink externally, and reddish within, with five longi-
tudinal stripes of green, as is often seen now. No doubt
numerous varieties have been obtained, but the original
form has not been lost. De I'Ecluse compares the scent
of the flower with that of the lime, the only difference
from our modern plant. He sowed seeds which produced
a white-flowered variety, such as we sometimes see now.
The plants described by de I'Ecluse were sent to him
in 1588, by Philippe de Sivry, Seigneur of Waldheim and
Governor of Mons, who had received them from some
one in attendance on the papal legate in Belgium. De
I'Ecluse adds that the species had been irxtroduced into
Italy from Spain or America (certivin est vel ex Hispania,
vel ex America hahuisse), and he wonders that, although
the plant had become so common in Italy that it was
eaten like a turnip and given to the pigs, the learned
men of the University of Padua only became acquainted
with it by means of the tuber which he sent them from
Germany. Targioni ^ has not been able to discover any
proof that the potato was as widely cultivated in Italy
at the end of the sixteenth century as de I'Ecluse
asserts, but he quotes Father Magazzini of Vallombrosa,
whose posthumous work, published in 1G23, mentions the
species as one previously brought, without naming the
date, from Spain or Portugal by barefooted friars. It
was, therefore, towards the end of the sixteenth or at the
beginning of the seventeenth century that the cultivation
of the potato became known in Tuscany. Independently
of what de I'Ecluse and the agriculturist of Vallombrosa

' Targioni-Tozzetti, Lezzioni, ii. p. 10 ; Cenni Storiii sulV Introduziove
di Varie Plants nelV Ajricoltura di Toscaiia, 1 vol. iu 8vo, Floreuce, 1S53,
p. 37.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 49

say of its introduction from the Iberian peninsula, it is
not at all likely that the Italians had any dealings with
Raleigh's companions.

No one can doubt that the potato is of American
origin ; but in order to know from what part of that
vast continent it was brought, it is necessary to know
if the plant is found wild there, and in what localities.

To answer this question clearly, we must first remove
two causes of error : the confusion of allied species of the
genus Solanum with the potato ; and the other, the
mistakes made by travellers as to the wild character
of the plant.

The allied species are Solanum Commersonii of
Dunal, of which I have already spoken; S. inaglia
of Molina, a Chili species; S. immite of Dunal, a
native of Peru ; and >S'. verrttcosum ^ of Schlechtendal,
which OTows in IMexico. These three kinds of Solanum
have smaller tubers than S. tuberosum, and differ also
in other characteristics indicated in special works on
botany. Theoreticall}", it may be believed that all these,
and other forms growing in America, are derived from a
single eailier species, but in our geological epoch they
present themselves with differences which seem to me to
justify specific distinctions, and no experiments have
proved that by crossing one with another a product
would be obtained of which the seed (not the tubers)
would propagate the race. Leaving these more or less
doubtful questions of species, let us tiy to ascertain
whether the common form of Solanum tuberosum has been
found wild, and merely remark that the abundance of
tuberous solanums growing in the temperate regions of
America, from Chili or Buenos Ay res as far as Mexico, con-
firms the fact of an American origin. If we knew nothing
more, this would be a strong presumption in favour of
this country being the original home of the potato.

The second cause of error is very clearly explained

* Solanum. verrucosum, whose introduction into the neighbourhood
of Gex, near Geneva, I mentioned in 1855, has since been abandoned
because its tubers are too small, and because it does not, as it was hoped,
withstand the potato-fungus.

50 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

by the botanist Weddell,^ who has carefully explored
Bolivia and the neighbouring countries. " When we
reflect/' he says, " that on the arid Cordillera the Indians
often establish their Httle plots of cultivation on points
which would appear almost inaccessible to the great
majority of our European farmers, we understand that
when a traveller chances to visit one of these cultivated
plots, long since abandoned, and finds there a plant of
Solanum tuberosum which has accidentally persisted, he
gathers it in the belief that it is really wild ; but of this
there is no proof."

We come now to facts. These abound concerning the
wild character of the plant in Chili.

In 1822, Alexander Caldcleugh,^ English consul,
sent to the London Horticultural Society some tubers of
the potato which he had found in the ravines round
Valparaiso. He sa3^s that these tubers are small, some-
times red, sometimes yellowish, and rather bitter in taste.^
" I believe," he adds, " that this plant exists over a great
extent of the littoral, for it is found in the south of
Chili, where the aborigines call it maglia!' This is
probably a confusion with >S^. maglia of botanists ; but
the tubers of Valparaiso, planted in London, produced
the true potato, as we see from a glance at Sabine's
coloured figure in the Transactions of the Horticultural
Society. The cultivation of this plant was continued
for some time, and Lindley certified anew, in 1847, its
identity with the common potato.^ Here is the account
of the Valparaiso plant, given by a traveller to Sir
William Hooker.^ "I noticed the potato on the shore
as far as fifteen leagues to the north of this town, and to
the south, but I do not know how far it extends. It

' Clitoris. Andina, in 4to, p. 103.

* Sabine, Trans. Hort. Soc, vol. v. p. 24-9.

' No importance should be attached to this flavonr, nor to the watery
quality of some of the tubers, since in hot countries, even in the south
of Europe, the potato is often poor. The tubers, which are subter-
ranean ramifications of the stem, are turned green by exposure to tJio
light, and are rendered bitter.

* Journal Hort. Soc, vol. iii. p. 66.

* Hooker, Botanical Miscellajiies, 1S31, vol. ii. p. 203.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 51

groY/s on cliffs and hills near the sea, and I do not
remember to have seen it more than two or three leagues
from the coast. Although it is found in mountainous
places, far from cultivation, it does not exist in the
immediate neighbourhood of the fields and gardens where
it is planted, excepting when a stream crosses these en-
closures and carries the tubers into unculti^'ated places."
The potato described by these two travellers had white
flowers, as is seen in some cultivated European varieties,
and like the plant formerly reared by de I'Ecluse. We
may assume that this is the natural colour of the species,
or at least one of the most common in its wild state.

Darwin, in his voyage in the Beagle, found the potato
growing wild in great abundance on the sand of the
sea-shore, in the archipelago of Southern Chili, and
growing with a remai'kable vigour, which may be attri-
buted to the damp climate. The tallest plants attained
to the heic^ht of four feet. The tubers were small as a
rule, thouffh one of them was two inches in diameter.
They were watery, insipid, but with no bad taste when
cooked. " The plant is undoubtedly wild," says the
author,^ "and its specific identity has been confii-med
fii'st by Henslow, and afterwards by Sir Joseph Hooker
in his Flora Antarctica?'

A specimen in the herbarium collected by Claude
Gay, considered by Dunal to be Sclanum tuberosum,
bears this inscription : " From the centre of the Cordilleras
of Talcagouay, and of Cauquenes, in places visited only
by botanists and geologists." The same author, Gay, in
his Flora Chilena,^ insists upon the abundance of the
Avild potato in Chili, even among the Araucanians in the
mountains of Malvarco, where, he says, the soldiers of
Pincheira used to go and seek it for food. This evidence
sufficiently proves its wild state in Chili, so that I may
omit other less convincing testimony — for instance, that
of Molina and Meyen, whose specimens from Chili have
not been examined.

The climate of the coast of Chili is continued upon

* Journal of the Voyage, etc., edit. 1852, p. 285.
» Vol. i. part 2, p. 329. * VoL v. p. 74.

52 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

the heights as we follow the chain of the Andes, and the
cultivation of the potato is of ancient date in the tem-
perate regions of Peru, but the wild character of the
species there is not so entirely proved as in the case of
(Jliili.^ Pavon declared he found it on the coast at
Chancay, and near Lima. The heat of these districts
seems very great for a species which requires a temperate
or even a rather cold climate. Moreover, the specimen
in Boissier's herbarium, gathered by Pavon, belongs, ac-
cording to Dunal,^ to another species, to which he has
given the name of S. iinmite. I have seen the authentic
specimen, and have no doubt that it belongs to a species
distinct from the 8. tuberosum. Sir W. Hooker ^ speaks
of McLean's specimen, gathered in the hills round Lima,
without any information as to whether it was found wild.
The specimens (more or less wild) which Matthews sent
from Peru to Sir W. Hooker belonfx, accordino; to Sir
Joseph/ to varieties which differ a little from the true
potato. Mr. Hemsley,^ who has seen them recently in
the herbarium at Kew, believes them to be " distinct
forms, not more distinct, however, than certain varieties
of the species."

Weddell,^ whose caution in this matter we already
know, expresses himself as follows: — "I have never
found Solammi tuberosum in Peru under such circum-
stances as left no doubt that it was indigenous; and I
even declare that I do not attach more belief to the wild
nature of other plants found scattered on the Andes
outside Chili, hithei-to considered as indigenous."

On the other hand, M. Ed. Andr^'' collected with
great care, in two elevated and wild districts of Columbia,
and in another near Lima, specimens which he believed
he might attribute to >S'. tuberosum. M. Andre has been
kind enough to lend them to me. I have compared
them attentively with the types of Dunal's species in

' Ruiz and Pavon, Flora Peruviana, ii. p. 38.

* Dunal, Prodromus, xiii., sect. i. p. 22.

' Hooker, Bat. iliscelL, ii. * Hooker, Fl. Antarctica,

* Journal Hort. Soc, new series, toI. v.

* Weddell, Chloris Andina, p. 103.

' Andre, in Illustraiion UortiroJe, 1877, p. 114.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR TEEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 53

my herbarium and in that of M. Boissier, None of
these Solanacese belong, in my opinion, to S. tuberosum,
although that of La Union, near the river Cauca, comes
nearer than the rest. None — and this is yet more certain
— answers to S. immite of Dunal, They are nearer to
S. columbianuvi of the same author than to 8. tuberosum,
or S. immite. The specimen from Mount Quindio presents
a singular characteristic — it has pointed ovoid berries.^

In Mexico the tuberous Solanums attributed to
S. tuberosum,, or, according to Hemsley,^ to allied forms,
do not appear to be identical with the cultivated plant.
They belong to S. Fendleri, which Dr. Asa Gray con-
sidered at first as a separate species, and afterwards^
as a variety of S. tuberosum or of S. verrucosum.

We may sura up as follows : —

1. The potato is wild in Chili, in a form which is
still seen in our cultivated plants.

2. It is very doubtful whether its natural home
extends to Peru and New Granada.

3. Its cultivation was diffused before the discovery
of America from Chili to New Granada.

4. It was introduced, probably in the latter half of
the sixteenth century, into that part of the United
States now known as Virginia and North Carolina.

5. It was imported into Europe between 1580 and
1585, first by the Spaniards, and afterwards by the
English, at the time of Raleigh's voyages to Virginia.*

Batata, or Sweet Potato — Convolvulus batatas, Ldn-
nseus; Batatas cdulis, Choisy.

The roots of this plant, swelled into tubers, resemble
potatoes, whence it arose that sixteenth-century navi-
gators applied the same name to these two very different
species. The sweet potato belongs to the Convolvulus
family, the potato to the Solanum family ; the fleshy

' The form of the berries in S. columhiamim and S. immite is not yet
known.

* Hemsley, Journal JTort. Soc, new series, vol. v.

* Asa Gray, Synoptical Flora of North America, ii. p. 227.

* See, for the successive introduction into the different parts of
Europe, Clos, Quelques Documents sur I'Histoire de la Pomme da
Terre, in 8vc, 1874, in Journal d'Agric. Pratiq. du Midi de la France.

54 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

parts of the former are roots, those of the latter subter-
i-anean branches.^ The sweet potato is sugary as well
as farinaceous. It is cultivated in all countries within
or near the tropics, and perhaps more in the new than
in the old world.^

Its orio^in is, accardino: to a ofreat number of authors,
doubtful. Humboldt,^ Meyen,^ and Boissier^ hold to its
American, Boyer,^ Choisy,' etc., to its Asiatic origin. The
same diversity is observed in earlier works. The question
is the more difficult since the Convolvulacese is one of the
most widely diffused families, either from a very early
epoch or in consequence of modern transportation.

There are powerful arguments in favour of an
American origin. The fifteen known species of the
genus Batatas are all found in America ; eleven in that
continent alone, four both in America and the old
world, with possibility or probability of transportation.
The cultivation of the common sweet potato is widely
diffused in America. It dates from a very early epoch.
Marco^raff ^ mentions it in Brazil under the name of
jetica. Humboldt says that the name camote comes
from a Mexican word. The word Batatas (whence comes
by a mistaken transfer the word potato) is given as
American. Sloane and Hughes^ speak of the sweet
potato as of a plant much cultivated, and having several
varieties in the West Indies. They do not appear to
suspect that it had a foreign origin. Clusius, who was
one of the first to mention the sweet potato, saj^s he had
eaten some in the south of Spain, where it was supposed
to have come from the new world.^" He quotes the

' Turpin gives figures •which clearly show these facts. Mdm. du
Museum, vol. xis. plates 1, 2, 5.

* Dr. Sagot gives interesting details on the method of cultivation,
the product, etc., in the Journal Soc. d'Hortic, de France, second series,
vol. V. pp. 450—158.

» Humboldt, Koiivelle Espagne, edit. 2, vol. ii. p. 470.

* Meyen, Grundrisse Pjlanz. Geogr., p. 373.

* Boissier, Voyage Botanique en Espagne.

* Boyer, Hort. Maurit., p. 225. ^ Choisy, in Prodromua, p. 33S,

* Marcgraff, Bres., p. IG, with illustration.

» Sloane, Hist. Jam., i. p. 150 j Hughes, Barb., p. 22S.
'• Clusius, Hist., ii. p. 77.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 55

names Batatas, camotes, aniotes, ajes} which were foreign
to the languages of the old world. The date of his
book is IGOl. Humboldt'^ says that, according to
Goraara, Christopher Columbus, when he appeared for
the first time before Queen Isabella, offered her various
productions from the new world, sweet potatoes among
others. Thus, he adds, the cultivation of this plant was
already common in Spain from the beginning of the six-
teenth century. Oviedo,^ writing in 1526, had seen the
sweet potato freely cultivated by the natives of St.
Domingo, and had introduced it himself at Avila, in Spain.
Rumphius * says positively that, according to the general
opinion, sweet potatoes were brought by the Spanish
Americans to Manilla and the Moluccas, whence the
Portuguese diffused it throughout the Malay Archipelago.
He quotes the popular names, which are not Malay, and
which indicate an introduction by the Castillians.
Lastly, it is certain that the sweet potato was unknown
to the Greeks, Romans, and Arabs ; that it was not
cultivated in Egypt even eighty years ago,^ a fact which
it would be hard to explain if we supposed its origin to
be in the old world.

On the other hand, there are arguments in favour of an
Asiatic origin. The Chinese Encyclopcedia of Agricul-
ture speaks of the sweet potato, and mentions different
varieties ; ^ but Bretschneider '^ has proved that the
species is described for the first time in a book of the
second or third century of our era. According to
Thunberg,^ the sweet potato was brought to Japan by
the Portuguese. Lastly, the plant cultivated at Tahiti,
in the neighbouring islands, and in New Zealand, under
the names uinara, giiraarra, a,nd giiinaUa, described by
Forster^ under the name of Convolvulus cicrysorldzus, is,

* J Jes was a name for the yam (Humboldt, Nouvelle Espagne).

* Humboldt, ihid.

3 Oviedo, Ramusio's translation, vol. iii. pt. 3.

* Rumphius, Ainhoin., v. p. 368.
5 Forskal, p. 54 ; Delile, III.

« D'Hervey Saint-Denys, Rech. siir VAgric. des Chin., 1850, p. 109.
' Study and Value of Chinese Botanical Worlcs, p. 13.

* Thunberg, Flma Japon., p. 8J-. » Forster, Plantce EscuL, p. 5G.

5G ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

according to Sir Joseph' Hooker, the sweet potato.^
Secmann^ remarks that these names resemble the
Quichuen name of the sweet potato in America, which is,
he says, cumar. The cultivation of the sweet potato be-
came general in Hindustan in the eighteenth century.^
Several popular names are attributed to it, and even,
according to Piddington,* a Sanskrit name, ruJdalu,
which has no analog}^ with any name known to me, and
is not in Wilson's Sanskrit Dictionary. According to a
note given me by Adolphe Pictet, riildalu seems a
Bengalee name composed from the Sanskrit alii (RuJda
plus dlu, the name of Arum campanulatum). This
name in modern dialects designates the yam and the
potato. However, Wallich^ gives several names omitted
by Piddington. Roxburgh ^ mentions no Sanskrit name.
Rheede '' says the plant was cultivated in Malabar, and
mentions common Indian names.

The arguments in favour of an American origin seem
to me much stronger. If the sweet potato had been
known in Hindustan at the epoch of the Sanskrit
language it would have become diffused in the old world,
since its propagation is easy and its utility evident. It
seems, on the contrarj^, that this cultivation remained
long unknown in the Sunda Isles, Egypt, etc. Perhaps
an attentive examination might lead us to share the
opinion of Meyer,^ who distinguished the Asiatic plant
from the American species. However, this author has
not been generally followed, and I suspect that if there is
a different Asiatic species it is not, as Meyer believed,
the sweet potato described by Rumphius, which the
latter says was brought from America, but the Indian
plant of Roxburgh.

Sweet potatoes are grown in Africa ; but either the
cultivation is rare, or the species are different. Robert
Brown ^ says that the traveller Lockhardt had not seen

' Hooker, HandhooTc of New Zealand Flora, p. 194.

* Seeaiaim, Journal of Bot., 1866, p. 328.

» Roxburgh, edit. Wall., ii. p. 69.' * riddingtoii, Index.

» Wallich, Flora Ind. • Roxburgb, edit. 1832, vol. i. p. 483.

' Hhcede, MuL, vii. p. 95. • Meyer, PriiJiitice Fl. Esscq., p. lU3.

* li. Brown, Bot. Congo, p. 55.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 57

the sweet potato of whose cultivation the Portuguese
missionaries make mention. Thonning ^ does not name it.
Vogel brought back a species cultivated on the western
coast, which is certainly, according to the authors of
the Flora Nigritiana, Batatas panictdata of Choisy. It
was, therefore, a plant cultivated for ornament or for
medicinal purposes, for its root is purgative.^ It might
1)0 supposed that in certain countries in the nld or new
world Ipomcea tuherosa, L., had been confounded with
the sweet potato; but Sloane^ tells us that its enormous
roots are not eatable.*

Ijwmma rnammosa, Choisy (Convolvulus Tnaminosus,
Loureiro ; Batata fnammosa, Rumphius), is a Convol-
vulaceous plant with an edible root, which may well be
confounded with the sweet potato, but whose botanical
character is nevertheless distinct. This species grows
wild near Amboyna (Rumphius), where it is also culti-
vated. It is prized in Cochin-China.

As for the sweet potato (Batatas edidis), no botanist,
as far as I know, has asserted that he found it wild him-
self, either in India or America.^ Clusius ^ affirms upon
hearsay that it grows wild in the new world and in the
neicrhbouring islands.

In spite of the probability of an American origin,
there remains, as we have seen, much that is unknown
or uncertain touchins: the original home and the trans-
port of this species, which is a valuable one in hot coun-
tries. Whether it was a native of the new or of the
old world, it is difficult to explain its transportation
from America to China at the beginning of our era, and

' Schumaclier and Thonning, Beslc. Guin.

* Wallicli, in Roxbm-o:h, Fl. Inch, ii. p. 63.
' Sloane, Jam., i. p. 152.

* Several Convolvulaceas have larp^e roots, or more properly root-
stocks, but in this case it is the bape of the stem with a part of the root
which is swelled, and this root-stock is always purgative, as in the Jalap
!ind Turbitb, while in the sweet potato it is the lateral roots, a different
organ, which swell.

• No. 701 of Schomburgh, coll. 1, is wild in Guiana. According
to Choisy, it is a variety of the Batatas edidis; according to Bentham
(Hook, Jour. Bot., v. p. 352), of the Batatas paniculata. My specimen,
svhich is rather imperfect, seems to me to be different from both.

• Clusias, Hist., ii. p. 77.

58 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

to the South Sea Islands at an early epoch, or from Asia
and from Australia to America at a time sufficiently
remote for its cultivation to have been early diffused
from the Southern States to Brazil and Chili, We must
assume a prehistoric communication between Asia and
America, or adopt another "hypothesis, which is not in-
applicable to the present case. The order Convolvidacece is
one of those rare families of dicotyledons in which certain
species have a widely extended area, extending even to
distant continents.^ A species which can at the present
day endure the different climates of Virginia and Japan
may well have existed further north before the epoch of
the great extension of glaciers in our hemisphere, and
prehistoric men may have, transported it southward
when the climatic conditions altered. Accordinor to
this hypothesis, cultivation alone preserved the species,
unless it is at last discovered in some spot in its ancient
habitation — in Mexico or Columbia, for instance.^

Beetroot — Beta vulgaris and B. maritwia, Linnaeus ;
Beta vulgaris, Moquin.

This plant is cultivated sometimes for its fleshy root
(red beet), sometimes for its leaves, which are used as a
vegetable (white beet), but botanists are generally agreed
in not dividing the species. It is known from other
examples that plants slender rooted by nature easily
become fleshy rooted from the effects of soil or cultivation.

The slender-rooted variety grows wild in sandy soil,
and especially near the sea in the Canary Isles, and all
along the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea, and as far as
the Caspian Sea, Persia, and Babylon,^ perhaps even as

' A. de CandoUe, G^ogr. Bot. Raisonnd, pp. 1041-1043, and pp.
510-51 8.

^ Dr. Bretscbneider, after liavinjj read the above, wrote to me from
Pekin that the cultivated sweet potato is of origin foreign to China,
according to Chinese authors. The handbook of agriculture of Nung.
chang-tsuan-shu, whose author died in 1(133, asserts this fact. He
speaks of a sweet potato wild in China, called chu, the cultivated species
being han-chu. The Min-shu, published in the sixteenth century, says
that the introduction took place between 1573 and 1G20. The American
origin thus receives a further proof.

* Moquin-Tandon, in Prodromus, vol. xiii. pt. 2, p. 55; Boissier,
Flora Ofientalis, iv. p. 898; Ledcbour, Fl. Rosnica, iii. p. 692.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOE THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 59

far as the west of India, whence a specimen was brought
by Jaqnemont, although it is not certain that it was
growing wild. Roxburgh's Indian flora, and Aitchison's
more recent flora of the Punjab and of the Sindh, only
mention the plant as a cultivated species.

It has no Sanskrit name,^ whence it may be inferred
that the Aryans had not brought it from western tem-
perate Asia, where it exists. The nations of Aiyan race
v/ho had previously migrated into Europe probably did
not cultivate it, for I find no name common to the Indo-
European languages. The ancient Greeks, who used the
leaves and roots, called the species teutlioii;^ the Romans,
beta. Heldreich^ gives also the ancient Greek name
sevkle, or sfekelie which resembles the Arab name selg,
silq,^ among the Nabatheans. The Arab name has passed
into the Portuguese selga. No Hebrew name is known.
Everything shows that its cultivation does not date from
more than three or four centuries before the Christian era.

The red and white roots were known to the ancients,
but the number of varieties has greatly increased in
modern times, especially since the beetroot has been
cultivated on a large scale for the food of cattle and for
the production of sugar. It is one of the plants most
easily improved by selection, as the experiments of
Vilmorin have proved.^

Manioc — Manihot utilissima, Pohl ; Jatroi>ha ina-
nihot, Linnseus.

The manioc is a shrub belonging to the Euphorbia
family, of which several roots swell in their first year ;
they take the form of an irregular ellipse, and contain
a fecula (tapioca) with a more or less poisonous juice.

It is commonly cultivated in the equatorial or tropical
regions, especially in America from Brazil to the West
Indies. In Africa the cultivation is less general, and seems
to be more recent. In certain Asiatic colonies it is

' Roxburgh, Flora Indira, ii. p. 59 ; PiddingtoD, Index.

* Theophrastus and Dioscorides, quoted by Lenz, Bntanih der Grie-
chen und Romer, p. 446; Fraas, Synopsis Fl. Class., p. 233.

' Heldreich, Die Nutzpjlanzen Griechenlands, p. 22.

* Alawam, Agriculture nabatheen7ie, from E. Meyer, Geschichte der
Botanik, iii. p. 75.

* Notice swr V Amelioration des Plantes par le Semis, p. 15.

GO ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

flecidedly of modern introduction. It is propagated Ly
budding.

Botanists are divided in opinion whether the innu-
merable varieties of manioc should be regarded as form-
ing one, two, or several dilierent species. Polil ^ admitted
several besides his Manihot utilissima, and Dr. Miiller,^
in his monograph on the EuphorbiacefP, places the variety
aipi in an allied species, 31. 'pahnata, a plant cultivated
with the others in Brazil, and of which the root is not
poisonous. This last character is not so distinct as might
be believed from certain books and even from the asser-
tions of the natives. Dr. Sagot,^ who has compared a
dozen varieties of manioc cultivated at Cayenne, says
expressly, " There are maniocs more poisonous than
others, but I doubt whether any are entirely free from
noxious principles."

It is possible to account for these singular differences
of properties in very similar plants b}^ the example of
the potato. The Manihot and Solanum tuheroswni
both belong to suspected families {Euphorhiacece and
Sulanaceai). Several of their species are poisonous in
some of their organs ; but the fecula, wherever it is
found, is never harmful, and the same holds good of
the cellular tissue, freed from all deposit ; that is to say,
reduced to cellulose. In the preparation of cassava, or
manioc flour, great care is taken to scrape the outer skin
of the root, then to pound or crush the fleshy part so as
to express the more or less poisonous juice, and finally
the paste is submitted to a baking which expels tlie
volatile parts.^ Tapioca is the pure fecula without the
mixture of the tissues which still exist in the cassava.
In the potato the outer pellicle contracts noxious quali-
ties when it is allowed to become green by exposure to
the light, and it is well known that unripe or diseased
tubers, containing too small a propertion of fecula with

' Pohl, PJantai~uvi Brasilice Icones et Descriptiovef!. in fol., vo\. i.

* J. Jliiller, in Prodromus, xv., sect. 2, x>P- 10(>2-10G4.
» Sagot, Bull, de la Soc. Bof. de France, Dec. 8, 1871.

* I give the essentials of the preparation ; the details vary accorJing
to the country. See on this head: Aublet, Guyane, ii. p. 67; De-
courtilz, Flora des Antilles, iii. p. 113; Sagot, etc.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 61

inucli sap, are not good to eat, and would cause positive
hann to persons who consumed any quantity of them.
All potatoes, and probably all maniocs, contain something
harmful, which is observed even in the products of dis-
tillation, and which varies with several causes ; but only
matter foreio-n to the fecula should be mistrusted.

The doubts about the number of species into which
the cultivated manihots should be divided are no source
of difficulty regarding the question of geographic origin.
On the contrary, we shall see that they are an important
means of proving an American origin.

The Abbe Raynal had formerly spread the erroneous
opinion that the manioc was imported into America from
Africa. Robert Brown ^ denied this in 1818, but without
giving reasons in support of his opinion ; and Humboldt,^
Moreau de Jonnes,^ and Saint Hilaire * insisted upon its
American origin. It can hardly be doubted for the
following reasons : —

1. Maniocs were cultivated by the natives of Brazil,
Guiana, and the warm region of Mexico before the arrival
of the Europeans, as all early travellers testify. In the
West Indies this cultivation was, according to Acosta,^
common enough in the sixteenth century to inspire the
belief that it was also there of a certain antiquity.

2. It is less widely diffused in Africa, especially in
resfions at a distance from the west coast. It is known
that manioc was introduced into the Isle of Bourbon by
the Governour Labourdonnais.^ In Asiatic countries,
where a plant so easy to cultivate would probably have
spread had it been long known on the x\.frican continent,
it is mentioned here and there as an object of curiosity
of foreign origin.'

' E. Brown, Botany of the Congo, p. 50.

* Humboldt, Nouvelle Espagne, edit. 2, vol. ii. p. 398.
' Hist, de I' Acad, des Sciences, 1824.

* Guillemin, Archives de Botanique, i. p. 239.

* Acosta, Hist. Nat. des Indes, French trans., 1598, p. 163.

* Thomas, Statistique de Bourbon, ii. p. 18.

' The catalogue of the botanical, wardens of Bnitenzorg, 1806, p. 222,
says expressly that the Manihot utili.'i.'iitna comes from Bourbon and
America.

62 ORIGIN CF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

3. The natives of America had several ancient na,mes
for the varieties of manioc, es])ecially in Brazil,^ which
does not appear to have been the case in Africa, even on
the coast of Guinea.^

4. The varieties cultivated in Brazil, in Guiana, and
in the West Indies are very numerous, whence we may
presume a very ancient cultivation. This is not the case
in Africa.

5. The forty-two known species of the genus Manihot,
without counting M. utilissima, are all wild in America ;
most of them in Brazil, some in Guiana, Peru, and
Mexico; not one in the old world.^ It is very unlikely that
a single species, and tha,t the cultivated one, was a native
both of the old and of the new woi-ld, and all the more so
since in the family Euphorbiacece the area of the woody
species is usually restricted, and since phanerogamous
plants are very rarely common to Africa and America.

The American origin of the manioc being thus
established, it may be asked how the species has been
introduced into Guinea and Congo. It was probably
the result of the frequent communications established in
the sixteenth century by Portuguese merchants and
slave-traders.

The ManiJiot utilissima and the allied species or
variety called a?pi, which is also cultivated, have not
been found in an undoubtedly wild state. Humboldt
and Bonpland, indeed, found upon the banks of the
Magdalena a plant of Manihot utilissima which they
called almost wild,^ but Dr. Sagot assures me that it has
not been found in Guiana, and that botanists who have
explored the hot region in Brazil have not been more
fortunate. We gather as much from the expressions
of Pohl, who has carefully studied these plants, and who
was acquainted with the collections of ]\lartius, and had

* Aypi, wa/ndioca, manihot, manioch, ynca, etc., in Pohl, Icones and
Desc, i. pp. 30, 33. Martius, Beit rage z. Ethiwr/niphic, etc., Brazilien^,
ii. p. 122, f^ves a immLer of names.

* Thonuiugf (in Schumacher, Besk. Guin.), who is accustomed to
quote the common names, gives nond for tlie manioc.

* J. Miillcr, in Prod nun u.i, xv., eect. 1, p. 1057.

* Kunrb, in Humboldt and B„ Nova Genera, ii. p. 108.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOK THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 63

no doubt of their American origin. If he had observed
a wild variety identical with those which are cultivated,
he would not have suggested the hypothesis that the
manioc is obtained from his Manihot pusilla'^ of the
province of Goyaz, a plant of small size, and considered
as a true species or as a variety of Manihot palmata.^
Martins declared in 1867, that is after havinsf received a
quantity of information of a later date than his journey,
that the plant was not known in a wild state.^ An early
traveller, usually accurate, Piso,* speaks of a wild mandi-
Jtoca, of which the Tapuyeris, the natives of the coast
to the north of Rio Janeiro, ate the roots. "It is," he
says, " very like the cultivated plant ; " but the illustra-
tion he gives of it appears unsatisfactory to authors who
have studied the maniocs. Polil attributes it to his
21. aipi, and Dr. Miiller passes it over in silence. For
my part, I am disposed to believe what Piso says, and
his figure does not seem to me entirely unsatisfactory.
It is better than that by Vellozo, of a wild manioc which
is doubtfully attributed to M. aipi.^ If we do not
accept the origin in eastern tropical Brazil, we must
have recourse to tv.'"o hypotheses : either the cultivated
maniocs are obtained from one of the wild species
modified by cultivation, or they are varieties which
exist only by the agency of man after the disappearance
of their fellows from modern wild vegetation.

Garlic — Allium sativunn, Linnieus.

Linnreus, in his Species Plantamm, indicates Sicily
as the home of the common garlic ; but in his Hortiis
Clijfortianus, v.'here he is usually more accurate, he does
not give its origin. The fact is that, according to all the
most recent and complete floras of Sicily, Italy, Greece,
France, Spain, and Algeria, garlic is not considered to be
indigenous, although specimens have been gathered here
and there which had more or less the appearance of

' Pohl, Icones et Descr., i. p. 3fi, pL 2fi. * Miiller, in Prodromus.

' De Martius, Beitrdge zur EthnograpJde, etc., i. pp. 19, 138.
* Piso, Historia Naturalis Braziliw, in folio, 1658, p. 55, cum icone.
^ Jatropia Sylvestris Veil. Fl. Flum., 16, t. 83. See Miiller, in
D. C. Prodromus, xv. p. 1033.

64 OrJGIN OV CULTIVATED PLANTS.

being so. A plant so constantly cultivated and so easily
propagated may spread from gardens and persist for a
considerable time without being wild by nature. I do
not know on what authority Kunth ^ mentions that the
species is found in Egypt. According to authors who are
more accurate^ in their accounts of the plants of that
country, it is only found there under cultivation. Boissier,
whose herbarium is so rich in Eastern plants, possesses
no wild specimens of it. The only country where garlic
has been found in a wild state, with the certainty of its
really being so, is the desert of the Kirghis of Sungari ;
bulbs were brought thence and cultivated at Dorpat,^
and specimens were afterwards seen by RegeL* The
latter author also says that he saw a specimen which
Wallich had gathered as wild in British India ; but
Baker,^ who had access to the rich herbarium at Kew,
does not speak of it in his review of the "AUiiuns of
India, China, and Japan."

Let us see whether historical and philological records
confirm the fact of an origin in the south-west of Siberia
alone.

Garlic has been long cultivated in China under the
name of suan. It is written in Chinese by a single sign,
which usually indicates a long known and even a wild
species.^ The floras of Japan ' do not mention it, whence
I gather that the species was not wild in Eastern Siberia
and Dahuria, but that the Mongols brought it into
China.

According to Herodotus, the ancient Egyptians made
great use of it. Archaeologists have not found the proof
of this in the monuments, but this may be because the
plant was considered unclean by the priests.^

' KuTjfli, Eiriim., iv. p. 381.

* Solnveinfurth and Ascherson, Aufzahlunrj, p. 29-4.

• Ledebour, Flora Altaica, ii. p. 4; Flora Hvssica, iv. p. 162.

♦ Kegel, Allior. Monogr., p. 41'.

» Baker, in Journnl of Bot., 187-4, p. 295.

* Bretschiieider, Study and Vahie, etc., pp. 15, 4, and 7.

' Thunberg, Fl. Jap. ; Franchet and Savatier, Fnumeratio, 1876,
vol. ii.

• Unger, PJlanzen def: Alien JEgyptens, p. 42.

PLANTS CULTIVATI.D FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS, 65

There is a Sanskrit name, mahoiishouda} become
loshoun in Bengali, and to wliich appears to be related
the Hebrew name schouni or schumin,^ which has pro-
duced the Ai'ab thoum or toiiin. The Basque name hara-
tchouria is thought by de Charencey ^ to be allied with
Aryan names. In support of- his hypothesis I may
add that the Berber name, tiskert, is quite different, and
that consequently the Iberians seem to have received the
plant and its name rather from the Aryans than from
their probable ancestors of Northern Africa. The Lettons
call it A;i2JZo/i/i:s,tlieEsthonians krunslauk,vi'hence probably
the German Knoblauch. The ancient Greek name appears
to have been scorodon, in modern Greek scordon. The
names given by the Slavs of Illyria are bili and cesan.
The Bretons say qidnen,^ the Welsh craf, cenhinnen, or
(farlleg, whence the English garlic. The Latin allium
has passed into the languages of Latin origin.^ This
great diversity of names intimates a long acquaintance
with the plant, and even an ancient cultivation in
Western Asia and in Europe. On the other hand, if the
species has existed only in the land of the Kirghis, where
it is now found, the Aryans might have cultivated it and
carried it into India and Europe ; but this does not
explain the existence of so many Keltic, Slav, Greek,
and Latin names which differ from the Sanskrit. To
explain this diversity, we must suppose that its original
abode extended farther to the west than that known at
the present day, an extension anterior to the migrations
of the Aryans.

If the genus Allium were once made, as a whole, the
object of such a serious study as that of Gay on some

* Piddington, Index.

■ Hiller, Hierophyton ; Rosenraiillpr, Eiil. Alferthum, vol. IT.
" De Charencey, Actes de la Soc. Phil., 1st March, 1869.

* Davies, Welsh Botaywlogy.

* All these common names are found in my dictionary compiled by
Moritzi from floras. I could have quoted a lararer numlaer, and men-
tioned the probable etymologies, as given by philologists — Hehn, for
instance, in his Kulturpflanzen aus Asien, p. 171 and following; but
this is not necessary to show its origin and early cultivation in several
different countrieB.

GQ OEIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

of its species,^ perhaps it might be found that certain
wild Eiu-o})ean forms, included by authors under A.
arenarium, L., A. arenarium, Sm., or^. scorodoprasum,
L., are only varieties of A. sativum. In that case every-
thing would agree to show that the earliest peoples of
Europe and Western Asia cultivated such form of the
species just as they found it from Tartary to Spain,
iriving it names more or less different.

Onion — Allium Cepa, Linnaeus.

I wall state first what w^as known in 1855 ;^ I will
then add the recent botanical observations which confirm
the inferences fi'om philological data.

The onion is one of the earliest of cultivated species.
Its original country is, according to Kunth, unknown.^
Let us see if it is possible to discover it. The modern
Greeks call Allium Cepa, which they cultivate in
abundance, kronimunda} This is a good, reason for be-
lieving that the krommuon of Theophrastus ^ is the same
species, as sixteenth-century Avriters already supposed.^
Pliny' translated the word by cmpa. The ancient Greeks
and Romans knew several varieties, which they distin
guished by the names of countries : Cyprium, Cretense,
Samothraciae, etc. One variety cultivated in Egypt ^ was
held to be so excellent that it received divine honours,
to the great amusement of the Romans.^ Modern
Egyptians designate A. Cepa by the name of basal ^^ or
hussul,^^ whence it is probable that the hezalim of the
Hebrews is the same species, as commentators have said.^^
There are several distinct names — pcdandu, latarJM, sa-
Icandala,^^ and a number of modern Indian names. The
species is commonly cultivated in India, Cochin-China,

' Anvales des Sc. Nat., 3rcl series, vol. viii.

' A. de CandoUe, Ge'ogr. B<>t. Raisonnde, ii. p. 823.

* Kunth, Enumer., iv. p. 394.

* Fraas, Syn. Fl. Clas.'^., p. 291.

* Theophrastus, Hist., 1. 7, c. 4.

* J. Banhin, Hist., ii. p. 548. ^ Pliny, Hist., 1. 19, c. 6. * Hid.

* Juvenalis, Sat. 15. '* Forskal, p. 65.
" Ainslie's Mat. Med. Ind., i. p. 269.

" Hiller, Hieroph., ii. p. 3o; Rosenmiillcr, Handhk. Bibl. Alterk., iv,
p. 96.

•* Piddington, Index ; Ainslie's Mat. Med. Ind.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 67

China,* and even in Japan.^ It was largely consumed
by the ancient Egyptians. The drawings on their
monuments often represent this species.^ Thus its
cultivation in Southern Asia and the eastern region of
the Mediterranean dates from a very early epoch. More-
over, the Chinese, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin
names have no apparent connection. From this last fact
we may deduce the hypothesis that its cultivation was
begun after the separation of the Indo-European nations,
the species being found ready to hand in different
countries at once. This, however, is not the present state
of things, for we hardly find even vague indications of
the wild state of A. Cepa. I have not discovered it
in European or Caucasian floras ; but Hasselquist ^ says,
"It grows in the plains near the sea in the environs of
Jericho." Dr. Wallich mentioned in his list of Indian
plants, No. 5072, specimens which he saw in districts of
Bengal, without mentioning whether they were cultivated.
This indication, however insuflicient, together with the
antiquity of the Sanskrit and Hebrew names, and the
communication which is known to have existed between
the peoples of India and of Egypt, lead me to suppose
that this plant occupied a vast area in Western Asia,
extending perhaps from Palestine to India. Allied species,
sometimes mistaken for A. Cepa, exist in Siberia.^

The specimens collected by Anglo-Indian botanists, of
which Wallich gave the first idea, are now better known.
Stokes discovered Alliuin Cepa wild in Beluchistan.
He says, " wild on the Chehil Tun." Griffith brought
it from Afghanistan and Thomson from Lahore, to say
nothing of other collectors, who are not explicit as to the
wild or cultivated nature of their specimens.^ Boissier
possesses a wildspecimen found inthe mountainous regions
of the Khorassan, The umbels are smaller than in the

' Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., ii. ; Loureiro, Fl. Cochin., p. 249.

« Thnnberg, Fl. Jap., p. 132.

» Unger, Pjlanzen d. AH. Mjxjpt, p. 42, figs. 22, 23, 24!.

* Hasselquist, Voy. and Trav., p. 279.

* Ledebour, Fl. Rossica, iv. p. 169.

* Aitchison, J. Catalogue of the Plants of the Punjab and the Sindh,
in Svo, 1869, p. 19; Baker, in Journal of Bot., 1874, p. 295.

G8 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

cultivated plant, but there is no other difference. Dr.
Kegel, jun., found it to the south of Kuldscha, in Western
Siberia.^ Thus my former conjectures are completely
justified ; and it is not unlikely that its habitation extends
even as far as Palestine, as Hasselquist said.

The onion is designated in China by a single sign
(pronounced tsung), which may suggest a long existence
there as an indigenous plant.^ I very much doubt, how
ever, that the area extends so far to the east.

Humboldt ^ saj^s that the Americans have always been
acquainted with onions, in Mexican xonacatl. "Cortes,"
he says, " speaking of the comestibles sold at the market
of the ancient Tenochtillan, mentions onions, leeks, and
garlic." I cannot believe, however, that these names
applied to the species cultivated in Europe. Sloane, in
the seventeenth century, had only seen one Alliurti
cultivated in Jamaica {A. Cepa), and that was in a garden
with other European vegetables.* The word xonacatl is
not in Hernandez, and Acosta^ says distinctly that the
onions and garlics of Peru are of European origin. The
species of the genus Allium are rare in America.

Spring, or Welsh Onion — Allium fistulosum, Linn?eus.

This species was for a long time mentioned in floras
and works on horticulture as of unknown origin ; but
Russian botanists have found it wild in Siberia towards
the Altai mountains, on the Lake Baikal in the land of
the Kirghis." The ancients did not know the plant.' It
must have come into Europe through Russia in the
Middle Ages, or a little later. Dodoens,^ an author of
the sixteenth century, has given a figure of it, hardly
recognizable, under the name of Cepa oblonga.

Shallot — Allium ascalonicum, Linnreus.

It was believed, according to Pliny ,^ that this plant

» lU. Hortlc, 1877, p. 167.

* Bretscliueider, Study and Value, etc., pp. 47 and 7.

* Nouvelle Espagne, 2nd edit., ii. p. 47t).

* Sloane, Jam., i. p. 75.

* Acosta, Hist. Nat. des Indes, French trans., p. 1C5.

* Lcdebour, Flora liossira, iv. p. 169.

' Lenz, Botanik. der Alten Griechen uvd Bomer, p. 295.

" Dodoens, Pewptades, p. 687. » Pliuy, Hist., 1. 19, c. f^.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 69

took its name from Ascalon, in Judaea; but Dr. Foiirnier^
thinks that the Latin author mistook the meaning of the
word Ashdonion of Theophrastus. However this may-
be, the word has been retained in modern languages under
the form oiechalote in French, chalote in Spanish, scalogno
in Italian, Aschalvxh or Esddauch in German.

In 1855 I had spoken of the species as follows : ^ —
"According: to Roxburirh,^ Allium ascalonicum is
much cultivated in India. The Sanskrit name pulandu
is attributed to it, a word nearly identical with palandu,
attributed to A. Cepa} Evidently the distinction be-
tween the two species is not clear in Indian or Anglo-
Indian works.

" Loureiro says he saw Allium asccdonicum cul-
tivated in Cochin-China,^ but he does not mention
China, and Thunberg does not indicate this species in
Japan. Its cultivation, therefore, is not universal in the
east of Asia. This fact, and the doubt al)Out the Sanskrit
name, lead me to think that it is not ancient in Southern
Asia. Neither, in spite of the name of the species, am I
convinced that it existed in Western Asia. Rauwolf,
Forskal, and Delile do not mention it in Siberia, in Arabia,
or in Eg3^pt. Linnreus ^ mentions Hasselquist as having
found the species in Palestine. Unfortunately, he gives
no details about the locality, nor about its wild condition.
In the Travels of Hasselquist '^ I find a Cepa montana
mentioned as OTOwino^ on Mount Tabor and on a neighbour-
ing mountain, but there is nothing to prove that it was
this species. In his article on the onions and garlics of
the Hebrews he mentions only Allium, Cepa, then A.
'porruiin and A. sativum. Sibthorp did not find it in
Greece,® and Fraas ^ does not mention it as now cultivated

' He will treat of tliis in a publication entitled Cibaria, which will
shortly appear.

^ Ge'og. Bot. Raisonnee, p. 829.

» Roxburgh, Fl. Ind.; edit. 1S32, vol. ii. p. 142.

* Piddington, Index.

* Loureiro, Fl. Cochin., p. 251.

• Linnaeus, Species, p. 429.

^ Hasselqiiis", Voy. and Trav., 17C6, pp. 281, 282.

• Sibthorp, Prodr. » Fraas, S'jn. Fl. Class., p. 291.

70 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

in that country. According to Koch/ it is naturalized
among the vines near Fiume. However, Viviani^ only
speaks of it as a cultivated plant in Dalmatia.

" From all these facts I am led to believe that
Allium ascalonicum is not a species. It is enough to
render its primitive existence doubtful, to remark : (1)
that Theophrastus and ancient writers in general have
spoken of it as a form of the Allium Cepa, having the
same importance as the varieties cultivated in Greece,
Thrace, and elsewhere; (2) that its existence in a wild
state cannot be proved ; (3) that it is little cvdtivated,
or not all, in the countries where it is supposed to have
had its origin, as in Syria, Egypt, and Greece ; (4) that
it is commonly without flowers, whence the name of Cepa
sterilis given by Bauhin, and the number of its bulbs is
an allied fact; (5) when it does flower, the organs of the
flower are similar to those of A. Cej)a, or at least no
difference has been hitherto discovered, and according to
Koch ^ the only ditference in the whole plant is that the
stalk and leaves are less swelled, althoucrh fistulous."

Such was formerly my opinion.* The facts published
since 1855 do not destroy my doubts, but, on the contrary,
justify them. Kegel, in 1875, in his monograph of the
genus Allium, declares he has only seen the shallot as a
cultivated species. Aucher Eloy has distributed a plant
from Asia Minor under the name of A, ascalonicum, but
judging from my specimen this is certainly not the
species. Boissier tells me that he has never seen A.
ascalonieum in the East, and it is not in his herbarium.
The plant from the Morea which bears this name in the
flora of Bory and Chaubard is quite a different species,
which he has named A. gomphrenoides. Baker,^ in his
review of the Alliums of India, China, and Japan,
mentions A. ascalonicum in districts of Beno-al and of
the Punjab, from specimens of Griffith and Aitchison ;
but he adds, " They are probably cultivated plants."

' Koch, Syn. Fl. Germ., 2nd edit., p. 833.

* Viviaiii, Fl. Dalimit., p. 138. » Koch, ^[in. Fl. Oemi.

* A. lie Candolle, Gcojr. Bot. Eaisonnee, p. 821).

* Buker, in Journ. 0/ Bot., 187-i, p. 295.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 71

He attributes to A. ascalonicuvi Allium sulvia, Ham.,
of Nepal, a plant little known, and whose wild character
is uncertain. The shallot produces many bulbs, which
may be propagated or preserved in the neighbourhood
of cultivation, and thus cause mistakes as to its origin.

Finally, in spite of the progress of botanical investiga-
tions in the East and in India, this form of Allium has
not been found wild with certainty. It appears to me,
therefore, more probable than ever that it is a modifica-
tion of A. Cepa, dating from about the beginning of the
Christian era — a modification less considerable than many
of those observed in other cultivated plants, as, for
instance, in the cabbage.

Rocambole — Allium scorodojprasum, Linnteus.

If we cast a glance at the descriptions and names
of A. scorodoprasum in works on botany since the
time of Linnaeus, we shall see that the only point on
which authors are aijreed is the common name of rocam-
hole. As to the distinctive characters, they sometimes
approximate the plant to Alliiim sativum, sometimes
retjard it as altogether distinct. With such different
definitions, it is difficult to know in what country the
plant, well known in its cultivated state as the rocambole,
is found wild. According to Cosson and Germain,^ it
grows in the environs of Paris. According to Grenier
and Godron,^ the same form grows in the east of France.
Burnat says he found the species undoubtedly wild in
the Alpes-Maritimes, and he gave specimens of it to
Boissier. Willkomm and Lano-e do not consider it to be
wild in Spain,^ though one of the French names of the
cultivated plant is ail or eschalote d' Espagne. Many
other European localities seem to me doubtful, since the
specific characters are so uncertain. I mention, however,
that, according to Ledebour,'^ the plant which he calls
.1. scorodoprasuvi is very common in Eu-sia from Fin-
land to the Crimea. Boissier received a specimen of it

* Cosson and Germain, Flore, ii. p. 553.

* firenier and Godron, Flore de France, iii. p. 197.
' Willkomm and Lange, Prodr. Fl. Hisp., i. p. 8S5.

* Ledebunr, Flora Rossica, iv. p. 163.

72

OrJGlN OF CULTIVATED rLA>;TS.

from Dobrutscha, sent by the botanist Sintenis. The
natural habitat of the species borders, tlierefore, on that
of AUium sativum, or else an attentive study of all
these forms will show that a single species, comprising
several varieties, extends over a great part of Eurojje and
the bordering countries of Asia.

The cultivation of this species of onion does not
appear to be of ancient date. It is not mentioned by
Greek and Roman authors, nor in the list of plants
recommended by Charlemagne to the intendants of his
gardens.^ Neither does Olivier de Serres speak of it.
We can only give a small number of original common
names among ancient peoples. The most distinctive
are in the North. Skovlog in Denmark, keijje and
rachenholl in Sweden.^ JRockenboUe, w^hence comes the
French name, is German. It has not the meaning given
by Littrd Its etymology is Bolle, onion, growing among
the rocks, Rochen?

Chives — Allium schcenoprasum, Linnreus.

This species occupies an extensive area in the
northern hemisphere. It is found all over Europe, from
Corsica and Greece to the south of Sweden, in Siberia
as far as Kamtschatka, and also in North America, but
only near the Lakes Huron and Superior and further
north ■* — a remarkable circumstance, considering its Euro-
pean habitat. The variety found in the Alps is the
nearest to the cultivated form.^

The ancient Greeks and Romans must certainly have
known the species, since it is wild in Italy and Greece.
Targioni believes it to be the Scorodon schiston of
Theophrastus ; but we are dealing with words without
descriptions, and authors whose specialty is the inter-
pretation of Greek text, like Fraas and Lenz, are prudent
enough to affirm nothing. If the ancient names are
doubtful, the fact of the cultivation of the plant at this
epoch is yet more so. It is possible that the custom of
n-athcrino- it in the fields existed.

> Le Grand d'Anssy, Histoire de la Tic des Franrais, vol. i. p. 122.
» Nomnich, Polyglott. Lexicon, p. 187. * Ibid.

* Asi Gray, Botany of the Northern States, edit 5, p. 534.

• De Candolle, Flore Franfaise, iv. p. 227.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 73

Colocasia — Aruvi esculentum, Linnseus; Colocasia
antiquoruTYi, Schott.^

This species is cultivated in the damp districts of the
tropics, for the swelled lower portion of the stem, which
forms an edible rhizome similar to the subterraneous
part of the iris. The petioles and the young leaves are
also utilized as a vegetable. Since the different forms of
the species have been properly classed, and since we have
possessed more certain information about the floras of
the south of Asia, we cannot doubt that this plant is
wild in India, as Roxburgh ^ formerly, and Wight ^ and
others have more recently asserted ; likewise in Ceylon,^
Sumatra,^ and several islands of the Malay Arcliipelago.*^

Chinese books make no mention of it before a work
of the year 100 B.C.' The first European navigators saw
it cultiv^ated in Japan and as far as the north of New
Zealand,^ in consequence probably of an early introduc-
tion, and without the certain co-existence of wild stocks.
When portions of the stem or of the tuber are thrown
aAvay by the side of streams, they naturalize themselves
easily. This was perhaps the case in Japan and the
Fiji Islands,^ judging from the localities indicated. The
colocasia is cultivated here and there in the W^est Indies,
and elsewhere in tropical America, but much less than
in Asia or Africa, and without the least indication of an
American origin.

In the countries where the species is wild there are
conmion names, sometimes very ancient, totally different
from each other, which confirms their local origin. Thus
the Sanskrit name is kucJtoo, which persists in modern

* Arum Egyptium, Colnmraa, Ecphrasis, ii. p. 1, tab. 1; Rum-
phius, Amhoin, vol. v. tab. 109. Arum colocasia and A. esculenium,
Linnsens ; Colocasia antiquorum, Schott, Jfe?et., i. 18; Eugler, in D. C.
ilonog. Phaner., ii. p. 491.

* Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., iii. p. 495. * Wight, Icones, t. 786.

* Thwaites, Enum. Plant. Zeylan., p. 335.

* Miquel, Sumatra, p. 258.

* Rumphius, Amhoin, vol. v. p. 318.

' Bretschneider, On the Stiuly and Value, etc., p. 12.

* Forster, De Plantis Escul., p. 58.

* Franchet and Savatier, Emun., p. 8; Seemann. Flora Viiicr^sis,
p. 28 i.

74 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Hindu languages — in Bengali, for instance.^ In Ceylon
the wild plant is styled gakala, the cultivated plant
kandallaJ^ The Malay names are kelacbjj^ tallus, taUa>t,
tales, or taloes,^ from which perhaps comes the well-
known name of the Otahitans and New Zealanders — tallo
or tarro^ dalo^ in the Fiji Islands. The Japanese have
a totally distinct name, imo^ which shows an existence
of lonor duration either indiojenous or cultivated.

European botanists first knew the colocasia in Egypt,
where it has perhaps not been very long cultivated. The
monuments of ancient Egypt furnish no indication of
it, but Pliny ^ spoke of it as the Aruim Mjyptiuin.
Prosper Alpin saw it in the sixteenth century, and
speaks of it at length.^ He says that its name in its
country is culcas, which Delile^'' writes qolkas, and
koulkas. It is clear that this Arab name of the
Egyptian arum has some analogy with the Sanskrit
kuchoo, which is a confirmation of the hypothesis,
sufficiently probable, of an introduction from India or
Ceylon. Da I'Ecluse ^^ had seen the plant cultivated in
Portugfal, as introduced from Africa, under the name
alcoleaz, evidently of Arab origin. In some parts of the
south of Italy, where the plant has become naturalized,
it is, according to Parlatore, called aro di Egitto}^

The name colocasia, given by the Greeks to a plant
of which the root was used by the Eg3'ptiaus, may
evidently come from colcas, but it has been transferred
to a plant differing from the true colcas. Indeed,
Dioscorides applies it to the Egyptian bean, or neliiinho}^
which has a large root, or rather rhizome, rather stringy

» Roxburgh, Fl. Ind.

* Thwaites, Enum. J'lant. Zeylan. ' Rnmphins, Amhoin,

* Miquel, Sumatra, p. 258; Hasskarl, Cat. Tlorti Bfnjur. A'fer., p. 55.

* Forster, De Plantls Escul., p. 58. * Soeniaun, Flora Vitiensia.
' Fratichet and Savatier, Enum. * I'linv, Hist.j 1. 19, c. 5.

* Alpiims, Hist. Mjypt. Naturalif!, edit. 2, vol. i. p. 166; ii. p. 192.

" Delile, Fl. J:J<jypt. 111., -p. 2S;' De la Colocase des Anciens, in Svo,
1846.

*• Clusius, His'oria, ii. p. 75. '* Parlatore, Fl. Ital., ii. p. 255.

** Prosper Alpiiius, Hist. .Egypt. Naturalis ; Coluinna ; Delile, j4h>i.
du Mtis., i. p. 375; De la Coloca.fe des Anrieiis ; Roj'iiier, Ecoiiomie des
Egyptiens, p. 321.

Pl.ANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 7o

and not good to eat. The two plants are very different,
especially in the flower. The one belongs to the Aracece,
the other to the NymphceacecB ; the one belongs to the
class of Monocotyledons, the other to that of the Dico-
iyledons. The nelumbo of Indian origin has ceased to
grow in Egypt, while the colocasia of modern botanists
lias persisted there. If there is any confusion, as seems
probable in the Greek authors, it must be explained by
the fact that the colcas rarely flowers, at least in Egypt.
From the point of view of botanical nomenclature, it
matters little that mistakes were formerly made about
the plants to which the name colocasia should be applied.
Fortunately, modern scientific names are not based upon
the doubtful definitions of the ancient Greeks and
Romans, and it is suflScient to say now, if the etymology
is insisted upon, that colocasia comes from colcas in
consequence of an error.

Ape, or Large-rooted Alocasia — Alocasia macrorrhiza,
Schott; Arum maerorrJtizum , Linnaeus.

This araceous plant, which Schott places now in the
genus Colocasia, now in the Alocasia, and whose names
are far more complicated than might be supposed from
those indicated above,-' is less frequently cultivated than
the common colocasia, but in the same manner and nearly
in the same countries. Its rhizomes attain the length
of a man's arm. They have a distinctly bitter taste,
which it is indispensable to remove by cooking.

The aborigines of Otahiti call it ape, and those of
the Friendly Isles happed In Ceylon, the common name
is hahara, according to Thwaites.^ It has other names
in the Malay Archipelago, which argues an existence
prior to that of the more recent peoples of these
regions.

The plant appears to be wild, especially in Otahiti.*
It is also wild iu Ceylon, according to Thwaites, who has
studied botany for a long time in that itsland. It is

' See Engler, in D. C. Monographic^ Phanerogarum, ii. p. 502.

• Forster, De Plantis Esculentis Insularum Oceani Australis, p. 58.'
» Thwaites, Enum. PI. Zeyl., p. 336.

* Nadeaud, Enum. des Flantcs LndijeneSf p. 40.

76 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

mentioned also in India ^ and m Australia,^ but its wild
condition is not affirmed — a fact always difficult to
establish in the case of a species cultivated on the banks
of streams, and which is propagated by bulbs. More-
over, it is sometimes confounded with the Colocasia
indica of Kunth, which grows in the same manner, and
is found here and there in cultivated ground ; and this
species grows wild, or is naturalized in the ditches and
streams of Southern Asia, although its history is not yet
well known.

Konjak — Amoiyhojihallus Konjah, Koch ; A'nior-
phophallus Rivieri, du llieu, var. Koiijah, Engler.^

The konjak is a tuberous plant of the family
Aracese, extensively cviltivated by the Japanese, a culture
of which Vidal has given full details in the Bulletin de
la Societe d' Acdimatatlon of July, 1877. It is consi-
dered by Engler as a variety of AmorphoiAallus llivieri,
of Cochin-China, of which horticultural pei'iodicals
have given several illustrations in the last few years.*
It can be cultivated in the south of Europe, like the
dahlia, as a curiosity ; but to estimate the value of the
bulbs as food, they should be prepared with lime-water,
in Japanese fashion, so as to ascertain the amount of
fecula which a given area will produce.

Dr. Vidal gives no proof that the Japanese plant is
wild in that country. He supposes it to be so from the
meaning of the common name, which is, he says, konni-
yakou, or yainagonniyakou, yama meaning "mountain."
Franchet and Savatier^ have only seen the plant in
gardens. The Cochin-China varietv, believed to belono-
to the same species, grows in gardens, and there is no
proof of its being wild in the country.

Yams— Dioscorea sativa, D. batatas, D. jajionica,
and D. alata.

The yams, monocotyledonous plants, belonging to

1 Engler, in D. C. Monog. Phaner.

* Bentliam, Flora Austr., viii. p. 155.

^ En'j:ler, in D. C Monogr. Phaner., vol. ii. p. 313.

* Gardener's Chronicle, 1873, p. 610 ; Flore des Se^fes et Jardins,
t. 1958, 1959; Hooker, lk>t. Mag., t. 6195.

* Francliet and Savatier, Enwn. P;. Japoviw, ii. p. 7.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 77

the family Dioscoridece, constitute the genus Dloscorea,
of which botanists have described about two hundred
species, scattered over all tropical and sub-tropical
countries. They usually have rhizomes, that is, under-
ground stems or branches of stems, more or less fleshy,
which become larger when the annual, exposed part of
the plant is near its decay.^ Several species are culti-
vated in different countries for these farinaceous rhizomes,
which are cooked and eaten like potatoes.

The botanical distinction of the species has always
presented difficulties, because the male and female flowers
are on difl'erent individuals, and because the characters
of the rhizomes and the lower part of the exposed stems
cannot be studied in the herbarium. The last complete
work is that of Kunth,^ published in 1850. It requires
revision on accovint of the number of specimens brought
home by travellers in these last few years. Fortunately,
with regard to the origin of cultivated species, certain
historical and philological considerations will serve as
a guide, without the absolute necessity of knowing and
estimatino- the botanical characters of each.

Roxburgh enumerates several Dloscorece^ cultivated
in India, but he found none of them wild, and neither
he nor Piddington ^ mentions Sanskrit names. This last
point argues a recent cultivation, or one of originally
small extent, in India, arising either from indigenous
species as yet undefined, or from foreign species culti-
vated elsewhere. The Bengali and Hindu generic name
is alu, preceded by a special name for each species or
variety ; kam alu, for instance, is Dloscorea alata. The
absence of distinct names in each province also argues
a recent cultivation. In Ceylon, Thwaites ^ indicates
six wild species, and he adds that D. sativa, L., i). alata,

• M. Saprot, Bull, de la Sne. Bot. de France, 1871, p. 306, has well
described the growth and cultivation of yams, as he has studied them in
Cayenne.

^ Knnth, Enumeratin, vol. v.

* The83 are D. glolosi, alata, riibella , fasciculat/i, purpurea, of which
two or three appear to be merely varieties.

♦ Piddington, Index.

0 Thwaites, Enum. Plant. Zeyl., p. 326.

78 OrjGlN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

L., and D. 'purpurea, Roxb., are cultivated in gardens,
but are not found wild.

The Chinese yam, D'loscorea hafatas of Dccaisne,^
extensively cultivated by the Chinese under the name
of Sain-ill, and introduced by M. de Montigny into
European gardens, where it remains as a luxury, has
not hitherto been found wild in China. Other less-
known species are also cultivated by the Chinese,
especially the chou-yu, tou-tchou, chan-yu, mentioned
in their ancient works on agriculture, and which has
spherical rhizomes (instead of the pyriform spindles of
the B. batatas). The names mean, according to Stanis-
las Julien, mountain arum, whence we may conclude
the plant is really a native of the country. Dr.
Bretschneider ^ gives three Dioscorece as cultivated in
China (D, batatas, alata, sativa), adding, " The Dioscorea
is indigenous in China, for it is mentioned in the oldest
work on medicine, that of the Emperor Schen-nung."

Dioscorea japonica, Thunberg, cultivated in Japan,
has also been found in clearings in various localities,
but Franchet and Savatier^ say that it is not posi-
tively known to what degree it is wild or has strayed
from cultivation. Another species, more often cultivated
in Japan, gTows here and there in the country according
to the same authors. They assign it to Dioscorea
sativa of Linnaeus; but it is known that the famous
Swede had confounded several Asiatic and American
species under that name, which must either be al)an-
doned or restricted to one of the species of the Indian
Archipelago. If we choose the latter course, the true
D. sativa would be the plant cultivated in Ceylon with
which Linna3us was acquainted, and which Thwaites
calls the D. sativa of Linnaeus. Various authors admitted
the identity of the Ceylon plant with others cultivated
on the Malabar coast, in Sumatra, Java, the Philippine
Isles, etc. Blume '^ asserts that D. sativa, L., to which

* Decaisne, Histoire et Cnlture de I'Ljname de Chine, in the Berne
norticnle, 1st July and Dec. 1853 ; Flore des Serves et Jardins, x. pi. 971.

^ On the Study and Value, etc., p. 12.

3 Franchet and Savatier, Emim. riant. Japonice, ii. p. 47.

* Blunie, Enum. Plant. Javw, p. 22.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 79

he attributes pi. 51 in Rheede's Hortiis Malabaricus, vol.
viii., grows in damp places in the mountains of Java and
of Malabar. In order to put faith in these assertions, it
would be necessary to have carefully studied the question
of species from authentic specimens.

The yam, which is most commonly cultivated in
the Pacific Isles under the name tibi, is the Dioscorea
alata of Linnaeus. The authors of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries speak of it as widely spread in
Tahiti, in New Guinea, in the Moluccas, etc.-^ It is
divided into several varieties, according to the shape of
the rhizome. No one pretends to have found this species
in a wild state, but the flora of the islands whence it
probably came, in particular that of Celebes and of New
Guinea, is as yet little known.

Passing to America, we find there also several species
of this genus growing wild, in Brazil and Guiana, for
instance, but it seems more probable that the cultivated
varieties were introduced. Authors indicate but few culti-
vated species or varieties (Plumier one, Sloane two) and
few common names. The most widely spread is yam,
ignaTue, or inhaine, which is of African origin, according
to Hughes, and so also is the plant cultivated in his time
in Barbados.^

He says that the word yam means "to eat," in several
negro dialects on the coast of Guinea. It is true that
two travellers nearer to the date of the discovery of
America, whom Humboldt quotes,^ heard the word
ignaine pronounced on the American continent : Ves-
pucci in 1497, on the coast of Paria ; Cabral in 1.500, in
Brazil. According to the latter, the name was given to
a root of which bread was made, which would better
apply to the manioc, and leads me to think there must
be some mistake, more especially since a passage from
Vespucci, quoted elsewhere by Humboldt,^ shows the

' Forstcr, Plant. Esculent., p. 56; RuTnpliius, Amhoin, vol. v., pi
120, 121, etc.

^ Hughes, Hist. Nat. Barh., 1750, p. 226.

* Humboldt, Nouvelle Espagne, 2ncl edit., vol. ii. p. 4G8.

♦ Ibid., p. 403.

80 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

confusion he made between tlie manioc and the yam.
i>. Clifortiana, Lam., grows wild in Peiu^ and. in
Brazil,^ but it is not proved to be cultivated. Presl says
verosiviiliter colitur, and the Flora Brasiliensis does
not mention cultivation.

The species chiefly cultivated in French Guiana,
according to Sagot,^ is Lioscorea triloba, Lam., called
Lidian yam, which is also common in Brazil and
the West India Islands. The common name argues a
native origin, whereas another species, D. cayennensis,
Kunth, also cultivated in Guiana, but under the name of
i-icgro-country yam, was most likely brought from Africa,
an opinion the more probable that Sir W. Hooker likens
a yam cultivated in Africa on the banks of the Nun and
the Quorra,^ to D. cayennensis. Lastly, the free yam
of Guiana is, according to Dr. Sagot, D. alata introduced
from the Malay Archipelago and Polynesia.

In Africa there are fewer indigenous Blosconce than
in Asia and America, and the culture of yams is less
widely spread. On the west coast, according to Thon-
ning,^ only one or two species are cultivated ; Lockhardt*^
only saw one in Congo, and that only in one locality.
Bojer'' mentions four cultivated species in Mauritius,
which are, he says, of Asiatic origin, and one, B. hid-
bifera, Lam., from India, if the name be correct. He
asserts that it came from Madagascar, and has spread
into the woods beyond the plantations. In Mauritius
it bears the name Cambare marron. Now, cambare
is something like the Hindu name lann, and marron
(marroon) indicates a plant escaped from cultivation.
The ancient Egyptians cultivated no yams, which aroues
a cultivation less ancient in India than that of the colo-
casia. Forskal and Delile mention no yams cultivated
in Egypt at the ]:)resent day.

To sum up : several JUioscorece wild in Asia (especially

' Hsenke, in Presl, Rel, p. 133. « Martius, Fl. Bras., v. p. 43.

« Sagot, Bull. Soc. hot. France, 1871, p. 3U5.

* Hooker, Fl. Nigrit, p. 53.

* Sehumacher and Tlionning, Besk. Giiin, p. 417.

" Brown, Congo, p. 49. ' Bo^er, Hurtits Mauritianue.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS. 81

in the Asiatic Archipelago), and others less numerous
growing in America and in Africa, have been introduced
into cultivation as alimentary plants, probably more
recently than many other species. This last conjecture is
based on the absence of a Sanskrit name, on the limited
geographical range of cultivation, and on the date, which
appears to be not very ancient, of the inhabitants of the
Pacific Isles.

Arrowroot — Maranta arundinacea, Linnjeus. A
plant of the family of the Scitaminece, allied to the genus
Canna, of which the underground suckers ^ produce the
excellent fecula called arrowroot. It is cultivated in the
West India Islands and in several tropical countries of
continental America. It has also been introduced into
the old world — on the coast of Guinea, for instance.^

Maranta arundinacea is certainly American. Ac-
cording to Sloan e,^ it was brought from Dominica to
Barbados, and thence to Jamaica, which leads us to
suppose that it was not indigenous in the West Indies.
Kornicke, the last author who studied the genus Ma-
i-anta,* saw several specimens which were gathered in
Guadaloupe, in St. Thomas, in Mexico, in Central
America, in Guiana, and in Brazil ; but he did not con-
cern himself to discover whether they were taken from
wild, cultivated, or naturalized plants. Collectors hardly
ever indicate this ; and for the study of the American
continent (excepting the United States) we are unpro-
vided with local floras, and especially with floras made
by botanists residing in the country. In published
works I find the species mentioned as cultivated ^ or
growing in plantations,^ or without any explanation. A
locality in Brazil, in the thinly peopled province of
Matto Grosso, mentioned by Kornicke, supposes an
absence of cultivation. Seemann '^ mentions that the
species is found in sunny spots near Panama.

* See Tussac's description, Flore des Antilles, i. p. 183.

* Hooker, Niger Flora, p. 531.

' Sloane, Jamaica, 1707, voL i. p. 254.

* In Bull. Sac. des Natur. de Moscou, 1822, voL i. p. 34.

» Aublet, Guyane, i. p. 3. ^ Meyer, Flora Essequibo, p. 11.

' Seemann, Bot. of Herald., p. 213.

82 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATiiD PLANTS.

A species is also cultivated in the West Indies, Ma-
raiita indica, which, Tussac says, was brought from the
East Indies. Kornicke believes that M. ramosissima of
Wallich found at Sillet, in India, is the same species,
and thinks it is a variety of 31. arundinacea. Out of
thirty-six more or less known species of the genus
Maranta, thirty at least are of American origin. It is
therefore unlikely that two or three others sliould be
Asiatic. Until Sir Joseph Hooker's Flora of British
India is completed, these questions on the species of the
Scitaminecv and their origin will be very obscure. •

Anglo- Indians obtain arrowi'oot from another plant
of the same family, Curcuma angustifolia, Roxburgh,
which grows in the forests of the Deccan and in Mala-
bar.^ I do not know whether it is cultivated.

• Roxbiirpli, Fl. Ind., i. p. 31; Porter, The Tropical Agiiculturalist,
p. 2-il 3 AiusHc, Materia Medica,i. p. 19.

CHAPTER, 11.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES.

Article I. — Vegetables.

Common Cabbage — Brassica oleracea, Linnpeus.

The cabbage in its wild state, as it is represented in
Eng. Bot., t. 637, tlie Flora Danica, t. 2056, and elsewhere,
is found on the rocks by the sea-shore : (1) in the Isle of
Laland, in Denmark, the island of Heligoland, the south
of England and Ireland, the Channel Isles, and the islands
ort' the coast of Charente Inferieure; ^ (2) on the north
coast of the Mediterranean, near Nice, Genoa, and Lucca.^
A traveller of the last century, Sibthorp, said that he
found it at Mount Athos, but this has not been confirmed
by any modern botanist, and the species appears to be
foreign in Greece, on the shores of the Caspian, as also in
Siberia, where Pallas formerly said he had seen it, and in
Persia.^ Not only the numerous travellers who have
explored these countries have not found the cabbage, but
the winters of the east of Europe and of Siberia appear
to be too severe for it Its distribution into somewhat
isolated places, and in two difierent regions of Europe,
suggests the suspicion either that plants apparently indi-

' Fries, Summa,p 29; Nylander, Conspectus, p. 46 ; Benthnm, Randb.
Brit. FL, edit. 4, p. 40; Mackay, Fl. Uibcrn., p. 28; Brebisson, Fl. de
Normandie, edit. 2, p. 18; BabbiTigton, Primitice Fl. Sarnicai, p. 8;
Clavaud, Flore de la Gironde, i. p. 68.

* Bertoloni, Fl. Ital., vii. p. 146; Nylander, Conspectus.

" Ij«debour, Fl. Ross.; Grleshach, Spicilijiuin J' I. Runiel. ; Boissier,'
llora OvientaHs, etc.
5

84 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

genous may in several cases be tlie result of self-sowing
from cultivation/ or that the species was formerly com-
mon, and is tending to disappear. Its presence in the
western islands of Europe favours the latter hypothesis,
but its absence in the islands of the Mediterranean is
opposed to it.^

Let us see whether historical and philological data
add anything to the facts of geograplucai botany.

In the first place, it is in Europe that the countless
varieties of cabbage have been formed,^ principally since
the days of the artcient Greeks, Theophrastus dis-
tinguished three, Pliny double that number, Tournefort
twenty, De Candolle more than thirty. These modifica-
tions did not come from the East — another sign of an
ancient cultivation in Europe and of a European origin.

The common names are also numerous in European
lanffuaires, and rare or modern in those of Asia. Without
repeating a number of names I have given elsewhere,^ I
shall mention the five or six distinct and ancient roots
from which the European names are derived.

Kap or Imh in several Keltic and Slav names. The
French name cahus comes from it. Its origin is clear Ij^
the same as that of caput, because of the head-shaped
form of the cabbasre.

Caul, kohl, in several Latin (caulls, stem or cabbage),
German (ChSli in Old German, Kohl in modern German,
kaal in Danish), and Keltic languages [Jcaol and kol in
Breton, cat in Irish).^

Bi'esic, hresych, hrasslc, of the Keltic and Latin
(brassica) languages, whence, probably, be rza and verza of
the Spaniards and Portuguese, varza of the Roumanians.^

' Watson, who is careful on these points, doubts whether the cabbigo
is indigenous in England {Compendium of the Ctjbele, p. 103), Out most
authors of British floras admit it to be so.

^ Br. halearica and Br. cretica are perennial, almost woody, not
biennial ; and botanists are agreed in separating them from Br. ohtracea.

' Aug. Pyr. de Candolle has published a paper on the divisions and
«iibdi visions of Br. oleracea (Tran^'actionf; of fhe Hort. Sac, vol. v., trans,
iated into German v.nl in French in the Bibl. Univ. Agric, vol. viii.),
wliich is often quoted.

* A\ph. do Candolle, Ge gr. Bot. Raisonnde, p. 839.

* Ad. Pictet, Les.Ori'jines Indo'Europdennes, edit. 2, vol. i. p 3S0.

* Urandza, Prodr. Fl. Romane, p. 122.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 85

Azci of the Basques (Iberians), considered by de
Charencey^ as proper to the Euskarian tongue, but which
differs little from the preceding.

Krainhai, cramhe, of the Greeks and Latins.

The variety of names in Keltic languages tends to
show the existence of the species on the west coast of
Europe. If the Aryan Kelts had brought the plant from
Asia, they would probably not have invented names
taken from three different sources. It is easy to admit,
on the contrary, that the Aryan nations, seeing the
cabbage wild, and perhaps already used in Europe by
the Iberians or the Ligurians, either invented names or
adopted those of the earlier inhabitants.

Philoloofists have connected the krambai of the
Greeks with the Persian name Jcaramh, karam, kalam,
the Kurdish kalam, the Armenian gaghanih ; ^ others
with a root of the supposed mother-tongue of the Aryans ;
but they do not agree in matters of detail. According to
Fick,^ karanibha, in the primitive Indo-Germanic tongue,
signifies " Gemilsepflanze (vegetable), Kohl (cabbage),
karambha meaning stalk, like caulis." He adds that
karainhha, in Sanskrit, is the name of two vegetables.
Anglo-Indian writers do not mention this supposed
Sanskrit name, but only a name from a modern Hindu
dialect, kopee.'^ Pictet, on his side, speaks of the Sanskrit
word kalamba, " vegetable stalk, ap])lied to the cabbage."

I have considerable difficulty, I must own, in ad-
mitting these Eastern etymologies for the Greco-Latin
word crambe. The meaning of the Sanskrit word (if it
exists) is very doubtful, and as to the Persian word,
we ouo-ht to know if it is ancient. I doubt it, for if the
cabbaoe had existed in ancient Persia, the Hebrews
would have known it.^

For all tliese reasons, the species appears to me of

' De Charencer, Recherches aur les Nonis Basques, in Actes de lo
Socie'te Phihilogique, 1st March, 18H9.

* Ad. Pictet, Les Origines Indo-Europe'ennes, edit. 2, voL i. p. 380,

* Fick, Vorterb. d. Indo-Germ. Sprachen, p. 3-4.

* Piddington, Index; Ainslie, Mat. Med. Ind.

* Rosen uiiiller, Bihl. Alterth., mentiuns no name.

«6 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS

European origin. The date of its cultivation is probably
ver^^ ancient, earlier than the Aryan invasions, but no
doubt the wild plant was gathered before it was cultivated.

Garden-Cress — Lejndium sativum^ Linnaeus.

This little Crucifer, now used as a salad, was valued
in ancient times for certain properties of the seeds. Some
authors believe that it answers to a certain cardomon of
Dioscorides ; while others apply that name to Erucarut
aleppica} ■ In the absence of sufficient description, as the
modern common name is cardamon^ the first of these
two suppositions is probably correct.

The cultivation of the species must date from ancient
times and be widely diffused, for veiy different names
exist: reschad in Arab, turehtezuk^ in P er sia,n, dieges ^ in
Albanian, a language derived from the Pelasgic; without
mentioning names drawn from the similarity of taste
"with that of the water-cress (N^asturtium officinale):
There are very distinct names in Hindustani and
Benoali, but none aie known in Sanskrit.^

At the present day the plant is cultivated in Europe,
in the north of Africa, in Eastern Asia, India, and else-
where, but its origin is somewhat obscure. I possess
several specimens gathered in India, where Sir Joseph
Hooker^ does not consider the species indigenous.
Kotschy brought it back from Karrak, or Karek Island,
in the Persian Gulf The label does not say that it was
a cultivated plant. Boissier ' mentions it without com-
ment, and he afterwards speaks of specimens from Ispahan
and Egypt gathered in cultivated ground. Olivier is
quoted as having found the cress in Persia, but it is not
said whether it was growing wild.^ It has been asserted
that Sibthorp found it in Cyprus, but reference to his
work shows it was in the fields.^ Poech does not mention

' Sec Fraas, ;^y«. FI. Class., pp. 120, 12 i ; Lenz, Bot. der AUev, p. 617.
2 Sibthorp, Frudr. Fl. Grcic, ii. p. 0 ; Heldreicli, Nutzpfl. GriechenL,
]i. 4".

5 Ainslie, Mat. Med. Tnd., i. p. 95. * Heldreicli, Nicfz. Gr.

* Piu(liii<?ton, Index; Ainslie, Mat. Med. Ind., i. p. 95.

* Hook >r, Fl. Brit. Ind., i. p. ICO. ' Boissier, Fl. Orient., vol. i.

* De Candolle, Sysf., ii. p. 533.

* Sibthorp and Smith, I'rodr. Fl. Grae^r, ii. p. G.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 87

it in Cj'prus.^ linger and Kotschy ^ do not consider it
to be wild in that island. According to Ledebour,^ Koch
found it round the convent on Mount Ararat; Pallas
near Sarepta; FaJk on the banks of the Oka, a tributary
of the Volga ; lastly, H. Martins mentions it in his flora of
Moscow ; but there is no proof that it was wild in these
various localities. Lindemann,^ in 1860, did not reckon
the species among those of Russia, and he only indicates it
as cultivated in the Crimea.^ According to Nyman,^ the
botanist Schur found it wild in Transylvania, while the
Austro-Hungarian floras either do not mention the species,
or give it as cultivated, or growing in cultivated ground.

I am led to believe, by this assemblage of more or
less doubtful facts, that the plant is of Persian origin,
vVhence it may have spread, after the Sanskrit epoch,
jito the gardens of India, Syria, Greece, and Egypt, and
even as far as Abyssinia.^

Purslane — Portulaca oleracea, Linnaeus.

Purslane is one of the kitchen garden plants most
widely difl'used throughout the old world from the earliest
times. It has been transported into America,^ where it
spreads itself, as in Europe, in gardens, among rubbish,
by the wayside, etc. It is more or less used as a vege-
table, a medicinal plant, and is excellent food for pigs.

A Sanskrit name for it is known, lonica or loania,
which recurs in the modern languages of India.^ The

' Poecb, Emim. PI. Cypri, 1842.

* Unorer and Kotschy, Inseln Cypern., p. 331.
3 Ledebour, Fl. P.ofs., i. p. 203.

■• Lindemann, Index Plant, in Ross., Bull. Soc. Nat. ITosc. 18G0, rol. xxxiii.

* Lindemann, Prodr. Fl. Cher son, p. 21.

« Nvman, Conspectus Fl. Evrop., 1878, p. 65.
» Schweinfurth, Beitr. Fl. Mh., p. 270.

* In the United States purslane was believed to be of foreign origin
(Asa Gray, Fl. of Northern States, ed. 5 ; Bot. of California, \. p. 79), bat
in a recent publication, Asa Gray and Trumbull give reasons for believing
that it is indigenous in America as in the old world. Columbus had
noticed it at San Salvador and at Cuba ; Oviedo mentions it in St.
Domingo and De Lery in Brazil. This is not the testimony of botanists,
but Nuttall and others found it wild in the upper valley of the Missouri,
in Colorado, and Texas, where, however, from the date, it might have
been inti'oduced. — Author's Note, 1884.

» Piddington, Index to Indian Plants.

88 ORIGIN or CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Greek name andrachne and the Latin portulaca are
very different, as also the group of names, cholza in Per-
sian, Jchursa or koursa in Hindustani, kourfa kara-or in
Arab and Tartar, which seem to be the origin of hurza
noka in Polish, kurj-molia in Bohemian, Kreusel in Ger-
man, without speaking of the Russian name schrucha,.
and some others of Eastern Asia.^ One need not be a
])hilologist to see certain derivations in these names show-
ing that the Asiatic peoples in their migrations trans-
ported with them their names for the plant, but this does
not prove that they transported the jilant itself. They
may have found it in the countries to which they came.
On the other hand, the existence of three or four different
roots shows that European peoples anterior to the Asiatic
migrations had already names for the species, which is
consequently very ancient in Europe as well as in Asia.

It is very difficult to discover in the case of a plant
so widely diffused, and which propagates itself so easily
by means of its enormous number of little seeds, whether
a specimen is cultivated, naturalized by spreading from
cultivation, or really wild.

It .does not appear to be so ancient in the east as in
the west of the Asiatic continent, and authors never say
that it is a wild plant.^ In India the case is very
different. Sir Joseph Hooker says^ that it grows in
India to the height of five thousand feet in the Himalayas.
He also mentions having found in the north-west of
India the variety with upright stem, which is cultivated
together with the common species in Europe. I find
nothing positive about the localities in Persia, but so
many are mentioned, and in countries so little cultivated,
on the shores of the Caspian Sea, in the neighbourhood of
the Caucasus, and even in the south of Russia,* that it
is difficult not to admit that the plant is indigenous in
that central region whence the Asiatic peoples overran

' Nemnich, Polyglot. Lex. Naturgesch., ii. p. 1047.

* Loureiio, Fl. Cochin., i. p. 359 ; Francliet and Savatier, Faum. PI.
Japon., i. p. 53 ; Bcnlliaiii, Fl. Hongkong, p. 127.

* Hooker, Fl. Brit. Ind., i. p. 240.

* Ledebour, Fl. Ross., ii. p. 145 ; Lindemaiin, in Prodr. Fl. Chers., p. 74,
says, " In desertis et arcno^s.s inter Clierson et Btrislaw, circa t'dessara."

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 89

Europe. In Greece the plant is wild as well as culti-
vated.^ Further to the west, in Italy, etc., we begin to
tiud it indicated in floras, but only growing in fields,
gardens, rubbish-heaps, and other suspicious localities.^

Thus the evidence of philology and botany alike show
that the species is indigenous in the whole of the region
which extends from the western Himalayas to the south
of Russia and Greece.

New Zealand Spinacli — Tetragonia expansa, Murray.

This plant was brought from New Zealand at the time
of Cook's famous voj'age, and cultivated by Sir Joseph
Banks, and hence its name. It is a singular plant from a
double point of view. In the first place, it is the only
cultivated species which comes from New Zealand ; and
secondly, it belongs to an order of usually fleshy plants,
the Ficoidece, of which no other species is used. Hor-
ticulturists ^ recommend it as an annual vegetable, of
which the taste resembles that of spinach, but which
bears drought better, and is therefore a resource in
seasons when spinach fails.

Since Cook's voyage it has been found wild chiefly on
the sea coast, not only in New Zealand but also in Tas-
mania, in the south and west of Australia, in Japan, and
in South America.* It remains to be discovered whether
in the latter places it is not naturalized, for it is found
in the neighbourhood of towns in Japan and Chili.^

Garden Celery — Apium graveolens, Linnseus.

Like many Umbellifers which grow in damp places,
wild celery has a wide range. It extends from Sweden to
Algeria, Egypt, Abyssinia, and in Asia from the Caucasus
to Beluchistan, and the mountains of British India.^

> Lenz, Bot. der Alten, p. 632 ; Helclre'cli, FJ. Aliisch. Ehene., p. 483.

* Bertoloni, Fl. It., vol. v. ; Gussone, Fl. Sic, vol. i. ; Moris, Fl. Sard.,
vtl. ii. ; Willkomm and Lange, Prodr. Fl. Hisp., vol. iii.

^ Botanical Magazine, t. 2362; Bon Jardinier, ISSO, p. 567-

■• Sir J. Hooker, Handbook of 'New Zealand Flora, p. Si; Penthari',

Flora Austr alien sis, iii p. 327; Franchet and Savatier, Enum. Plant

JaponicB, i. p. 177.

* CI. Gay, Flora Ohilena, ii. p. 468.

' Fries, Summa Veget. Scavd. ; Mnnhj, Caf^al. Alger.,-p. 11; Boissier,
Fl. Orient., vol. ii. p. 856; Schweinfurth and Ascher^on, Av/zdhlung,
p. 272; Hooker, Fl. Brit. Ind., ii. p. 679.

DO ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

It is spoken of in the Odyssey under the name ot
selinon, and in Theophrastus ; but later, Dioscorides and
Pliny ^ distinguish between the wild and cultivated
celery. In the latter the leaves are blanched, which
greatly diminishes their bitterness. The long course of
cultivation explains the numerous garden varieties. The
one which diti'ers more widely from the wild plant is that
of which the flesh}- root is eaten cooked.

Chervil — Scandix cerefolium, Linna3us; Anthi'iseus
cerefolium, Hoffmann.

Not lonG: ao-o the origin of this little TJmbellif jr, so com-
mon in our gardens, was unknown. Like many annuals,
it sprang up on rubbish-heaps, in hedges, in waste
places, and it was doubted whether it should be con-
sidered wild. In the west and south of Europe it seems
to have been introduced, and more or less naturalized ;
but in the south-east of Russia and in western temperate
Asia it appears to be indigenous. Steven^ tells us that
it is found " here and there in the woods of the Crimea."
Boissier ^ received several specimens from the provinces
to the south of the Caucasus, from Turcomania and the
mountains of the north of Persia, localities of which the
species is probably a native. It is wanting in the floras
of India and the east of Asia.

Greek authors do not mention it. The first mention
of the plant by ancient writers occurs in Columella and
Pliny,^ that is, at the beginning of the Christian era.
It was then cultivated. Piiny calls it ccrefoliurn. The
species was probably introduced into the Greco-Roman
Avorld after the time of Theophrastus, that is in the
course of the three centuries which preceded our era.

Parsley — PetroseUninn sativum., Moench.

This biennial Qmbellifer is wild in the south of Europe,
from Spain to Turkey. It has also leen found at
Tlemcen in Algeria, and in Lebanon.^

' Dioscorides, Mat. Med., \. 3, c. 67, 68; Pliny, Bist., \. 19, c. 7, 8 ;
Lenz, Bot. der Alten Griechen und Romer, p. 5.57.

'■^ Steven, Vcrzeichniss Taurisihen Ualbinseln, p. 183.

• Boissier, Fl. Orient, ii. p. 913.

* Lciiz, Bot. d. Alt. Gr. und E., p. 572.

» Muuby, Catal. Alger., edit. 2, p. 22; Boissier, Fl. Orient., ii. p. 857.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOK THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 91

Dioscorides and Plinj speak of it under the names
of Petroselinon and Petroselinum} but only as a wild
medicinal plant. Nothing proves that it was cultivated in
their time. In the Middle Ages Charlemagne counted it
fimong the plants which he ordered to be cultivated in
his gardens.^ Olivier de Serres in the sixteenth century-
cultivated parsley. English gardeners received it in
1 o48.^ Although this cultivation is neither ancient nor
important, it has already developed two varieties, which
would be called species if they were found wild; the
parsley with crinkled leaves, and that of which the fleshy
root is edible.

Smyrnium, or Alexanders — Smyrnimn olus-atrum,
Linnpeus.

Of all the Umbellifers used as vegetables, this was one
of the commonest in gardens for nearly fifteen centuries,
and it is now abandoned. We can trace its besrinnino-
and end. Theophrastus spoke of it as a medicinal plant
under the name oi Lpposelinon, but three centuries later
Dioscorides*^ says that either the root or the leaves
might be eaten, which implies cultivation. The Latins
called it olus-atrum, Charlemagne olisahim, and com-
manded it to be sown in his farnis.^ The Italians made
fjreat use of it under the name onacerone.^ At the end
of the eighteenth century the tradition existed in Eng-
land that this plant had been formerly cultivated ; later
English and French horticulturists do not mention it.''

The Sniyrnium olus-atrum is wild throughout
Southern Europe, in Algeria, Syria, and Asia Minor.^

Corn Salad, or Lamb's Lettuce — Valerianella olitoria,
Linnseus.

» Dioscorides, Mat. Med., 1. 3, c. 70 ; Pliny, Hixt., \. 20, ch. 12.

" The list of these plants may be found iu ^leyer, Gesch. der Bot.,
iii. p. 401.

' Phillips, Companion to the Kitchen Garden, ii. p. 35.

'' Theophrastus, Hi^t., 1. 1, 9 ; 1. 2, 2 ; 1. 7, 6 ; Dioscorides, Mat. Med.,
1. 3, c. 71.

* E. Meyer, Gesch. der Bot., iii. p. 401.
^ Targioni, Cenni Storici, p. 58.

' English Botany, t. 230 ; Phillips, Companion to the Kitchen Garden;
Le Bon Jardinier.

• Boissier, Fl. Orient., ii. p. 927.

D.2. OliiGlN Oh' CULTIVATED 1 LANTS.

Frequently cultivated as a salad, this annual, of the
Valerian family, is found "vvild throughout temperate
Europe to about the sixtieth degree of latitude, in
Southern Europe, in the Canary Isles, Madeira, and the
Azores, in the north of Africa, Asia Minor, and the
Caucasus.^ It often grows in cultivated ground, near
villages, etc., which renders it somewhat difficult to
know where it grew before cultivation. It is mentioned,
however, in Sardinia and Sicily, iu the meadows and
mountain pastures.^ I suspect that it is indigenous only
in these islands, and that everywhere else it is introduced
or naturalized. The grounds for this opinion are the fact
that no name which it seems possible to assign to this
plant has been found in Greek or Latin authors. We
cannot even name any botanist of the Middle Ages or
of the sixteenth century who has spoken of it. Neither
is it mentioned among the vegetables used in France in
the seventeenth century, either by the Jardinier Frangais
of 1651, or byLaurenberg's worh, Ho rticultura (Frankfurt,
1632). The cultivation and even the use of this salad
aj)pear to be modern, a fact which has not been noticed.

Cardoon — Cynara cardunculus, Linnaeus.

Artichoke — Cynara sjolynius, Linnaeus; C. cardun-
culus, var. sativa, Moris.

For a long time botanists have held the opinion that
the artichoke is probably a form obtained by cultivation
from the wild cardoon.^ Careful observations have lately
proved this hypothesis. Moris,* for instance, having cul-
tivated, in the garden at Turin, the w'ild Sardinian plant
side by side with the artichoke, affirmed that true
characteristic distinctions no longer existed.

Willkomm and Lange,^ wdio have carefully observed
the plant in Spain, both wild and cultivated, share the

* Krok, Monor/raphie des Valerianella, Stockholm, 186 i, p. 88;
Boissier, Fl. Orient., iii. p. 101.

* Bertoloni, Fl. ItaL, i. p. 185; Moris, Fl. Sard., ii. p. 314; Gassone,
Synopsis Fl. SicuJce, edit. 2, vol. i. p. 30.

* Dodoens, Hist. Plant, p. 721; Linnaeus, Species, p. 1159; De Can-
doUe, Prodr., vi. p. 620.

* Moris, Flora Sardoa, ii. p. 61.

» Willkomm and Lnnge, Prod,-. FL Hisp., ii. p. 180.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 03

same opinion. Moreover, the aitichoke has not been
found out of gardens ; and since the Mediterranean
region, the home of all the Cynaroi, has been thoroughly-
explored, it may safely be asserted that it exists nowhere
w'ild.

The cardoon, in which we must also include G.
horrida of Sibthorp, is indigenous in Madeira and in the
Canary Isles, in the mountains of Marocco near Mogador,
in the south and east of the Iberian peninsula, the
south of France, of Italy, of Greece, and in the islands
of the Mediterranean Sea as far as Cyprus.^ Munby ^ does
not allow C. carduneulus to be wild in Alo-eria, but
he does admit Cynara humilis of Linnaeus, which is
considered by a few authors as a variety.

The cultivated cardoon varies a grood deal with reo^ard
to the division of the leaves, the number of spines, and
the size — diversities which indicate long cultivation.
The Romans eat the receptacle which bears the flowers,
and the Italians also eat it, under the name of yirello.
Modern nations cultivate the cardoon for the fleshy part
of the leaves, a custom which is not yet introduced into
Greece.^

The artichoke offers fewer varieties, which bears out
the opinion that it is a form derived from the cardoon.
Targioni/ in an excellent article upon this plant,
relates that the artichoke w^as brought from Naples to
Florence in 14G6, and he proves that ancient writers,
even Athenreus, were not acquainted with the artichoke,
but only wdth the wild and cultiv^ated cardoons. I must
mention, however, as a sign of its- antiquity in the north
of Africa, that the Berbers have two entirely distinct
names for the two plants : addacl for the cardoon, taga
for the artichoke.^

' Webb, Fhyt. Canar., lii. sect. 2, p. 384 ; Ball, Spicilegium Fl. Maroc,
p. 524; Willkomm and Lange, Pr. Fl. Hisp. ; Bertoloni, Fl. Ital., ix. p,
86 ; Boissier, Fl. Orient > iii. p. 357 ; Unger and Kotschy, Inseln Cypern.
p. 246.

« Munby, Catal., edit. 2.

' Heldreich, Nutzpflanzen Grieclienlands, p. 27.

* Targioni, Cenni Storici, p. 52.

' Dictionnaire Fran<;ais.Beihe)e, published by the Government, 1 vol.
in 8vo.

04) OIUUIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

It is bolieveJ that the hados, Tclnara, and scoUmos of
tlie Greeks, and the canliuis of Roman horticulturists,
were Cyaara cai-danculas,^ although the most detailed
description, that of Theophrastus, is suffici(mtly confused.
"The plant," he said, "grows in Sicily " — as it does to this
day — "and," he added, "not in Greece.'' It is, therefore,
possible that the plants observed in our day in that
country may have been naturalized from cultivation.
According to Athenseus,^ the Egyptian king Ptolemy
Enerffetes, of the second centurv befji'e Christ, had found
in Libya a great quantity of wild klnara, by which his
soldiers had profited.

Although the indigenous species was to be found at
such a little distance, I am very doubtful whether the
ancient Egyptians cultivated the cardoon or the artichoke.
Pickering and linger^ believed they recognized it in some
of the drawings on the monuments ; but the two figures
which Unger considers the most admissible seem to me
extremely doubtful. Moreover, no Hebrew name is known,
and the Jews would probably have spoken of this vege-
table had they seen it in Egypt. The diffusion of the
species in Asia must have taken place somewhat late.
There is an Arab name, hirsclmff or Jcerschouf, and a
Persian name, kitnghir,'^ but no Sanskrit name, and the
Hindus have taken the Persian word kunjir,^ which
shows that it was introduced at a late epoch. Chinese
authors do not mention any Cynara.^ Tlie cultivation
of the artichoke was only introduced into England in
1548.' One of the most curious facts in the history of
Cynara cardanculus is its naturalization in the present
century over a vast extent of the Pampas of Buenos
Ayrcs, where its abundance is a hindrance to travellers.^

' Theophrastus, Hist., 1. 6, c. 4 ; Pliny, Hist., 1. 19, c. 8; Leuz,
Bot. der Alten Grieclien and Rotuer, p. 4S0.

* Athenseus, Deipn., ii. 84.

' Pickering, Chron. Arrangement, p. 71 ; Unger, Pfiinzen der Alten
Mijvptens, p. 46, figs. 27 and 28.

* Ainslie, Mat. Med. Ind., i. p. 22. * PiiUlington, Index.
^ Bretschueider, Study, etc , and Letters of 1881.

' Phillips, Companion to the Kitchen Garden,p. 22.

* Aug. de Saint Uilary, Plantes Remarkables du Bre»il, Introd., p. 58;
Darwin, Animals and Plants under Domestication, ii. p. 34.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 95

It is becoming equally troublesome in Chili.^ It is not
asserted that the artichoke has anywhere been naturalized
in this manner, and this is another sign of its artificial
orioin.

Lettuce — Latuca Scarivla, var. sativa.

Botanists are agreed in considering the cultivated
lettuce as a modification of the wild species called Lativca
Scariola.^ The latter grows in temperate and southern
Europe, in the Canary Isles, Madeira,'^ Algeria,* Abys-
sinia,^ and in the temperate regions of Eastern Asia
Boissier speaks of specimens from Arabia Petrea to
Mesopotamia and the Caucasus.^ He mentions a variety
with crinkled leaves, similar therefore to some of our
garden lettuces, which the traveller Hausknecht brought
with him from the mountains of Kurdistan. I have a
specimen from Siberia, found near the river Irtysch, and
it is now known with certainty that the species grows in
the north of India, in Kashmir, and in Nepal.'' In all these
countries it is often near cultivated ground or among
rubbish, but often also in rocky ground, clearings, or
meadows, as a really wild plant.

The cultivated lettuce often spreads from gardens,
and sows itself in the open country. No one, as far as I
know, has observed it in such a case for several genera-
tions, or has tried to cultivate the wild L. Scariola, to
see whether the transition is easy from the one form to
the other. It is possible that the original habitat of the
species has been enlarged by the diffusion of cultivated
lettuces reverting to the wild form. It is known that
there has been a great increase in the number of culti-
vated varieties in the course of the last two thousand

' Cl. Gay, Flora CMJena, iv. p. 317.

* The author who has gone into this question mo?t carefully is Bischoff,
in his Beitrdge zur Flora Deutsclilands und der Schweitz, p. 184. See
also Moris, Flora Sardoa, ii. p. 530.

^ Webb, Phytogr. Canariensis, iii. p. 422 ; Lowe, Flora of Madeira,
p. 514.

* Munby, CataL, edit. 2, p. 22, under the name of L. sylvestris,

* Schweinfurth and Ascherson, Aufzdhlung, p. 285.
« Boissier, Fl. Orient., iii. p. 809.

^ Clarke, Compos. Indicce, p. 263.

96 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

years. Thcophrastus indicated three ; ^ le Bon Jardinier
of 1880 gives forty varieties existing in France.

The ancient Greeks and Romans cultivated tlie lettuce,
especially as a salad. In the East its cultivation possibly
dates from an earlier epoch. Nevertheless it does not
appear, from the original common names both in Asia and
Europe, that this plant was generally or very anciently
cultivated. There is no Sanskrit nor Hebrew name
known, nor any in the reconstructed Aryan tongue. A
Greek name exists, tridax ; Latin, latiica ; Persian and
WiW(\.u,hahn; and the analogous Arabic form chuss or chass.
The Latin form exists also, slightly modified, in the Slav
and Germanic languages,^ which may indicate either that
the Western Aryans diffused the plant, or that its culti-
vation spread with its name at a later date from the
south to the north of Europe.

Dr. Bretschneider has confirmed my supposition ^
that the lettuce is not very ancient in China, and that it
was introduced there from the AVest, He says that the
first work in which it is mentioned dates from A.D. 600
to A.D. 900.4

Wild Chicory — Clchorium Intyhus, Linnreus.

The wild perennial chicory, which is cviltivated as a
salad, as a vegetable, as fodder, and for its roots, which
are used to mix w' ith coffee, grows throughout Europe,
except in Lapland, in Marocco, and Algeria,'' from Eastern
Europe to Afghanistan and Beluchistan,'' in the Punjab
and Kashmir,'^ and from Russia to Lake Baikal in Siberia.^
'J'he plant is certainly wild in most of these countries;
but as it often grows by the side of roads and fields, it is
I)robable that it has been transported by man from its
original home. This must be the case in India, for there
is no known Sanskrit name.

The Greeks and Romans employed this species wild

* Theophrastus, \. 7, c. 4. ^ Nemnich, Pohjjl. Lexicon.

* A. de CandoUe, Geogr. B^t. Uaisonitie, p. 843.

* Bietsclineider, Study and Value of Chinese Botanical Worka. p. 17.
' Ball, Spicilcgium Fl. Marocc, p. 534; Muuby, Catal., edit. 2, p. 21.

* Boissier, Fl. Ch-ient., iii. p. 715.
' Clarke, Compos. Ind., p. 250.

® Ledebour, Fl. Ross., ii. p. 774.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 97

and cultivated,^ but their notices of it are too brief to be
clear. According to Heldreich, the modern Greeks apply
the general name of lachaiia, a vegetable or salad, to
seventeen different chicories, of which he gives a list.^
He says that the species commonly cultivated is Cicho-
rium divaricatitm, Schousboe ((7. pumilum, Jacquin);
but it is an annual, and the chicory of which Theophrastus
speaks was perennial.

Endive — Cichorium Endivia, Linnreus.

The white chicories or endives of our gardens are
distinguished from Cichoriu7)% Intybus, in that they are
annuals, and less bitter to the taste. Moreover, the hairs
of the pappus which crowns the seed are four times longer,
and unequal instead of being equal. As long as this
plant was compared with C. Intyhus, it was difficult
not to admit two species. The origin of C. Endivia
is uncertain. When we received, forty years ago, speci-
mens of an Indian CicJioi^iurti, which Hamilton named
C. cosmia, they seemed to us so like the endive that we
supposed the latter to have an Indian origin, as has been
sometimes suggested;^ but Anglo-Indian botanists said,
and continue to assert, that in India the plant only grows
under cultivation.* The uncertainty persisted as to the
geographical origin. After this, several botanists^ con-
ceived the idea of comparing the endive with an annual
species, wild in the region of the Mediterranean, Gicho-
riurri pumilum, Jacquin (G. divaricatum, Schousboe),
and the differences were found to be so slight that some
have suspected, and others have affirmed, their specific
identity. For my part, after having seen wild specimens
from Sicily, and compared the good illustrations published
by Reichenbach (Icones, vol. xix., pis. 1357, 1358), I
am disposed to take the cultivated endives for varieties

' Dioscoridep, ii. c. 160; Pliny, xix. c. 8; Palladin?, xi. c. 11. See
other authors quoted by Lenz, Bot. d. AUen, p. 483.

^ Heldreich, Die Nutspflanzen Griechenlands, pp. 28, 76.

' Auor. Pyr. de Candolle, Prodr., vii. p. 84; Alph. de Candolle, Gdcgr.
B 't., p. 845.

■* Clarke, Compos. iTid., p. 250.

* De Yiv'mni, Flora Dalmat.,n. -p. 97; Schultz in Webb, P/ii/t Canar.,
sect. ii. p. 391; Boissier, Fl. Orient., iii. p. 716.

08 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTa.

of the same species as G. pumilum. In this case the
oldest name being C. Endivia, it is the one which ought
to be retained, as has been done by Schultz. It resembles,
moreover, a popular name common to several languages.

The wild plant exists in the whole region, of which
the Mediterranean is the centre, from Madeira,^ Marocco,^
and Algeria,^ as far as Palestine,'* the Caucasus, and
Turkestan.^ It is very common in the islands of the
Mediterranean and in Greece. Towards the west, in
Spain and Madeira, for instance, it is probable that it has
become naturalized from cultivation, judging from the
positions it occupies in the fields and by the wayside.

No positive proof is found in ancient authors of the
use of this plant by the Greeks and Romans;^ but it
is probable that they made use of it and several other
Cichoria. The common names tell us nothing, since they
may have been applied to two difierent species. These
names vary little,' and suggest a cultivation of Grseco-
Koman origin. A Hindu name, Jiasni, and a Tamul one,
koschi,^ are mentioned, but no Sanskrit name, and this
indicates that the cultivation of this plant was of late
origin in the east.

Spinach — Spinacia oleracea, Linnreus.

This vegetable was unknown to the Greeks and
Romans.^ It was new to Europe in the sixteenth century,^''
and it has been a matter of dispute whether it should bo
called spanaclia, as coming from Spain, or spiiuicia, from
its prickly fruit. ^^ It was afterwards shown that the
name comes from the Arabic isfdndclsch, e^hanach, or
sepanach, according to difierent authors.-^^ The Persian

' Lowe, Flora of Madeira, p. 521. * Ball, Svicilegtum, p, 534.
' Munby, Catal., edit. 2, p. 21. * Boissier, Ft. Orient., iii. p. 716.
^ Bange, Beitrdge zur Flora R^^sxIavds und Central Asiens, p. 197.

* Lenz. Bot. der Alten, p. 483 ; Heldreich, Die JS'utzpfianzen Griechen
lav,ds, p. 74.

' rsemuich, PolygT. Lex., at the word Ct'chorium Endivia.

* Royle, III. Himal., p. 247 ; Piddington, Index.

* J. Banhiu, Hist., ii. p. 964 ; Fi-aas, Syn. Fl. Class. ; Lenz, Bot. der
Alten.

'« Brassavola, p. 176. " Mathioli, ed Valgr., p. 343.

** Ebn Baithar, neberitz von Sondtlieimer, i. p. 34j Forska.\, Egypt,
p. 7"; Delile, III. ./Egypt., p. 29.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOE THEIR STEilS OR LEAVES. 99

name is ispany, or isj^anaj} and the Hindu isfavy, or
folak, according to Piddington, and also pinnis, accord-
ing to the same and to Roxburgh. The absence of any
Sanskrit name shows a cultivation of no great antiquity
in these regions. Loureiro saw the spinach cultivated
at Canton, and Maximowicz in Mantschuria ; ^ but
Bret^jchneider tells us that the Chinese name signifies
herb of Persia, and that "Western vegetables were com-
monly introduced into China a century before the Chris-
tian era.^ It is therefore probable that the cultivation
of this plant began in Persia from the time of the Grseco-
Eoraan civilization, or that it did not quickly spread
either to the east or to the west of its Persian oriijin.
No Hebrew name is known, so that the Arabs must have
received both plant and name from the Persians. No-
thing leads us to suppose that they carried this vegetable
into Spain. Ebn Baithar, who was living in 1235, was of
Malaga ; but the Aiabic works he quotes do not say where
the plant was cultivated, except one of them, which says
that its cultivation was common at Nineveh and Babylon.
Herrera's work on Spanish agriculture does not mention
the species, although it is inserted in a supplement of
recent date, whence it is probable that the edition of
1513 did not speak of it; so that the European cultiva-
tion must have come from the East about the fifteenth
century.

Some popular works repeat that spinach is a native
of Northern Asia, but there is nothing to confirm this
supposition. It evidently comes from the empire of the
ancient Medes and Persians. According to Bosc,"* the
ti'aveller, Olivier brought back some seeds of it, found in
the East in the open country. This Mould be a positive
proof, if the produce of these seeds had been examined
by a botanist in order to ascertain the species and the
variety. In the present state of our knowledge it must

' Roxburgh, 17. !??(?., ed. 1832; v. iii. p. 771, applied to Spinacta
tetandra, which seems to be the same species.

* Maximowicz, Primitice Fl. Amur., p. 222.

* Bretschneider, Study and Value of Chin. Bot. JVorls, pp. 17, 15.

* Diet. d'Agric, v. p. 906.

100 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

be owned that spinach has not yet been found in a
wild state, unless it be a cultivated modification of
Spinacia tetandra, Steven, which is wild to the south of
the Caucasus, in Turkestan, in Persia, and in Afghanis-
tan, and which is used as a vegetable under the name of
schariiumfh}

Without entering here into a pnrely botanical dis-
cussion, I may say that, after reading the descriptions
quoted by Boissier, and looking at Wight's^ plate of
Spinacia tetandra, Roxb., cultivated in India, and the
specimens of several herbaria, I see no decided differ-
ence between this plant and the cultivated spinach with
prickly fruit. The term tetandra implies that one of
the plants has five and the other four stamens, but the
number varies in our cultivated spinaches.^

If, as seems probable, the two plants are two varieties,
the one cultivated, the other sometimes wild and some-
times cultivated, the oldest name, S. oleracea, ought to
persist, especially as the two plants are found in the
cultivated grounds of their original country.

The Dutch or great sjnnach, of which the fruit has no
spines, is evidently a gai-den product. Tragus, or Bock
was the fii'st to meution it in the sixteenth century.^

Amaranth — Amarantus gangcticiis, Linnaeus.

Several annual amaranths are cultivated as a green
vegetable in Mauritius, Bourbon, and the Seychelles Isles,
under the name of hrede de Malabar.^ This appears
to be the principal species. It is much cultivated in
India. Anfrlo-Indian botanists mistook it for a time
for Amarantus oleraceus of Linnseus, and Wight gives
an illustration of it under this name,^ but it is now
acknowledged to be a different species, and belongs to
A. gangcticus. Its numerous varieties, differing in size,
colour, etc., are called in the Telinga dialect tota kura,
with the occasional addition of an adjective for each.

> Boissier, Fl. Orient, vi. p. 23k * ^VigLt, Icones, t. 818.

* Noes, Gen. Plant. Fl. Germ., 1. 7, pi. 15.

* BauLiii, Bist., ii. p. 965.

* .4. gangelicus, A. trii^tis, and A. hyhridis of Liniia3us, aocordiDg to
Baker, Flora of Mauritius, p. 26U.

* Yfight, Icones, p. 715.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. lOf

There are other names in Bengali and Hindustani. The
3^oung shoots sometimes take the place of asparagus
at the table of the English.^ A. melancholicus, often
grown as an ornamental plant in European gardens, is
considered one of the forms of this species.

Its original home is perhaps India, but I cannot dis-
cover that the plant has ever been found there in a wild
state ; at least, this is not asserted by any author. All
the species of the genus Amarantus spread themselves in
cultivated ground, on rubbish-heaps by the wayside, and
thus become half-naturalized in hot countries as well as
in Europe. Hence the extreme difficulty in distinguish-
ing the species, and above all in guessing or proving their
origin. The species most nearly akin to A. gangeticus
appear to be Asiatic.

A. gangeticus is said by trustworthy authorities to
be wild in Egypt and Abyssinia;^ but this is perhaps
only the result of such naturalization as I spoke of
iust now. The existence of numerous varieties and
of different names in India, render its Indian origin most
probable.

The Japanese cultivate as vegetables A. cauclatus,
A. mangostanus, and A. melanchol.icus (or gangeticus) of
Linnseus,^ but there is no proof that any of them are
indigenous. In Java A. 'polystacliyus, Blume, is cul-
tivated; it is very common among rubbish, by the
wayside, etc.^

I shall speak presently of the species grown for the
«eed.

Leek — Allium anij>eloprasuni, var. Porrum.

According to the careful monograph by J. Gay,^ the
'eek, as early writers^ suspected, is only a cultivated
variety of Allium ampeloprasum of Linnseus, so com-
mon in the East, and in the Mediterranean region,

' Roxbnro;li, Flora hidica, edit. 2, vol. iii. p. 606.

* Boissier, Flora Orientalis, iv. p. 990 ; Schweinfurth and Ascherson,
Aufzaldurig, etc., p. 289.

' Franchet and Savatier, Enum. Plant. Japonice, i. p. 390.

* Hasskarl, Plant. Javan. Rariores, p. 431.

* Gay, ^nn. des Sc. Naf., 3rd series, vol. viii.

* Linna3U3, Species PI. ; De Candolle, Fl. Fran/;., iii. p. 219.

102 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

ospeclally in Algeria, which in Central Europe sometimes
becomes naturalized in vineyards and round ancient
cultivations.-^ Clay seems to have mistrusted the indica-
tions of the floras of the south of Europe, for, contrary
to his method with other species of which he gives the
localities out of Algeria, he only quotes in the present
ca.se the Algerian localities; admitting, however, the
identity of name in the authors for other countries.

The cultivated variety of Porruvi has not been found
wild. It is only mentioned in doubtful localities, such
as vineyards, gardens, etc. Ledebour^ indicates for A.
ampeloprasum the borders of the Crimea, and the provinces
to the south of the Caucasus. Wallich brought a specimen
from Kamaon, in India,^ but we cannot be sure that it
was wild. The works on Cochin-China (Loureiro),
China (Bretschneider), and Japan (Franchet and Savatier^
make no mention of it.

Article II. — Fodder.

Lucern — Medicago sativa, Linnaeus.

The lucern was known to the Greeks and Romans.
They called it in Greek inedicai, in Latin mfidica, or herba
medica,heca,use it had been brought from Media at the time
of the Persian war, about 470 years before the Christian
era.* The Romans often cultivated it, at any rate from the
beginning of the first or second century. Cato does not
speak of it,^ but it is mentioned by Varro, Columella, and
Virgil. De Gasparin ^ notices that Crescenz, in 1 478, does
not mention it in Italy, and that in 1711 Tull had not
seen it beyond the Alps. Targioni, however, who could
not be mistaken on this head, says that the cultivation
of lucern was maintained in Italy, especially in Tuscany,

* Koch, Synnpsis Fl. Germ. ; Bab'ngfcon, 2Ian. of Brit. Bot. ; English
[Sot., etc.

' Ledebour, Flora Rni^a., iv. p. 1G3.

» Baker, Journal of Bot., 187-i, p. 29^.

* Strabo, xii. p. 5(50 ; Pliuy, bk. xviii. o. 16.

* llehn, Culiurpjia-nzen, etc., p. 3.35.

* Gasparin, Cours d'Agric, iv. p. 42-i.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 103

from ancient times.^ It is rare in modern Greece.^
French cultivators have often given to the lucern the
name of sainfoin, which belongs properly to Ono-
hrychis sativa ; and this transposition still exists, for
instance in the neighbourhood of Geneva. The name
lucern has been supposed to come from the valley of
Luzerne, in Piedmont ; but there is another and more
probable origin. The Spaniards had an old name, eruye,
mentioned by J. Bauhin,^ and the Catalans call it userdas *
whence perhaps the patois name in the south of France,
laouzerdo, nearly akin to luzerne. It was so commonly
cultivated in Spain that the Italians have sometimea
called it herha spagna} The Spaniards have, besides the
names already given, mielga, or melga, which appears to
come from Medica, but they principally used names
derived from the Arabic — alfafa, alfasafat, alfalfa. In
the thirteenth century, the famous physician EbnBaithar,
who wrote at Malaga, uses the Arab word^s/isa^, which
he derives from the Persian isjist.^ It will be seen that,
if we are to trust to the common names, the origin of
the plant would be either in Spain, Piedmont, or Persia.
Fortunately botanists can furnish direct and possible
proofs of til e original home of the species.

It has been found wild, with every appearance of an
indigenous plant, in several provinces of Anatolia, to the
south of the Caucasus, in several parts of Persia, in
Afghanistan, in Beluchistan,'' and in Kashmir.^ In the
south of Russia, a locality mentioned by some authors,
it is perhaps the result of cultivation as well as in
the south of Europe. The Greeks may, therefore, have
introduced the plant from Asia Minor as well as from
India, which extended from the north of Persia.

This origin of the lucern, which is well established,

' Targioni-Tozzetti, Cenni Storici, p. 34.

* Fraas,. Synopsis Fl. Class., p. 63 ; Hel Ireich, Die Nuizpfianzen
Griechenlands, p. 70.

2 Bauhin, Hist. Plant., ii. p. 381. * Colmeiro, Catal.

* Tozzetti, Dizion. Bof.

* Ebn Baithar, Heil und Kahrungsmittel, translated from Arabic by
Sontheimer, vol. ii. p. 257.

' Boissier, Fl. Orient., ii. p. 91. » Rovle, III. Himal, p. 197.

lOi ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

makes me note as a singular fact that no Sanskrit name
is known.^ Clover and sainfoin have none either, which
leads us to suppose that the Aryans had no artificial
meadows.

Sainfoin — Hedysarum Onohrychis, Linnaeus ; Onobry-
chis sativa, Lamarck.

This leguminous plant, of which the usefulness in the
dry and chalky soils of temperate regions is incontestable,
has not been long in cultivation. The Greeks did not
grow it, and their descendants have not introduced it
into their agriculture to this day.^ The plant called
Onohrychis by Dioscorides and Pliny, is Onobrychis
Caput-Galli of modern botanists,^ a species wild in Greece
and elsewhere, which is not cultivated. The sainfoin, or
lupitiella of the Italians, was highly esteemed as fodder
in the south of France in the time of Olivier de Serres,'^
that is to say, in the sixteenth century ; but in Italy it
was only in the eighteenth century that this cultivation
spread, particularly in Tuscany.^

Sainfoin is a herbaceous plant, which grows wild in
the temperate parts of Europe, to the south of the
Caucasus, round the Caspian Sea,^ and even beyond Lake
Baikal,' In the south of Europe it grows only on the
hills. Gussone does not reckon it among the wild species
of Sicily, nor Moris among those of Sardinia, nor Munby
among those of Algeria.

No Sanskrit, Persian, or Arabic names are known.
Everything tends to show that the cultivation of this
plant originated in the south of France as late perhaps
a'? the fifteenth century.

Frencli Honeysuckle, or Spanish Sainfoin — Hedysarum
coronarium, Linnaeus.

The cultivation of this leguminous plant, akin to the

* Piddinjjton, Index.

* Heldreich, Nutzpfanzen Giiechenlands, p. 72.

' Fraas, Synopsis Fl. Class., p. 58 ; Lenz, Bot. der A'ten Or. una
Rom., p. 731.

* O. de Serres, ThdCitre de I'Agric, p. 242.

* Targioni-Tozzetti, Cenni Storici, p. 34.

' Ledebour, FL Ross., i. p. 708; Boissier, FL Or., p. 532.
' Turczaninow, Flora Baical. Dahur., i. p. 340.

I

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 105

sainfoin, and of wliich a good illustration may be found
in the Flora des Sevres et des Jardins, vol. xiii. pi.
1882, has been diffused in modern times through Italy,
Sicily, Malta, and the Balearic Isles.^ Marquis Grimaldi,
who first pointed it out to cultivators in 1766, had seen
it at Seminara, in Lower Calabria ; De Gasparin ^ recom-
mends it for Algeria, and it is probable that cultiva-
tors under similar conditions in Australia, at the Cape,
in South America or Mexico, w^ould do well to try it.
In the neighbourhood of Orange, in Algeria, the plant
did not survive the cold of 6° centigrade.

Hedysarum coronarhim grows in Italy from Genoa
to Sicily and Sardinia,^ in tlie south of Spain ^ and
in Algeria,^ where it is rare. It is, therefore, a species
of limited geographical area.

Purple Clover — Trifolium pratense, Linnaeus.

Clover was not cultivated in ancient times, although
the plant was doubtless known to nearly all the peoples
of Europe and of temperate Western Asia. Its use was
first introduced into Flanders in the sixteenth century,
]ierhaps even earlier, and, according to Schwerz, the
Protestants expelled by the Spaniards carried it into
Germany, wdiere they established themselves under the
pi'otection of the Elector Palatine. It was also from
Flanders that the Enolish received it in 1633, through
the influence of Weston, Earl of Portland, then Lord
Chancellor.''

Trifolium pratense is wild throughout Europe, in
Algeria,'^ on the mountains of Anatolia, in Armenia,
and in Turkestan,^ in Siberia towards the Altai Moun-
tains,^ and in Kashmir and Garwhall.^*^

* Targioui-Tozzetti, Cenni Storici, p. 35; Mares and Virginuix, Catal
des Baleares, p. 100.

* De Gasparin, Cours d'Agric, iv. p. 472.
^ Bertoloni, Flora Ital., viii. p. 6.

* Willkomm and Lange, Prod': Fl. Hisp., iii. p. 262.

* Munby, Cafal, edit. 2, p. 12.

* De Gasparin, Cours d Agric, iv. p. 445, according to Sctwerz and
A. Young.

' Mnnby, Catal., edit. 2, p. 11. * Foissier, Fl. Orient, i. p. 115.

* Lcdebour, FL Ross., i. p. 548.

>» Baker, in Hooker's Fl. of Brit. Iiid., ii. p. 86.

106 OaiGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

The species existed, therefore, in Asia, in the land
of the Aryan nations ; but no Sanskrit name is known,
whence it may bt- inferred that it was not cultivated.

Crimson or Italian Clover — TrifullLim incarnatum,
Linna3us.

An annual plant grown for fodder, whose cultivation,
says Vilmorin, long confined to a few of the southern
departments, becomes every day more common in France.^
De Candolle, at the beginning of the present centuiy,
had only seen it in the department of Ariege.^ It has
existed for about sixty years in the neighbourhood ot
Geneva. Targioni does not think that it is of ancient
date in Italy,^ and the trivial name trafoglio strengthens
his opinion.

The Catalan fe, fencli,^ and, in the patois of the south
of Fi'ance,^ farradje (Roussillon),/rtrra/rt(/e (Languedoc),
feroutge (Gascony), whence the French name f avouch,
have, on the other hand, an oi'iginal character, which
indicates an ancient ciiltivation round the Pyrenees.
The term which is sometimes used, " clover of Roussillon,"
also shows this.

The wild plant exists in Galicia, in Biscaj^a, and
Catalonia,^ but not in the Balearic Isles ; ' it is found
in Sardinia ^ and in the province of Algiers.^ It appears
in several localities in France, Italy, and Dalmatia, in
the valley of the Danube and Macedonia, but in many
cases it is not known whether it may not have strayed
from neighbouring cultivation. A singular locality in
which it appears to be indigenous, according to English
authors, is on the coast of Cornwall, near the Lizard.
In this place, according to Bentham, it is the pale yelLav
variety, which is truly wild on the Continent, while the

> Bon Jardininr, 1880, pt. i. p. 818.
^ De Candolle, Fl. Franc., iv. p. 528.
' Targioni, Cenni Storici, p. 35.

* Costa, Intro. Fl. di Gatal., p. GO.

* Morit^'i, Diet. MS., compiled from floras published before the
middle cf the present century.

* Wiilkomiii and Lange, Prodr. Fl. Hisp., iii. p. 366.
' M;ires ;iud Virgincix, Catal., 1880.

* xMori^, Ft. Sard., i. p. 467. * Manby, Catal, edit. 2.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 107

crimson variety is only naturalized in England from
cultivation.^ I do not know to what degree this remark
of Bentham's as to the wild nature of the sole variety
of a yellow colour (var. Molinerii, Seringe) is confirmed
in all the countries where the species grows. It is
the only one indicated by Moris in Sardinia, and in
Dalmatia by Viviani,^ in the localities which appear
natural (in pascuis collinis, in montanis, in herbidis).
The authors of the Bon Jardinier^ affirm with Bentham
that Trifolimn Afolinerii is wild in the north of
France, that with crimson flowers being introduced from
the south ; and while they admit the absence of a good
specific distinction, they note that in cultivation the
variety Molinerii is of slower growth, often biennial
instead of annual.

Alexandrine or Egyptian Clover — Trifoliwm Alexan-
drinum, Linnaeus.

This species is extensively cultivated in Egypt as
fodder. Its Arab name is hersym or herzun.^ There is
nothing to show that it has been long in use ; the name
does not occur in Hebrew and Armenian botanical works.
The species is not wild in Egypt, but it is certainly
wild in Syria and Asia Minor.^

Ervilia — Erviini Ervilia, Linnfeus; Vicia Ervilia,
Willdenow.

Bertoloni^ gives no less than ten common Italian
names — ervo, lero, zirlo, etc. This is an indication of an
ancient and general culture. Heldreich "^ says that the
modern Greeks cultivate the plant in abundance as fodder.
They call it robai, from the ancient Greek orobos, as ervos
comes from the Latin ervuvi. The cultivation of the
species is mentioned by ancient Greek and Latin authors.^
The Greeks made use of the seed ; for some has been

' Benthavn, Handbooh Brit. Fl., edit. 4, p. 117.

* Moris, Fl. Sard., i. p. 467 ; Viviani, Fl. Dalmat, iii, p. 290-
■ Bon Jardinier, 1880, p. 619.

* Forskal, Fl. Egypt., p. 71; Delile, Plant. Cult, en Egypt., p. 10;
Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of Ancient Egyptians, ii. p. 398.

* Boissier, Fl. Orient, ii. p. 127. ' Bertoloni, Fl. It., vii. p. 500,
' Nutzpjianzen Griechenlands, p. 71.

* See Leuz, Bot. d. Alien, p. 727 ; Fraas, Fl, Class., p. 54.

G

108 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

discovered in the excavations on the site of Troy. ^ There
are a number of common names in Spain, some of them
Arabic,^ but the species has not been so widely cultivated
there for several centuries.^ In France it is so little
grown that n)any modern works on agriculture do not
mention it. It is unknown in British India.*

General botanical works indicate Ervum Ervilia as
growing in Southern Europe, but if we take severally the
best floras, it will be seen that it is in such localities as
fields, vineyards, or cultivated ground. It is the same in
Western Asia, where Boissier ^ speaks of specimens from
Syria, Persia, and Afghanistan. Sometimes, in abridged
catalogues,^ the locality is not given, but nowhere do I
tind it asserted that the plant has been seen wild in places
far from cultivation. The specimens in my own herbarium
furnish no further proof on this head.

In all likelihood the species was formerly wild in
Greece, Italy, and perhaps Spain and Algeria, but the
frequency of its cultivation in the very regions where it
existed prevent us from now finding the wild stocks.

Tare, or Common Vetch — Vic'ia sativa, Linnpeus.

Vicia sativa is an annual leguminous plant wild
throughout Europe, except in Lapland. It is also common
in Algeria,' and to the south of the Caucasus as far as the
])rovince of Talysch.^ Roxburgh pronounces it to be
wild in the north-west provinces and in Bengal, but Sir
Joseph Hooker admits this only as far as the variety called
angustifolia^ is concerned. No Sanskrit name is known,
and in the modern languages of India only Hindu names.^"
Targioni believes it to be the ketsach of the Hebrews.^^

' Wittniack, Sifzungsher Bot. Vereins Brandenburg, Dec. 19, 1879.

" Willkomm and Lanpc, Prorfr. Fl. Hisp., iii. p. 308.

' Baker, in Hooker's FZ. Brit. Ivd.

* Herrera, AgriruUvra, edit. 1819, iv. p. 72.

* Baker, in Hooker's Fl. Brit. Ivd.

*" For instance, Munby, Catal. Flant Algiriw, edit. 2, p. 12.
' Munby, Catal, edit. 2.

* Ledebonr, Fl. Ro><s., i. p. 666; Hohenackcr, Enum. Plant. Tahjsch,
p. 113 ; C. A. Meyer, Verzeichni.<s, p. 147.

» Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., edit. 1832, iii. p. 323 ; Hooker, Fl. Brit. Ind.,
ii p. 178.

'" Piddington'a Index gives fonr. " Targioni, Cenni StoHci, p. 30.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 109

I have received specimens from the Cape and from
California. The species is certainly not indigenous in
the two last-named regions, but has escaped from cul-
tivation.

The Romans sowed this plant both for the sake of the
seed and as fodder as early as the time of Cato.^ I have
discovered no proof of a more ancient cultivation. The
name v'lk, whence vicia, dates from a very remote epoch'
in Europe, for it exists in Albanian,^ which is believed to
be the lancjuage of the Pelasajians, and among the Slav,
Swedish, and Germanic nations, with slight modifications.
This does not prove that the species was cultivated. It
is distinct enough and useful enough to herbivorous
animals to have received common names from the earliest
times.

Flat-podded Pea — Lathyrus Cicera, Linnfeus.

An annual leguminous plant, esteemed as fodder, buh
whose seed, if used as food in any quantity, becomes
dangerous.^

It is grown in Italy under the name of onocJii} Some
authors suspect that it is the cicera of Columella and the
ervilia of Varro,^ but the common Italian name is very
different to these. The species is not cultivated in Greece.^
It is more or less grown in France and Spain, without
anything to show that its use dates from ancient times.
However, Wittmack'' attributes to it, but doubtfully,
some seeds brought by Yirchow from the Trojan exca-
vations.

According to the floras, it is evidently wild in dry
]ilaces, beyond the limits of cultivation in Spain and
Italy.^ It is also wild in Lower Egypt, according to

* Cato, De re Rusfica, edit. 1535, p. 34; Pliny, bk. xviii. c. 15.

* Heldreicli, Nvtzpflanzen Griechenlands, p. 71. In the earlier lan-
irnage than the Indo-Europeans, vik bears another nieauizig, that oi
"hamlet" (Fick, Vorterb. Indo-Germ., p. 189).

* Vilmorin, Bon Jardinier, 1880, p. 603.

* Targioni, Cenni Storici, p. 31 ; Eertoloni, Fl. Ital., vii. pp. 444, 447.

* Lenz, Botanik. d. Alien, p. 730.

* Fraas, Fl. Class. ; Heldreich, Nutzjlanzen Griechenlands.

' Wittmack, Sitz. Ber. Bot. Vereins Bmrtdenhunj, Dec. 19, 1879.

* Willkoinm and Lange, Prodr. Fl. Misp , iii. p. 313; Eertoloni, Fl.
Hal.

110 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Schweinfurth and Ascherson ; ^ but there is no trace of
ancient cultivation in this country or among the Hebrews.
Towards the East its wild character becomes less certain.
Boissier indicates the plant "in cultivated gi-ound from
Turkey in Europe, and Egypt as far as the south of the
Caucasus and Babylon."^ It is not mentioned in India
either as wild or cultivated, and has no Sanskrit name.'^

The species is probably a native of the region com-
prised between Spain and Greece, perhaps also of Algeria,'*
and diffused by a cultivation, not of very ancient date,
over Western Asia.

Chickling Vetch — Laihyrus sativus, Linnreus.

An annual leguminous plant, cultivated in the South
of Europe, from a very early age, as fodder, and also for
the seeds. The Greeks called it lathyros ^ and the Latins
cicercula.^ It is also cultivated in the temperate regions
of Western Asia, and even in the north of India ;' but it
has no Hebrew^ nor Sanskrit name,^ which argues a
not very ancient cultivation in these regions.

Nearly all the floras of the south of Europe and of
Algeria give the plant as cultivated and half- wild, rarely
and only in a few localities as truly wild. It is easy to
understand the difficulty of recognizing the wild character
of a species often mixed with cereals, and which persists
and spreads itself after cultivation. Heldreich does not
allow that it is indigenous in Greece.^" This is a strong
presumption that in the rest of Europe and in Algeria the
plant has escaped from cultivation.

It is probable that this was not the case in Western
Asia ; for authors cite sufficiently wild localities, where
agriculture plays a less considerable part than in Europe.

' Schweinfurth .ind A=^cherson, Anfzdhluivj, etc., p. 2j7.

* Boissier, Fl. Orient., ii. p. 605.

» J. Baker, in Hooker's Fl. of Brit. Ind.

* Munby, Catal.

• Theophrastus, Hi<t. Plant., viii., c. 2, 10.

* Columella, De rei ru.'ifi<-a, ii. c. 10; Pliny, xviii. c. 13, 32.
» Roxburgh, Fl. Ind. ; Hooker, Fl. Bri'. Ind., ii. p. 178.

• Rosenmiiller, Handb. Bibl. Alterth., vol. i.

• Piddington, Index.

'• Heldreich, Pjlanz. d. Attisch. Ebene, p. 476 ; Nutzpf. Or., p. 72.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. Ill

Ledebour/ for instance, mentions specimens gathered in
the desert, near the Caspian Sea, and in the province of
Lenkoran. Meyer ^ confirms the assertion with respect to
Lenkoran. Baker, in his flora of British India, after
indicating the species as scattered here and there in the
northern provinces, adds, " often cultivated," whence it
may be inferred that he considers it as indigenous, at
least in the north. Boissier asserts nothing with regard
to the localities in Persia which he mentions in his
Oriental flora.^

To sum up, I think it probable that the species was
indigenous before cultivation in the region extending
from the south of the Caucasus, or of the Caspian Sea,
to the north of India, and that it spread towards Europe
in the track of ancient cultivation, mixed perhaps with
cereals.

Ochrus — Pisum ochrus, Linn?eus ; Lathyrus ochrus, de
Candolle.

Cultivated as an annual fodder in Catalonia, under
the name of tapisots,^ and in Greece, particularly in
the island of Crete, under that of ochros,^ mentioned
by Theophrastus,^ but without a word of description.
Latin authors do not speak of it, which argues a rare
and local cultivation in ancient times.

The species is certainly w^ild in Tuscany,'^ It appears
to be wild also in Greece and Sardinia, where it is found
in hedges,*^ and in Spain, w^here it grows in uncultivated
ground;^ but as for the south of France, Algeria, and
Sicily, authors are either silent as to the locality, or
mention only fields and cultivated ground. The plant
is unknown further east than Syria/'^ where probably it
is not wild.

» Ledebour, Fl. Boss., i. p. 681.

' C. A. Meyer, Verzeichrdss, p. 148.

» Boissier, Fl. Orient., ii. p. 606.

♦ Willkomm and Lange, Prodr. Fl. Hisp., iii. p. 312.

* Lenz, Bot. d. Alien, p. 730; Heldreich, Nutzpfl. Gr., p. 72.

* Leiiz.

» Caruel, Fl. Tosc, p. 193 ; Gr.ssone, Syn. Fl. Sic, edit. 2.

• Boissier, Fl. Orient., ii. p. 602; Mods, Fl. Sard., 1. p. 582.

• Willkomm and Lange, Prodr. F!. Hisp. '» Bjissier, Fl. Orient

112 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

The fine plate published by Sibthorp, Flora Graica,
589, suggests that the species is worthy of more general
cultivation.

Trigonel, or Fenugreek — Tr'irjonella fcenum-gr cecum,
Linnseus.

The cultivation of this annual leguminous plant was
common in ancient Greece and Italy,^ either for spring
forage, or for the medicinal properties of its seeds.
Abandoned almost everywhere in Europe, and notaV)ly
in Greece,^ it is maintained in the East and in India,^
where it is probably of very ancient date, and throughout
the Nile Valley.* The species is wild in the Punjab
and in Kashmir,^ in the deserts of Mesopotamia and of
Persia,^ and in Asia Minor ,'^ where, however, the localities
cited do not appear sufficiently distinct from the culti-
vated ground. It is also indicated ^ in several places in
Southern Europe, such as Mount Hymettus and other
localities in Greece, the hills above Bologna and Genoa,
and a few waste places in Spain ; but the further west
we go the more we find mentioned such localities as
fields, cultivated ground, etc. ; and careful authors do not
fail to note that the species has probabl}^ escaped from
cultivation.^ I do not hesitate to say that if a plant
of this nature were indigenous in Southern Europe, it
would be far more common, and would not be wanting to
the insular floras, such as those of Sicily, Ischia, and the
Balearic Isles.-^"

The antiquity of the species and of its use in India is
confirmed by tlie existence of several different names in

' Tlieophra«tns, Hi>if. Plavt., viii. c. 8; Columella, De rei rudica, ii.
c. 10 ; Pliny, Hist., xviii. c. 16.

* Fraas, Syn. Fl. Class., p. 63 ; Lenz, Bot. der Allen, p. 719.

* Baker, in Hooker's Fl. Brit. Inrl., ii. p. 57.

* Schweinfurth, Beitr. z. Fl. ^thiop., p. 258.

* Baker, in Hooker's Fl. Brit. Ind.

* Boissier, Fl. Orient, ii. p. 70. ' Boissier, Hid.

* Sibthorp, Fl. Grceca, t. 766 ; Lenz, Bot. der Alten, Bertoloni, Fl.
Ital., viii. p. 250 ; Willkomm and Lange, Prodr. Fl. Hisp., in. p. 390.

9 Caruel, Fl. Tosc, p. 256 ; Willkomm and Lange.
'" The plants which spread from one country to another introduce
themselves into islands with more difficulty, as will be seen from the re.
marks I formerly published Geoijr. Bot. Ka%sonn4e, p. 706).

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 113

different dialects, and above all of a Sanskrit and modern
Hindu name, metki} There is a Persian name, schemlit,
and an Arab name, helbeh;^ but none is known in
Hebrew.^ One of the names of the plant in ancient
Greek, tailis (rjjXtc), niay, perhaps, be considered by
philologists as akin to the Sanskrit name,* but of this
I am no judge. The species may have been introduced
by the Aiyans, and the primitive name have left no trace
in northern languages, since it can only live in the south
of Europe.

Bird's Foot — Ornithopus sativus, Brotero ; 0. isth-
TYiocarpus, Cosson.

The true bird's foot, wild and cultivated in Portuixal,
was described for the first time in 1804 by Brotero,^ and
Cosson has distinguished it more clearly from allied
species.^ Some authors had confounded it with Orni-
thopus roseiis of Dufour, and agriculturists have some-
times given it the name of a very ditierent speci.s,
0. perpusillus, which by reason of its small size is
unsuited for cultivation. It is only necessary to see
the pod of Ornithopus sativus to make certain of the
species, for it is when ripe contracted at intervals and
considerably bent. If there are in the fields plants of a
similar appearance, but whose pods are straight and not
contracted, they are the result of a cross with 0. roseus, or,
if the pod is curved but not contracted, with 0. cor>i-
pressus. From the appearance of these plants, it seems
that they might be grown in the same manner, and
would present, I suppose, the same advantages.

The bird's foot is only suited to a dry and sandy soil.
It is an annual which furnishes in Portugal a very early
spring fodder. Its cultivation has been successfully in-
troduced into Campine.''

^ PiddingtoTi, Ind^x. - Ainslie, Mat. Med. Ind., i. p. 130.

^ Eosenniiiller, Bihl. AHerfh.

* As usual, Fick's flictio aiy of Indo-Europenn langnages does n&t
mention the name of this plant, which the English say is Sanskrit.

* Brotero, Flora Lusitanica, ii. p. 160.

® Oosson, Notei sur Quelques Plantes Nouvelles ou Critiques du Midi
de I'Espagne, p. 36.

' Bon Jardinier, 1880, p. 512.

114 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

0. sativus appears to be wild in several districts of
Portugal and the south of Spain. I have a spscimen
from Tangier ; and Cosson found it in Al^^jeria. It is
often found in abandoned fields, and even elsewhere. It
is difiicult to say whether the specimens are not from
plants escaped from cultivation, but localities are cited
where this seems improbable ; for instance, a pine wood
near Chiclana, in the south of Spain (VVillkomra).

Spergula, or Corn Spurry — Spergida arvensis, Lin-
naeus.

This annual, belonging to the family of the Caryo-
phylacese, grows in sandy fields and similar places in
Europe, in North Africa and Abyssinia,^ in Western Asia
as far as Hindustan,^ and even in Java.^ It is difficult to
know over what extent of the old world it was originally
indigenous. In many localities we do not know if it is
really wild or naturalized from cultivation. Sometimes
a recent introduction may be suspected. In India, for
instance, numerous specimens have been gathered in the
last few years ; but Roxburgh, who was so diligent a
collector at the end of the last and the beginning of the
present century, does not mention the species. No
Sanskrit or modern Hindu name is known,* and it has
not been found in the countries between India and
Turkey.

The common names may tell us something with
regard to the origin of the species and to its culti-
vation.

No Greek or Latin name is known. Spergula, in
Italian spergola, seems to be a common name long in use
in Italy. Another Italian name, erha renaiola, indicates
only its gi'owth in the sand {vena). The French {spar-
govble), Spanish (esparcillas), Portuguese (espargata), and
German (Spark), have all the same root. It seems that
throughout the south of Europe the species was taken
from country to country by the Romans, before the

• Boissier, Fl. Orient., i. p. 731.

* Hooker, Fl. Brit. Ind., i. p. 243, and several specimens from the
Nilgherries and Ceylon in my herbarium.

■ Zollinger, No. 2556 in my herbariuca. * Piddincrton, Index.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 115

division of the Latin languages. In the north the case
is very different. There is a Russian name, toritsa ; ^
several Danish names, huinh or huvi, girr or kirr ;^ and
Swedish, knuttJryU, ndgcle, shorff.^ This great diversity
shows that attention had long been di-awn to this plant
In this part of Europe, and argues an ancient cultivation.
It was cultivated in the neighbourhood of Montbelliard
in the sixteenth century,* and it is not stated that it was
then of recent introduction. Probably it arose in the
south of Europe during the Roman occupation, and per-
haps earlier in the north. In any case, its original home
must have been Europe.

Agriculturists distinguish a taller variety of spergula,^
but botanists are not agreed with them in finding in it
sufficient characteristics of a distinct species, and some
do not even make it a variety.

Guinea Grass — Panicum Tnaximum, Jacquin.^

This perennial grass has a great reputation in countries
l^ang between the tropics as a nutritious fodder, easy of
cultivation. With a little care a meadow of guinea
grass will last for twenty years.'

Its cultivation appears to have begun in the West
Indies. R Browne speaks of it in his work on Jamaica,
published in the middle of the last century, and it is
subsequently mentioned by Swartz.

The former mentions the name guinea grass, without
any remarks on the original home of the species. The
latter says, " formerly brought from the coast of Africa to
the Antilles." He probably trusted to the indication
given by the common name ; but we know how fallacious

» Sobolewski, Fl. Petrop., p. 109.

^ Rafn, Danmarks Flora, ii. p. 7^9.

« Wahlenberg, quoted by Morltzi, Diet. MS. ; Svensh Botanik, t. 308.

* Bauhin, Hist. Plant., in. p. 722.

* Spergula Maxima, Boninghausen, an illustration published in Rei-
clienbach's Plantw Crit., vi. p. 513.

« Panicum maximum, Jacq., Call. 1, p. 71 (1786) ; Jacq., Icones 1,
t. 13 ; Swartz, Fl. Indice Occ, vii. p. 170 ; P. polygamv.ra, Swartz, Prodr.,
p. 24 (1788) ; P. jumentorum, Persoon Ench., i. p. 83 (1805) ; P.
altissimum of some gardens and modern authors. According to the
rule, the oldest name should be adopted.

' In Dominica according to Imray, in the Kew Report for 1879, p. 16.

116 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

such indications of origin sometimes are. Witness the
so-called Turkey wheat, which comes from America.

Swartz, who is an excellent botanist, says that the
plant grows in the diy cultivated pastures of the West
Indies, where it is also wild, which may imply that it
has become naturalized in places where it was formerly
cultivated. I cannot find it anywhere asserted that it is
really wild in the West Indies. It is otherwise in Brazil.
From data collected by de Marti us and studied by Nees,^
data afterwards increased and more carefully studied by
Doell,'-^ Panicum miaximum grows in the clearings of
the forests of the Amazon valley, near Santarem, in the
provinces of Balria, Ceara, Rio de Janeiro, and Saint Paul.
Although the plant is often cultivated in these countries,
the localities given, by their number and nature, prove
that it is indigenous. Dcell has also seen specimens from
French Guiana and New Gi-anada.

With respect to Africa, Sir William Hooker^ men-
tioned specimens brought from Sierra Leone, from
Agua]nm, from the banks of the Quorra, and from the
Island of St. Thomas, in Western Africa. Nees * indicates
the species in several districts of Cape Colony, even in
the bush and in mountainous country. Richard ° men-
tions places in Abyssinia, which also seem to be beyond
the limits of cultivation, but he owns to being not very
sure of the species. Anderson, on the contrary, posi-
tively asserts that Panicum maxhnuvi was brought
from the banks of the Mozambique and of the Zambesi
rivers by the traveller Peters.*^

The species is kno^vn to have been introduced into
Mauritius by the Governour Labourdonnais,'' and to have
become naturalized from cultivation as in Rodriguez
and the Seychelles Isles. Its introduction into Asia

' Nees, in Martins, Fl. Brasil., in 8vo, vol. ii. p. 166.
2 DcbII, in Fl. Braxih, in fol., vol. ii. part 2.
8 Sir W. Hooker, Niger Fl, p. 560.

* Nees, Florce Afncae Austr. GramineCB, p. 86.
6 A. Richard, Abyssinie, ii. p. 373.

* Peters, Reise Botnnik, p. 546.

* Bojer, Hortus Maurit., p. 565.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 117

must be recent, for Roxburgh and Miquel do not men-
tion the species. In Ceylon it is only cultivated.^

On the whole, it seems to me that the probabilities
are in favour of an African origin, as its name indicates,
and this is confirmed by the general, but insufficiently
grounded opinion of authors.^ However, as the plant
spreads so rapidly, it is strange that it has not reached
Egypt from the Mozambique or Abyssinia, and that it
was introduced so late into the islands to the east of
Africa. If the co-existence of phanerogamous species
in Africa and America previous to cultivation were not
extremely rare, it might be inferred in this case ; but
this is unlikely in the case of a cultivated plant of
which the diflusion is evidently very easy.

Article III. — Various Uses of the Stem and Leaves.

Tea — Thea sinensis, Linnaeus.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, when the
shrub which produces tea was still very little known,
Linnoeus gave it the name of Thea sinensis. Soon after-
wards, in the second edition of the Species Plantatum,
he judged it better to distinguish two species, Thea hohea
and Thea viridis, which he believed to correspond to the
commercial distinction between black and green teas. It
has since been proved that there is but one species, com-
prehending several varieties, from all of which either
black or green tea may be obtained according to the pro-
cess of manufacture. This question was settled, when
another was raised, as to whether Thea really forms
a genus by itself distinct from the genus Camellia.
Some authors make Thea a section of the old genus
Camellia ; but from the characters indicated with great
precision by Seemann,^ it seems to me that we are
justified in retaining the genus Thea, together with the
old nomenclature of the principal species.

A Japanese legend, related by Ktempfer,^ is often

* Baker, Fl. of Mauritius and Seychelles, p. 436.

* Thwaites, Enum. PL Zeylanice.

' Seeoiann, Tr. of the Linncean Society, xxii, p. 337, pi. Gl.

* KaempfLr, Ammn. Japan.

118 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

quoted. A priest who came from India into China
in A.D. 519, having succumbed to sleep when he had
wished to watch and pray, in a movement of anger cut
off his two eyelids, which were changed into a shrub,
the tea tree, whose leaves are eminently calculated to
prevent sleep. Unfortunately for those people who
readily admit legends in whole or in part, the Chinese
have never heard of this story, although the event is
said to have taken place in their country. Tea was
known to them long before 519, and probably it was
not brouoht from India. This is what Bretschneider
tells us in his little work, rich in botanical and philologi-
cal facts.^ The Pentsao, he says, mentions tea 2700 B.C.,
the Rye 300 or 600 B.C. ; and the commentator of the
latter work, in the fourth century of our era, gave
details about the plant and about the infusion of the
leaves. Its use is, therefore, of very ancient date in
China. It is perhaps more recent in Japan, and if it has
been long known in Cochin-China, it is possible, but
not proved, that it formerly spread thither from India ;
authors cite no Sanskrit name, nor even any name in
modern Indian languages. This fact will appear strange
when contrasted with what we have to say on the
natural habitat of the species.

The seeds of the tea-plant often sow themselves beyond
the limits of cultivation, thereby inspiring doubt among
botanists as to the wild nature of plants encountered
here and there. Thunberg believed the species to be
wild in Japan, but Franchet and Savatier ^ absolutely
deny this. Fortune,^ who has so carefully examined
the cultivation of tea in China, does not speak of the
wild plant. Fontanier* says that the tea-plant grows
wild abundantly in Mantschuria. It is probable that
it exists in the mountainous districts of South-eastern
China, where naturalists have not yet penetrated.

' Bretschneider, On the Study and Value of Chin. Bot, Works, pp. 13
ai\c\ 45.

* Franchet and Savatier, Enum. PI. Jap., i. p. 61.

" Fortune, Three Years' Wandering in China, 1 vol. in 8vo.

* Fontanier, Bulletin Soc. d'Acclim., 1870, p. 88.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 119

Loureiro says that it is found both " cultivated and un-
cultivated" in Cochin- China.i What is more certain
is, that English travellers gathered specimens in Upper
Assam -^ and in the province of Cachar.^ So that the
tea-plant must be wild in the mountainous region
which separates the plains of India from those of China,
but the use of the leaves was not formerly known in
India.

The cultivation of tea, now introduced into several
colonies, has produced admirable results in Assam. Not
only is the product of a superior quality to that of
average Chinese teas, but the quantity obtained increases
rapidly. In 1870, three million pounds of tea were pro-
duced in British India ; in 1878, thirty-seven million
pounds ; and in 1880, a harvest of seventy million pounds
was looked for.^ Tea will not bear frost, and suffers from
drought. As I have elsewhere stated,^ the conditions
which favour it are the opposite to those which suit the
vine. On the other hand, it has been observed that tea
flourishes in Azores, Avhere good wine is made ; ® but it
is possible to cultivate in gardens, or on a small scale,
many plants which will not be profitable on a large scale.
The vine grows in China, yet the manufacture of wine
is unimportant. Conversely, no wine-growing country
grows tea for exportation. After China, Japan, and
Assam, it is in Java, Ceylon, and Brazil that tea is most
largely grown, where, certainly, the vine is little culti-
vated, or not at all ; while the wines of dry regions, such
as Australia and the Cape, are already known in the
market.

Flax — Linum usitatissimurti, Linnseus.

The question as to the origin of flax, or rather of the
cultivated flax, is one of those which give rise to most
interesting researches.

1 Lonreiro, FI. Oochin., p. 414.

* Griffith, Reports; Wallich, quoted by Hooker, Fl. Brit. India, i
p. 293.

* Anderson, quoted by Hooker.

* The Colonies and India, Gardener's Chronicle, 18S0, i. p, 659.

* Speech at the Bot. Cong, of London in 1866.
« Flora, 1868, p. 64.

120 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

In Older to understand tlie difficuUies which it
presents, we must first ascertain what nearly allied forms
authors designate — sometimes as distinct species of the
genus Linuni, and sometimes as varieties of a single
species.

The first important work on this subject was by
Planchon, in 18-i8.^ He clearly showed the difi'erences
between Linum usitatissimum, L. hurtiile, and L. angiu*-
tifolium, which were little known. Afterwards Heer,^
when making profound researches into ancient cultivation,
went again into the characters indicated, and by adding
the study of two intermediate forms, as well as the com-
parison of a great number of specimens, he arrived at the
conclusion that there was a single species, composed of
several slightly different forms. I give a translation of
his Latin summary of the chai'acters, only adding a name
for each distinct form, in accordance with the custom of
botanical works.

Linum usitatisshn u m.

1. Annuurn (annual). Root annual; stem single,
upright ; capsules 7 to 8 mm. long ; seeds 4 to 6 mm.,
terminating in a point, a. Vulgare (common). Capsules
7 mm., not opening when ripe, and displaying glabrous
partitions. German names, Schliesslein, Dreschlein.
/3. Humile (low). Capsules 8 mm., opening suddenly when
ripe; the partitions hairy. Linum humile. Miller; L.
crepitans, Boninghausen. German names, Klanglein,
Springlein.

2. Ryemale (winter). Root annual or biennial ; stems
numerous, spreading at the base, and bent; capsules
7 mm., terminating in a point. Linum hyemale ronia-
num. In German, Winterlein.

3. Amhiguum (doubtful). Root annual or perennial ;
stems numerous, leaves acuminate ; capsules 7 mm., with
partitions nearly free from hairs ; seeds 4 mm., ending in
a short point. Linum amhiguum, Jordan.

4. AngustifoliuTn (narrow-leaved). Root annual or

' Planclion, in Hooker, Journal of Botanxj, vol. vii. p. 165.
* Heer, Die Pflanzen der Pfahlhanfen, in 4to, Ziii ich, lSG?,p. 35; Ucber
den Flachs und die Flachskultui; in 4to, Ziiricb, 1872.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 121

perennial ; stems numerous, spreading at the base, and
bent ; capsules 6 mm., with hairy partitions ; seeds 3 mm.,
slightly hooked at the top. Linum angiistifolium.

It may be seen how easily one form passes into
another. The quality of annual, biennial, or perennial,
which Heer suspected to be uncertain, is vague, especially
for the angustifolium ; for Loret, who has observed this
flax in the neighbourhood of Montpellier, says,^ " In
very hot countries it is nearly always an annual, and this
is the case in Sicilv accordincr to Gussone ; with us it is
annual, biennial, or perennial, according to the nature of
the soil in which it grows ; and this may be ascertained
by observing it on the shore, notably at Maguelone.
There it may be seen that along the borders of trodden
paths it lasts longer than on the sand, where the sun
soon dries up the roots and the acidity of the soil
prevents the plant from enduring more than a year,"

When forms and physiological conditions pass from
one into another, and are distinguished by characters
which vary according to circumstances, we are led to
consider the individuals as constituting a single species,
although these forms and conditions possess a certain
degree of heredity, and date perhaps from very early
times. We are, however, forced to consider them
separately in our researches into their origin. I shall
first indicate in what country each variety has been dis-
covered in a wild or half-wild state. I shall then speak of
cultivation, and we shall see how far geographical and
historical facts confirm the opinion of the unity of species.

The covimon annual flax has not yet been discovered,
with absolute certainty, in a wild state. I possess
several specimens of it from India, and Planchon saw
others in the herbarium at Kew; but Anglo-Indian
botanists do not admit that the plant is indigenous in
British India. The recent flora of Sir Joseph Hooker
speaks of it as a species cultivated principally for the oil
extracted from the seeds; and Mr. C. B. Clarke, formerly
director of the botanical gardens in Calcutta, writes to

* Loret, Ohservations Critiques sur Pluxieurs Plantes Montpellidraines,
in the Revue des Sc, Nat., 1875.

122 OIUGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

me that the specimens must have been cultivated, its
cultivation being very common in winter in the north of
India. Boissier"^ mentions L. humile, with narrow leaves,
which Kotschy gathered " near Schiraz in Persia, at the
foot of the mountain called Sabst Buchom." This is,
perhaps, a spot far removed from cultivation ; but I
cannot give satisfactory information on this head. Ho-
henacker found L. usitatissimum "half wild" in the pro-
vince of Talysch, to the south of the Caucasus, towards the
Caspian Sea.'^ Steven is more positive with regard to
Southern Russia.^ According to him, it " is found pretty
often on the barren hills to the south of the Crimea,
between Jalta and Nikita; and Nordmann found it on
the eastern coast of the Black Sea." Advancing westward
in Southern Russia, or in the region of the Mediterranean,
the species is but rarely mentioned, and only as escaped
from cultivation, or half wild. In spite of doubts and of
the scanty data which we possess, I think it very pos-
sible that the annual flax, in one or other of these two
forms, may be wild in the district between the south of
Persia and the Crimea, at least in a few localities.

The winter flax is only known under cultivation in a
few provinces of Italy.*

The Linum amhlguum of Jordan grows on the coast
of Provence and of Languedoc in dry places.^

Lastly, Linum angustifolium, which hardly differs
from the preceding, has a well-defined and rather large
area. It grows wild, especially on hills throughout the
reo-ion of which the Mediterranean forms the centre ; th^t
is, in the Canaries and Madeira, in Marocco,^ AlgeiiaJ
and as far as the Cyrenaic f from tho south of Europe,

' Boissier, Flora Orient, i. p. 851. It is L. usifaiiisimum of Kotschy,
No. 164.

* Boissier, ihid. ; Holienh., Enum. Talyxch. , p. IfiS.

* Steven, Verzpichnii'S der auf der taurisclien Halhinseln wildwach
senden Pflanzen, Moscow, 1857, p. 91.

* Heer, Ueb. d. Flochx, pp.17 and 22.

« Jordan, quoted by Walpers, AnnaL, vol. ii., and by Heer, p. 23.

* Ball, Spkilegium Fl. Marocc, p. 380.

7 Manby, CataL, edit. 2, p. 7-

8 Eohlf, according to Cosson, Bidle. Soc. Bot. de Fr., 1875, p. 46.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 120

as far as England,^ the Alps, and the Balkan Mountains ;
and lastly, in Asia from the south of the Caucasus^ to
Lebanon and Palestine.^ I do not find it mentioned in
the Crimea, nor beyond the Caspian Sea.

Let us now turn to the cultivation of flax, destined in
most instances to furnish a textile substance, often also
to yield oil, and cultivated among certain peoples for the
nutritious properties of the seed. I first studied the
question of its origin in 1855,* and with the following
result : —

It was abundantly shown that the ancient Egyptians
and the Hebrews made use of linen stuffs. Herodotus
affirms this. Moreover, the plant may be seen figured in
the ancient Egyptian drawings, and the microscope
indubitably shows that the bandages which bind the
mummies are of linen.^ The culture of flax is of ancient
date in Europe ; it was known to the Kelts, and in India
according to history. Lastly, the widely difterent com-
mon names indicate likewise an ancient cultivation or
long use in different countries. The Keltic name lin,
and Greco-Latin linon or linum,hiis no analogy with the
Hebrew pisihta,^ nor with the Sanskrit names oonia,
atasi, utasi. "^ A few botanists mention the flax as
'• nearly wdld " in the south-east of Russia, to the south
of the Caucasus and to the east of Siberia, but it was
not known to be truly wild. I then summed up the
probabilities, saying, " The varying etymology of the
names, the antiquity of cultivation in Egypt, in Europe,
and in the north of India, the circumstance that in the
latter district flax is cultivated for the yield of oil alone,

' Planchon, in Hooker's Journal of Botany, vol. 7; Bentham, Uandbk.
of Brit. Flora, edit. 4, p. 89.

2 Planchon, ibid. » Boissier, Fl. Or., i. p. 861.

* A. de Candolle, G^ogr. Bot. Eais., p. 833.

* Thomson, A7inals of Philosophy, June, 1834; Dutrochet, Larrey,
and Costaz, Comptes rendus de I'Acad. des. Sc, Paris, 1837, sem. i. p. 739;
Unger, Bot. Streifzilge, iv. p. 62.

•> Other Hebrew words are interpreted " flax," but this is the most
certain. See Hamilton, La Botanique de la Bible, Nice, 1871, p. 58.

' Piddington, Index Ind. Plants; Roxbnri,'h, Fl. hid., edit. 1832, ii.
p. 110. The name matusi indicated by Piddington belongs to othev
plants, according to Ad. Pictet, Orijines Indo-Euro., edit. 2, vol. i. p. o96.

124 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

lead me to believe that two o; thre' species of different
origin, conf )unded by most autb )rs under tlie name of
Xm2i,mitsi^<fiSsi7)iM,77i, were formerly cultivated in different
countries, without imitation or communication the one
with the other. ... I am very doubtful whether the
species cultivated by the ancient Egyptians was the
species indigenous in Russia and in Siberia."

My conjectures were confirmed ten years later by a
very curious discovery made by Oswald Hter. The lake-
dwellers of Eastern Switzerland, at a time when they only
used stone implements, and did not know the use of hemp,
cultivated and wove a flax which is not our common
annual flax, but the perennial flax called Liiniin anrjusti-
folium, which is wild south of the Alps. This is shown
by the examination of the capsules, seeds, and especially
of the lower part of a plant carefully extracted from the
sediment at Robenhausen.^ The illustration published
by Heer shows distinctly a root surmounted by from two
to four stems after the manner of perennial plants. The
stems had been cut, whereas our common flax is plucked
up by the roots, another proof of the persistent nature
of the plant. With the remains of the Robenhausen flax
some grains of Slleiie eretica were found, a species
which is also foreign to Switzerland, and abundant in
Italy in the fields of flax.^ Hence Heer concluded that
the Swiss lake-dwellers imported the seeds of the Italian
flax. This was apparently the case, unless we suppose
that the climate of Switzerland at that time differed
from that of our own epoch, for the perennial flax would
not at the present day survive the winters of Eastein
Switzerland.^ Heer's opinion is supported by the
surprising fact that flax lias not been found among the
remains of the lake-dwellings of Laybach and Mondsee

* Heer, Die Pflanzen der Pfahlbaufen, 8vo pamphlet, Zuricli, 1865,
p. 35 ; Uvher den Flachs und die Flachskultur in Alterthum, pamphlet in
8vo, Zurich, 1872.

« Bertoloni, FI. Ital., \y. p. 612.

* We have seen that flax is found towards the north-west of Europe,
but nob immediately north of the Alps. Porliaps the climate of Switzer-
land was forme ly more equable than it is now, with more snow to
shtjlter perenn al plants.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 125

of the Austrian States, where bronze has been discovered.^
The late epoch of the introduction of flax into this region
exchides the hypothesis that the inhabitants of Switzer-
land received it from Eastern Europe, from which, more-
over, they were separated by immense forests.

Since the ingenious observations of the Zurich savant,
a flax has been discovered which was employed by the
prehistoric inhabitants of the peat-mosses of Lagozza,
in Lombardy ; and Sordelli has shown that it was the
same as that of Robenhausen, L. angustifuliu'in? This
ancient people was ignorant of the use of hemp and of
metals, but they possessed the same cereals as the Swiss
lake-dwellers of the stone age, and ate like them the
acorns of Querciis rohur, var. sessilijiora. There was,
therefore, a civilization which had reached a certain
development on both sides of the Alps, before metals,
even bronze, were in common use, and before hemp and
the domestic fowl were known.^ It was probably before
the arrival of the Aryans in Europe, or soon after that
event.*

The common names of the flax in ancient European
languages may throw some light on this question.

The name tin, llin, linu, linon, linuin, lein, Ian,
exists in all the European languages of Aryan origin of
the centre and south of Europe, Keltic, Slavonic, Greek,
or Latin. This name is, however, not common to the
Arj-an languages of India; consequently, as Pictet^
justly says, the cultivation must have been begun by the

* Mittheil. Anthrnpol. Gesellschaft, Wien, vol. ti. pp. 122, 161; Ahhandl,
Wicn Akad., M, p. 488.

* Sordelli, Sidle piante della tm-biera e delta stazione preistorica
della Lagozza, pp. 37, ^1, printed at the conclnsion of Castelfranco's
Noiizie alia stazione lacustre della Lagozza, in Svo, Atti della Soc. Itul.
Sc. Nat, 1880.

* The fowl was introduced into Greece from Asia in the sixth
century before Christ, according to Heer, Ueh. d. Flachs, p. 25.

■* These discoveries in the peat. mosses of Lagozza and elsewhere in
Italj show how far Hehn was mistaken in supposing that {KuUv.rpfl., edit.
3, ]877, p. 524) the Swiss lake-dwellers were near the time of Caesar.
The men of the snme civilization as they to the south of the Alps were
evidently more ancient than the Roman republic, perhaps than the
Ligurians.

* Ad. Pictet, Origines Indo-Europ., edit. 2, vol. i. p. 396.

126 OEIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS,

western Aryans, and before their arrival in Eurojie.
Another idea occurred to me which led me into further
researches, but they were unproductive. I thought that,
since this flax was cultivated by the lake-dwellers of
Switzerland and Italy before the arrival of the Aryan
peoples, it was probably also grown by the Iberians, who
then occupied Spain a,nd Gaul ; and perhaps some special
name for it has remained among the Basques, the sup-
posed descendants of the Iberians. Now, according to
several dictionaries of their language,^ liho, lino, or U,
accordins: to the dialects, signifies flax, which agrees with
the name diffused throughout Southern Europe. The
Basques seem, therefore, to have received flax from
peoples of Aryan origin, or perhaps they have lost the
ancient name and substituted that of the Kelts and
Romans. The name fiachs or flax of the Teutonic lan-
guages comes from the Old German flahs. There are also
special names in the north-west of Europe — }jellaiva,
aiivina, in Finnish ; ^ hor, hdrr, hor, in Danish ; ^ hor
and tone in ancient Gothic* Haar exists in the German
of Salzburg.^ This word may be in the ordinary sense
of the German for thread or hair, as the name li may
be connected with the same root as ligai'e, to bind, and as
hor, in the plural horvar, is connected by philologists ^
with harva, the German root for Fiachs ; but it is, never-
theless, a fact that in Scandinavian countries and in
Finland terms have been used which differ from those
employed throughout the south of Europe. This variety
shows the antiquity of the cultivation, and agrees with
the fact that tlie lake-dwellers of Switzerland and Italy
cultivated a species of flax before the first invasion of the
Aryans. It is possible, I might even say probable, that

' Van Eys, Diet Basque-Franrais, 1876; Geze, Elements de Gram-
maire Basque suivis d'uii vocahulaire, Bayonne, 1873; Salaberry, Mots
Basques Navarrais, Bayonne, 1856; I'Ecluse, Vocah. Franf.-Basqiie, 1826.

* Nemnich, Puhj. Lex. d. Natunjesch., ii. p. 420 ; Rafn, Daiunark
Flora, ii. p. 390.

» Nemnich, ibid. * Hid. * Ibid.

6 Fick, Vergl. Worferluch. Tnd. Germ., 2nd edit, i. p. 722. He also
derives the name Liria from the Latin linmn ; but thi.s name is of earlier
date, being comuioii to several European Aryau languages.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 127

the latter imported the name li rather than the plant or
its cultivation; but as there is no wild flix in the north
of Europe, an ancient people, the Finns, of Turanian
origin, introduced the flax into the north before the
Aryans. In this case they must have cultivated the
annual flax, for the perennial variet}^ will not bear the
severity of the northern winters; while we know how
favourable the climate of Riga is in summer to the culti-
vation of the annual flax. Its first introduction into
Gaul, Switzerland, and Italy may have been from the
•south, by the Iberians, and in Finland by the Finns; and
the Aryans may have afterwards diffused those names
which were commonest among themselves — that of linum
in the south, and of flalis in the north. Perhaps the
Ar^^ans and Finns had brought the annual flax from
Asia, which would soon have been substituted for the
perennial variety, which is less productive and less
adapted to cold countries. It is not known precisely at
what epoch the cultivation of the annual flax in Italy
took the place of that of the perennial linum angusti-
folium, but it must have been before the Christian era ;
for Latin authors speak of a well-established cultivation,
and Pliny says that the flax was sown in spring and
rooted up in the summer.^ Metal implements were not
then wanting, and therefore the flax would have been
cut if it had been perennial. Moreover, the latter, if
sown in spring, would not have ripened till autumn.

For the same reasons the flax cultivated by the
ancient Egyptians must have been an annual. Hitherto
neither entire plants nor a great number of capsules have
been found in the catacombs of a nature to furnish direct
and incontestable proof Unger ^ alone was able to ex-
amine a capsule taken from the bricks of a monument,
which Leipsius attributes to the thirteenth or fourteenth
century before Christ, and he found it more like those
of L. usitatissimwni than of L. angustifoliuni. Out of
three seeds which Braun^ saw in the Berlin Museum,

' Pliny, bk. xix. c. 1 : Vere satum cestaie vellitur.

* Unger, Botanische Streifzilje, 1866, No. 7, p. 15.

• A. Braun, Die Pjianzenreste den JEgyptischen Museums in Berlin, in
8v'o, 1877, p. 4.

128 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

mixed with those of other cultiv^ated plants, one appeared
to him to belong to L. anguLstifolium, and the other to
L. humile ; but it must be owned that a sincjle seed
without plant or capsule is not sufficient proof. Ancient
Egyptian paintings show that flax was not reaped with
a sickle like cereals, but uprooted.^ In Egy])t flax is
cultivated in the winter, for the summer drought would
no more allow of a perennial variety, than the cold of
northern countries, where it is sown in spring, to be
gathered in in summer. It may be added that the
annual flax of the variety called humile is the only one*
now grown in Abyssinia, and also the only one that
modern collectors have seen in Egypt.^

Heer suggests that the ancient Egyptians may have
cultivated L. angiistifolium of the Mediterranean region,
sowing it as an annual plant.^ I am more inclined
to believe that they had previously imported or re-
ceived their flax from Egypt, already in the form of the
species L. humile. Their modes of cultivation, and the
figures on the monuments, show that their knowledge
of the plant dated from a remote antiquity. Now it is
known that the Egyptians of the first dynasties before
Cheops belonged to a proto-semitic race, which came
into Eg3^pt by the isthmus of Suez.* Flax has been
found in a tomb of ancient Chaldea prior to the existence
of Babylon,^ and its use in this region is lost in the
remotest antiquity. Thus the first Egyptians of white
race may have imported the cultivated flax, or their im-
mediate successors may have received it from Asia before
the epoch of the Phoenician colonies in Greece, and before
direct communication was established between Gieece
and Egypt under the fourteenth dynasty.^

' Rosellini, pis. 35' and 36, quoted by Unger, But. Sfreifzdje, No. 4,
p. 62.

* W. Schimper, Ascherson, Boiss'er. Schweinfarth, quoted by Braun.
» Keer, Ueb. d. Flachs, p. 26.

* Maspero, llistoire Ancienne des Peuples de I Orient., edit. 3, Paris,
1878, p. 13.

* Journal of the Royal Asiat. Soc, vol. xv. p. 271, quoted by Ileer, Ueb.
den Fl.

* Maspero, p. 213.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEilS OR LEAVES. I2d

A very early introduction of the j)lant into Egypt
from Asia does not prevent us from admitting that it was
at different times taken from the East to the West at
a later epoch than that of the lirst Egyptian dynasties.
Thus the western Arj^ans and the Phoenicians may have
introduced into Europe a flax more advaiitnQ;eous than
L. angustifollum during the period from 2'){)0 to 12U0
years before our era.

The cultivation of the plant by the Aryans must have
extended further north than that by the Phoenicians. In
Greece, at the time of the Trojan war, fine linen stuffs
were still imported from Colchis ; that is to say, from
that region at the foot of the Caucasus where the com-
mon annual flax has been found wild in modern times.
It does not appear that the Greeks cultivated the plant
at that epoch.^ The Aryans had perhaps already intro-
duced its cultivation into the valley of the Danube. How-
ever, I noticed just now that the lacustrine remains of
Mondsee and Laybach show no trace of any flax. In the
last centuries before the Christian era the Romans pro-
cured very fine linen from Spain, although the names
of the plant in that country do not tend to show that the
Phcenicians introduced it. There is not any Oriental
name existing in Europe belonging either to antiquity
or to the Middle Ages. The Arabic name Jaittan, kettane,
or kittane, of Persian origin,^ has spread w^estward only
among the Kabyles of Algeria.*

The sum of facts and probabilities appear to me to
lead to the following statements, which may be accepted
until they are modified by further discoveries.

1. Linum ang list if oil inn, usually perennial, rarely
biennial or annual, which is found wild from the Canary
Isles to Palestine and the Caucasus, was cultivated in
Switzerland and the north of Italy by peoples more
ancient than the conquerors of Aryan race. Its cultiva-
tion was replaced by that of the annual flax.

' The Greek texts are qnoted in Lenz. Bot. der Alt. Gr. und Bom.,
p. 672 ; and in Helm, Cidtuypfl. und Hausthiere, edit. 3, p. 1J4.

* Ad. Pictet, Origines Indo-Europ.

* Bictionnaire Franf.-Berbere, 1 voL in 8vo, 1814.

130 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

2. The annual flax {L. usitatisswium), cultivjited for
at least four thousand or five thousand years in Mesopo-
tamia, Assyria, and Egypt, was and still is wild in the
districts included between the Persian Gulf, the Caspian
Sea, and the Black Sea.

3. This annual flax appears to have been introduced
into the north of Europe by the Finns (of Turanian race),
afterwards into the rest of Europe by the western Aryans,
and pfrhaps here and there by the Phoenicians; lastly
into Hindustan by the eastern Aryans, after their sepa-
ration from the European Aryans.

4. These two principal forms or conditions of flax
exist in cultivation, and have probably been wild in their
modern areas for the last five thousand years at least.
Tt is not possible to guess at their previous condition.
Their transitions and varieties are so numerous that they
may be considered as one species comprising two or three
hereditary varieties, which are each again divided into
subvarieties.

Jute — Corchorus ccq'^sularis and Corchorus olitoriuSf
Linnseus.

The fibres of the jute, imported in great quantities in
the last few years, especially into England, are taken
from the stem of these two species of Corchorus, annuals
of the family of the Tiliacese. The leaves are also used
as a vegetable.

C. capsularls has a nearly spherical fruit, flattened
at the top, and surrounded by longitudinal ridges.
There is a good coloured illustration of it in the work of
the younger Jacquin, Edogce, p]. 119. G. olitorius, on
the contrary, has a long fruit, like the pod of a Crucifer.
It is figured in the Botanical Magazine, fig. 2810, and in
Lamarck, fig. 478.

The species of the genus are distributed nearly equally
in the warm regions of Asia, Africa, and America ; con-
sequently the origin of each cannot be guessed. It must
l)e sought in floras and herbaria, with the help of his-
toiical and other data.

Corchorus capsuliris is comnonly cultivated in
the Sunda Islands, in Ceylon, iu the peninsula of Ilin-

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 131

dustan, in Bengal, in Southern China, in the Philippine
Islands,^ generally in Southern Asia. Forster does not
mention it in his work on the plants in use among the
inhabitants of the Pacific, whence it may be inferred
that at the time of Cook's voyages, a century ago, its cul-
tivation had not spread in that direction. It may even
be suspected from this fact that it does not date from a
very remote epoch in the isles of the Indian Archipelago.

Blume says that Corchorus capsularis grows in the
marshes of Java near Parang,^ and I have two speci-
mens from Java which are not given as cultivated.^
Thwaites mentions it as "very common " in Ceylon.*

On the continent of Asia, authors speak more of it
as a plant cultivated in Bengal and China. Wight, who
gives a good illustration of the plant, does not mention
its native place. Edgeworth,^ who has studied on the
spot the flora of the district of Banda, says that it is
found in " the fields." In the Flora of Briiish India,
Masters, who drew up the article on the Tiliaceae from
the herbarium at Kew, says " in the hottest regions of
India, cultivated in most tropical countries." ^ I have
a specimen from Bengal which is not given as cul-
tivated. Loureiro says "wild, and cultivated in the
province of Canton in China,'' which probably means
wild in Cochin-China, and cultivated in Canton. In Japan
the plant grows in cultivated soil.^ In conclusion, I am
not convinced that the species exists in a truly wild state
north of Calcutta, although it may perhaps have spread
from cultivation and have sown itself here and there.

C. capsularis has been introduced into various parts
of tropical Africa and even of America, but it is only
cultivated on a large scale for the production of jute
thread in Southern Asia, and especially in Bengal.

' Eumpliius, Amhoin, vol. v. p. 212 ; Boxbnrgh, Fl. Ind., ii. p. 5S1;
Loureiro, Fl. Cocliinchine, vi. p. 408.

* Blume, Bijdmgen, i. p. 110. ^ Zollinger, Nos. 1G98 and 27C1.

* Thwaites, Enum. PI. Zeylan.,'p. 31.

* Edgevvorth, Linnman Soc. Jown., ix.

* Masters, in Hooker's Fl. Hrit. Ind., i. p. 397.
' Ijoureiro, Fl. Coc/im., i. p. 408.

8 Fianciiet aud Savatier, Enum., i. p. 66.

7

132 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

C. olitorius is more used as a vegetable tlian for
its fibres. Out of Asia it is employed exclusively for
the leaves. It is one of the commonest of culinary
plants among the modern Egyptians and Syrians, who
call it in Arabic melokych, but it is not likely that they
had any knowledge of it in ancient times, as we know
of no Hebrew name.-'^ The present inhabitants of Crete
cultivate it under the name of riiouchlia,^ evidently
derived from the Arabic, and the ancient Greeks were
not acquainted with it.

According to several authors '"^ this species of Corchorus
is wild in several provinces of British India. Thwaites
says it is common in the hot districts of Ceylon ; but in
Java, Blume only mentions it as growing among rubbish
(in ruderatis). I cannot find it mentioned in Cochin-China
or Japan. Boissier saw specimens from Mesopotamia,
Afghanistan, Syria, and Anatolia, but gives as a general
indication, "culta, et in ruderatis subspontanea." No
Sanskrit name for the two cultivated species of Corchorus
is known. ^

Touching the indigenous character of the plant in
Africa, Masters, in Oliver's Flora of Tropical Africa (i.
p. 262j, says, " wild, or cultivated as a vegetable through •
out tropical Africa." He attributes to the same species
two plants from Guinea which G. Don had described as
different, and as to whose wild nature he probably knew
nothing. I have a specimen from Kordofan gathered by
Kotschy, No. 45, "on the borders of the fields of sorghum."
Peters, as far as I know, is the only author who asserts
that the plant is Avild. He found C. olitorius " in
dry places, and also in the meadows in the neighbour-
hood of Sena and Tette." Schweinfurth only gives it as
a cultivated plant in the whole Nile Valley.^ This is
also the case in the flora of Senegambia by Guillemin,
Perrottet, and Bichard.

* Rosenmiiller, Bihl. Naturgesch.

' Von Heldreicli, Die Nufzpfi. Griechenl., p. 53.

• Masters, in Hooker's Fl. Brit. Ind., i. p. 3D7 ; Aitcliison, Catal.
Punjab, p. 23 ; Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., ii. p. 58L

* Piddington, Index.

• Snhweiufurth, Beitr. z. Fl. AJIhiop., p. 264.

i

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 133

To sum un, C. olitorius seems to be wild in the mode-
rately waim regions of Western India, of Kordofan, and
probably of some intermediate countries. It must have
spread from the coast of Timor, and as far as Northern
Australia, into Africa and towards Anatolia, in the wake
of a cultivation not perhaps ot earlier date than the
Christian era, even at its origin.

In spite of the assertions made in various works, the
cnltivation of this plant is rarely indicated in America.
I note, however, on Grisebaeh's authority,^ that it has
become naturalized in Jamaica from gardens, as often
happens in the case of cultivated annuals.

Sumach. — Mhus coriaria.

This tree is cultivated in Spain and Italy ^ for the
young shoots and leaves, which are dried and made into
a powder for tanning. I recently saw a plantation in
Sicily, of which the product was exported to America.
As oak -bark becomes more rare and substances for tan-
ning are more in demand, it is probable that this cultiva-
tion will spread ; all the more that it is suitable to sandy,
sterile regions. In Algeria, Australia, at the Gape, and.
in the Argentine Republic, it might be introduced with
advantage.^ Ancient peoples used the slightly acid fruits
as a seasoning, and the custom has lingered here and
there ; but I find no proof that they cultivated the
species.

It grows wild in the Canaries and in Madeira, in
the Mediterranean reoion and in the neiohbourhood of
the Black Sea, prefeiring dry and stony ground. In
Asia its area extends as far as the south of the Cau-
casus, the Caspim Sea, and Persia.** The species is
so common that it may have been in use before it was
cultivated.

» Grisebach, M. of Brit. TTesi Ind., p. 97.

* Bosc, Bict. d'Agric, at the word " Sumac."

* The conditions and methods of the culture of the sumach are the
subject of an important paper by Inzenga, translated in the Bull.
Soc. d'Acclim., Feb. 1877. In the Trans. Bot. Soc. of Edinburgh, ix.p. 341,
may be seen an extract from an earlier paper by the author on the same
Bubject.

* Ledebour, Fl. Eoss., i. p. 509 ; Boissior, Fl. Orient., ii. p. 4.

134 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS,

Sumacli is the Persian and Tartar name; ^ o^ous, rfius,
the ancient name among the Greeks and Romans.^
A proof of the persistence of certain common names is
found in the French " Currier's ronx or roitre."

Khat, or Arab Tea — Catha edulis, Forskal; Celastrus
edulis, Vahl.

This shrub, belonging to the family of the Celastracece ,
is largely cultivated in Abyssinia, under the name of
tchut or tchaf, and in Arabia under that of cat or gat. Its
leaves are chewed, when green, like those of the coca in
America, and they have the same exciting and strength-
ening properties. Those of uncultivated plants have a
stronger taste, and are even intoxicating. Botta saw
that in Yemen as nnich importance is attributed to the
cultivation of the Catha as to that of coffee, and he
mentions that a sheik, who is obliged to receive many
visits of ceremony, bought as much as a hundred francs' i
worth of leaves a day.^ In Abyssinia an infusion is
also made from the leaves.^ In spite of the eagerness
with which stimulants are sought, this species has nut
spread into the adjoining countries, such as Beluchistan,
Southern India, etc., where it might succeed.

The Catlia is wild in Abys.sinia,^ but has not yet been
found wild in Arabia. It is true that the interior of
tlie countiy is nearly unknown to botanists. It cannot
be ascertained from Botta's account whether the wild
plants he mentions are wild and indigenous, or escaped
from cultivation and more or less naturalized. Perhaps
the Catha was introduced from Abyssinia with the coffee
plant, which likewise has not been discovered wild in
Arabia. i

Mate — Ilex para r/ui(rie')}sis, Saint-Hilaire. |

The inhabitants of Brazil and of Paraguay have em-

* Nemnich, Pohjijl. Lexicon, ii. p. 1156 ; Aiuslie, Mat. Med. Ind., i.
p. 414.

* Fraap, Srn. Fl. Claxs., p. 85.

* Forskal, Flora JEijy pto-Arabica,\). 65 ; Ricliard, Tenfamen Fl. jlby.v.,
i. p. 134, pi. 30; Botta, A>rhives du Musium, ii. p. 73.

* Hociistetter, Flora, 1811, p. 663.

* Schweinfnrth and Asclierson, Aafzdhlung, p. 263; Oliver, Fl.
Trap. A/r., i. p. 364.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 135

ployed from time immemorial the leaves of this shrub, as
the Chinese have those of the tea plant. They gather them
especially in the dainp forests of the intei'ior, between the
degrees of 20 and 30 south latitude, and commerce trans-
ports them dried to great distances throughout the greater
part of South America. These leaves contain, with aroma
and tannin, a principle analogous to that of tea and coffee :
tliey are not, however, much liked in the countries where
Chinese tea is known. The plantations of mate are not
yet as important as the product of the wild shrub, but
they may increase as the population increases More-
over, the preparation is simpler than that of tea, as the
leaves are not rolled.

Illustrations and descriptions of the species, with a
number of details about its use and properties, may be
found in the works of Saint-Hilaire, of Sir William
Hooker, and of Martins.^

Coca. — Erythroxijlon Coca, Lamarck.

The natives of Peru and of the neighbouring pro-
vinces, at least in the hot moist regions, cultivate this
shrub, of which they chew the leaves, as the natives of
India chew the leaves of the betel. It is a very ancient
custom, which has spread even into elevated regions,
where the species cannot live. Now that it is known how
to extract the essential part of the coca, and its virtues
are recognized as a tonic, which gives strength to endure
fatigue without having the drawbacks of alcoholic liquors,
it is probable that an attempt will be made to extend
its cultivation in America and elsewhere. In Guiana, for
instance, the Malay Archipelago, or the valleys of Sikkim
and Assam, or in Hindustan, since both moisture and heat
are requisite. Frost is very injurious to the species. The
best sites are the slopes of hills where water cannot lie.
An attempt made in the neighbourhood of Lima failed,
because of the infrequency of rain and perhaps because
of insufficient heat,^

* Aug. fie Saint Hilaire, Mem-, du Museum, ix. p. 351 ; Ann. 8c.
Nat., 3rd series, xiv. p. 52 ; Hooker, London Journal of Botany, i. p. 34 ;
Martins, Flora Brasiliensis, vol. ii. part 1, p. 119.

» Martinet, Bull. Soc. d'Acclim., 1874, p. 449.

136 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

I shall not repeat here what may be found in several
excellent treatises on the coca ; ^ I need only say that the
original home of the species in America is not yet clearly
ascertained. Gosse has shown that early authors, such as
Jose])h de Jussieu, Lamarck, and Cavanilles, had only seen
cultivated specimens. Mathews gathered it in Peru, in
the ravine (qiiehrada) of Chinchao,^ which appears to be a
place beyond the limits of cultivation. Some specimens
I'rom Cuchero, collected by Poeppig,^ are said to be wild ;
but the traveller himself was not convinced of their wild
nature.^ D'Orbigny thinks he saw the wild coca on
a hill in the eastern part of Bolivia.^ Lastly, M. Andi'd
has had the courtesy to send me the specimens of Ery~
throxylon in his herbarium, and I recognized the coca in
several specimens from the valley of the river Cauca ia
New Granada, with the note " in abundance, wild or half-
wild." Triana, however, does not admit that the species
is wild in his country, New Granada.^ Its extreme im-
portance in Peru at the time of the Incas, compared to
the rarity of its use in New Granada, seems to show
that it has escaped from cultivation in places where it
occurs in the latter country, and that the species is in-
digenous only in the east of Peru and Bolivia, according
to the indications of the travellers mentioned above.

Dyer's Indigo. — Tndigofera tinctoria, Linnaeus.

The Sanskrit name is nili. ' The Latin name,
indicum, shows that the Romans knew tliat the indiiro
was a substance brought from India. As to the wild
nature of the plant, Roxburgh says, " Native place un-
known, for, though it is now common in a wild state in
most of the provinces of India, it is seldom found far from
the districts where it is now cultivated, or has been culti-
vated formerly." Wight and Royle, who have published
illustrations of the species, tell us nothing on this hea<l,

* Particularly in Gosse's Monographie de V Ei~y throxylon Coca, in
8vo, 186L

* Hooker, Comp. to the Bot. Mag., ii. p. 25.

* Peyritsch, in the Fiora Brasil., fasc. 81, p. 156.

* Hooker, Comp. to the Bot. Mag. * Gtsse, ^fonogr., p. 12.

* Triana and Planchon, Ann. Sciences Nat., 4th series, vul. 18, p. 338
' lloxburgh, Fl. Ind., iii. p. 379.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 137

and more recent Indian floras mention the plant as
cultivated.^ Several other indigoes are wild in India.

This species has been found in the sands of Senegal,^
but it is not mentioned in other African localities, and
as it is often cultivated in Senegal, it seems probable
that it is naturalized. The existence of a Sanskrit name
renders its Asiatic origin most probable.

Silver Indigo — Indigofera argentea.

This species is certainly wild in Abyssinia, Nubia,
Kordofan, and Senaar.^ It is cultivated in Egypt and
Arabia. Hence we might suppose that it was from this
species that the ancient Egyptians extracted a blue dye ; ^
but perhaps they imported their indigo from India, for
its cultivation in Egypt is probably not of earlier date
than the Middle Ages.°

A slightly different form, which Roxburgh gives as
a separate species (Indigofera cccrulea), and which
appears rather to be a variety, is wild in the plains of
the peninsula of flindustan and of Beluchistan.

American Indigoes.

There are probably one or two indigoes indigenous in
America, but ill defined, and often intermixed in cultiva-
tion with the species of the old world, and naturalized
beyond the limits of cultivation. This interchange makes
the matter too uncertain for me to venture upon any
researches into their original habitat. Some authors
have thought that /. Anil, Linnseus, was one of these
species. Linnaeus, however, says that his plant came
from India (3Iantissa, p. 273). The blue dye of the
ancient Mexicans was extracted from a plant which,
according to Hernandez' account,^ dilfers widely from the
indigoes.

' Wight, Icones, t. 3G5 ; Rojle, El. Himal., t. 195 ; Baker, in Flora
of Brit. Ind., ii. p. 98 ; Brandis, Forest Flora, p. 136.

* Guillemin, Perrottet, and Richard, Flora Seneg. Tentamen, p. 178.

* Richard, Tentamen Fl. Abyss., i. 184. ; Oliver, Fl. of Trap. Afr.,
ii. p. 97 ; Schweinfurth and Ascherson, Aufzalilung, p. 256.

■* Unger, Pflanzen d. Alt. .£gyptens, p. 66; Pickering, Chronol,
Arrang., p. 443.

* Reyner, Economie des Juifs, p. 439 ; des Egyptiens, p. 354.

* Hernandez, Thes., p. 108.

138 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Henna — Laiusonia alha, Lamarck (Lawsonia inermis
and L. spinosa of different authors).

The custom amono- Eastern women of stdninor their
nails red with the juice of henna-leaves dates from a
remote anti(juity, as ancient E^^yptian paintings and
mummies show.

It is difficult to know when and in what country this
species was first cultivated to fulfil the requirements of a
fashion as absurd as it is persistent, but it may be from
a very early epoch, since the inhabitants of Babylon,
Nineveh, and the towns of Egj^pt had gardens. It may
be left to scholars to show whether the practice of stain-
ing the nails began in Egypt under this or that dynasty,
before or after certain relations were established with
Eastern nations. It is enough for our purpose to know
that Laiusonia, a shrub belonging to the order of the
Lythraceoe, is more or less wild in the warm regions of
Western Asia and of Africa to the north of the e(|uator.

I have in my possession specimens from India, Java,
Timor, even from China ^ and Nuljia, which are not said
to be taken from cultivated plants, and others fiom
Guiana and the West Indies, which are doubtless fur-
nished by the imported species. Stocks found it indige-
nous in Beluchistan.^ Roxburgh also considered it to be
wild on the Coromandel ^ coast, and Thwaites * mentions
it in Ceylon in a manner which seems to show that it is
wild there. Clarke^ says, "very common, and cultivated
in India, perhaps wild in the eastern part." It is pos-
sible that it spread into India from its original home, as
into Ambojma '^ in the seventeenth centur}', and perhaps
more recently into the West Indies/ in the wake of culti-
vation ; for the plant is valued for the scent of its flowers,
as well as for the dye, and is easily propagated by seed.

» Fortune, No. 32.

* Aitchiscn, Catal. of PI. of Purtjah and Sindh, p. CO; Boissier, Fl,
Orient., ii. p. 744.

' Roxbra-gh, Fl. Ind., ii. p. 258.

♦ Thwaitts, Emtm. PI. ZeuL, p. 122.

* Clarke, in Hooker's Fl. Brit. Ind., ii. p. 273.

• Rumphius, Aiyib., iv. p. 42.

' Grisebach, Fl. Brit. 11'. Ind., i. p. 271.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 139

There is the same doubt as to whether it is indigenous
in Persia, Arabia, and Egj^pt (an essentially cultivated
country), in Nubia, and even in Guinea, where specimens
have been gathered.-^ It is even possible that the area of
this shrub extends from India to Nubia. Sach a wide
geographical distribution is, however, always somewhat
rare. The common names may furnish some indication.

A Sanskrit name, sakachera,^ is attributed to the
species, but as it has left no trace in the different modern
languages of India, I am inclined to doubt its reality.
The Persian name hanna is more widely diffused and
retained than any other {Inna of the Hindus, henneh and
alhenna of the Arabs, kinna of the modern Greeks).
That of cypros, used by the Syrians of the time of
Dioscorides,^ has not found so much favour. This fact
supports the opinion that the species grew originally
on the borders of Persia, and that its use as well as
its cultivation spread from the East to the West, from
Asia into Africa.

Tobacco — Kicotiana Tabacum, Linnaeus ; and other
species of Nicotiana.

At the time of the discovery of America, the custom
of smoking, of snuff-taking, or of chewing tobacco was
diffused over the greater part of this vast continent.
The accounts of the earliest travellers, of which the
famous anatomist Tiedemann ^ has made a very complete
collection, show that the inhabitants of South America
did not smoke, but chewed tobacco or took snufF, except
in the district of La Plata, Uruguay, and Paraguay,
where no form of tobacco was used. In North America,
from the Isthmus of Panama and the West Indies as far
as Canada and California, the custom of smoking was
universal, and circumstances show that it was also very
ancient. Pipes, in great numbers and of wonderful work-
manship, have been discovered in the tombs of the Aztecs

' Oliver, Fl. of Trap. Afr., ii. p. 483.

* Piddington, Index.

' Dioscorides, 1, c. 124 ; Lenz, Bof. d. Alfen, p. 177.

* Tiedemann, Geschichte des Tahaks, in 8vo, 1854. For Brazil, see
Martina, Beitrage zur Ethnographie und Sprachkunde Amerikas, i. p. 719.

140 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

in Mexico ^ and in the mounds of the United States ;
some of them represent animals foreign to North America.^

As the tobacco plant is an annual which gives a great
quantity of seeds, it was easy to sow and to cultivate or
naturalize them more or less in the neighbourhood of
dwellings, but it must be noted that different species of
the genus Nicotiana were employed in 'different parts
of America, which shows that they had not all the
same origin. Nicotiana Tahacuvi, commonly cultivated,
was the most widely diffused, and sometimes the only
one in use in South America and the West Indies. The
use of tobacco was introduced into La Plata, Paraguay,^
and Uruguay by the Spaniards, consequently we must
look further to the north for the origin of the plant.
De Martins does not think it w^as indigenous in Brazil,^
and he adds that the ancient Brazilians smoked the
leaves of a species belonging to their country known
to botanists as Nicotiana Langsdorjii. When I went
into the question in 1855,^ I had not been able to dis-
cover any wild specimens of Nicotiana Tabacum except
those sent by 131anchet from the province of Bahia,
numbered 32:^3, a. JSfo author, either before or since that
time, has been more fortunate, and I see that Messrs.
Fliickiger and Hanbury, in their excellent vrork on
vegetable drugs,^ say positively, " The common tobacco
is a native of the new w^orld, though not now known
in a wild state." I venture to gainsay this assertion,
although the wild nature of a plant may alv/ays be
disputed in the case of a plant which spreads so ea.sily
from cultivation.

We find in herbaria a number of .specimens gathered in
Peru without indication that they were cultivated or that
they grew near plantations. Boissier's herbarium contains

' Tiedemann, p. 17, pi. 1.

* The drawings on these pipes are reprodnced in Naidail'.ac's recent
work, Les Premiers Hommes et les Temps Frih'storiques, vol. ii. pp.
45, 4«.

* Tiedemann, pp. 38, 39.

* Martius, Si/.sf. Mat. Med. Bra.^., p. 120; FI. Bras., \c\. x. p. 191.

* A. de Candolle, Geogr. Bot. Eai.''07in^e, p. 843.

* Fliickiger and Hanburv, Pharmacographia, p. 418.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 141

two specimens collected by Pavon, from different locali-
ties.^ Pavon says in his fiora that the species grows in
the moist warm forests of the Peruvian Andes, and that it
is cultivated. But — and this is more significant — Edouard
Andr^ gathered specimens in the republic of Ecquador
at Saint Nicholas, on the western slope of the volcano of
Corazon in a virgin forest. These he was kind enough
to send me. They are evidently the tall variety (four to
six feet) of JS'. Tabacum, with the upper leaves narrow
and acuminate, as they are represented in the plates of
Hayne and Miller.^ The lower leaves are wanting. The
flower, which gives the true characters of the species, is
certainly that of N. Tahacum, and it is well known that
the height of this plant and the breadth of the leaves
vary in cultivation.^ It is very possible that its original
country extended north as far as Mexico, as far south as
Bolivia, and eastward to Venezuela.

Nicotiana rustica, Linnaeus, a species with yellow
flowers, very diHerent from Tahacum,'^ and which yields
a coarse kind of tobacco, was more often cultivated by
the Mexicans and the native tribes north of Mexico. I
have a specimen brought from California by Douglas in
1837, a time when colonists were still few; but American
authorities do not admit that the plant is wild, and Dr.
Asa Gray says that it sows itself in waste places.^ This
was perhaps the case with the specimens in Boissier's
herbarium, gathered in Peru by Pavon, and which he
does not mention in the Peruvian flora. The species
grows in abundance about Cordova in the Argentine
Republic,^ but from what epoch is unknown. From the

* One of these is classed under the name Nicot. fruticosa, which in
my opinion is the same species, tall, but not woody, as the name would
lead one to believe. N. auriculata, Bertero, is also Tabacum, according
to my authentic specimens.

* Hayne, Arzneikunde Gewachse, vol. xii. t. 41 ; Miller, Figures of
Plants, pi. 185, f. 1.

' The capsule is sometimes shorter and sometimes longer than the
calix, on the same plant, in Andre's specimens.

* See the figures of N. rastica in Plee, Types de Families Naturellea
de France, Solanees ; BuUiard, Herbier de France, t. 289.

* Asa Gray, Syn. Flora of North Amer. (1878), p. 2il.

* Martin de Moussy, Baser, de la R'pib. Argsnt., i, p. 193,

142 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

ancient use of the plant and the home of the most analo-
gous species, the probahilities are in favour of a Mexican,
Texan, or Californian origin.

Sevei'al botanists, even Americans, have believed that
the species came from the old world. This is certainly
a mistake, although the plant has spread here and there
even into our forests, and sometimes in abundance,^
having escaped from cultivation. Authoi's of the six-
teenth century spoke of it as a foreign plant introduced
into gardens and sometimes spreading from them.^ It
occurs in some herbaria under the names of N. tar-
tarica, turcica, or sibirica ; but these are garden-grown
specimens, and no botanist has found the species in Asia,
or on the borders of Asia, with any appearance of wildness.

This leads me to refute a widespread and more per-
sistent error, in spite of what I proved in 1855, namely,
that of regarding some species ill described from culti-
vated specimens as natives of the old world, of Asia in
pai'ticular. The proofs of an American origin are so
numerous and consistent that, without entering much
into detail, I may sum them up as follows : —

A. Out of fifty species of the genus Nicotiana found
in a wild state, two only are foreign to America ; namely,
N suavolens of New Holland, with which is joined
iV. rotundifolia of the same country, and that which
Ventinat had wrongly styled N. undidata; and N. fra-
gans, Hooker, of the Isle of Pines, near New Caledonia,
which differs very little from the preceding.

B. Though the Asiatic people are great lovers of
tobacco, and have from a very early epoch sought the
smoke of certain narcotic plants, none of them made use
of tobacco before the discovery of America. Tiedemann
has distinctly proved this fact by thorough researches
into the writiiio-s of travellers in the Middle As^es.^ He
even quotes for a later epoch, not long after the dis-
covery of America, between 1540 and 1003, the fact that

' Bulliard, Herhier de France.

• Caesalpinus, lib. viii. cap. 44; Banhin, Hist,, iii. p. 630.

• Tiedemann, Geschichte des Tabaks (1854), p. 208. Two years
enrlier, Yolz, Beitrage zur Culturgeschichte, had collected a number
of facts relative to the introduction of tobacco into different countries.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 1 i3

F.everal travellers, some of whom were botanists, such as
Belon and Rauwolf, who travelled through the Turkish
and Persian empires, observing their customs with much
attention, have not once mentioned tobacco. It was
evidently introduced into Turkey at the beginning of the
seventeenth century, and the Persians soon received it
from the Turks. The first European who mentions the
smoking of tobacco in Persia is Thomas Herbert, in 1626.
No later travellers have omitted to notice the use of the
hookah as well established. Olearius describes this ap-
paratus, which he saw in 1633. The first mention of
tobacco in India is in 1605,^ and it is probable that it
was of European introduction. It was first introduced
at Arracan and Pegu, in 1619, according to the traveller
Methold.^ There are doubts about Java, because Rum-
phius, a very accurate observer, who wrote in the second
half of the seventeenth century, says^ that, according
to the tradition of some old people, tobacco had been
employed as a medicine before the arrival of the Portu-
guese in 1496, and that only the practice of smoking it
had been communicated by the Europeans. Rumphius
adds, it is true, that the name tahaco or tambuco, which
is in use in all these places, is of foreign origin. Sir
Stamford Raffles,* in his numerous historical researches
on Java, gives, on the other hand, the year 1601 as the
date of the introduction of tobacco into Java. The
Portuguese had certainly discovered the coasts of Brazil
between 1500 and 1504, but Vasco di Gama and his
successors went to Asia round the Cape, or through the
Red Sea, so that they could hardly have established
frequent or direct communications between America and
Java. Nicot had seen the plant in Portugal in 1560, so
that the Portuguese probably introduced it into Asia
in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Thunberg
alKrms^ that the use of tobacco was introduced into

' According to an anonymous Indian author quoted by Tiedemann,
p. 229.

* Tiedemann, p. 23i. * Ramphius, Herh. Amhoin v. p. 223,

* Raffles, Descr. of Java, p. 85.

* Thunberg, Flora Japonica, p. 91.

144 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Japan by the Portuguese, and according to early travellers
quoted by Tiedemann, this was at the beginning of the
seventeenth century. Lastly, the Chinese have no original
and ancient sign for tobacco ; their paintings on china
in the Dresden collection often present, from the year 1700
and never before that date, details relating to tobacco,^
and Chinese students are agreed that Chinese works do
not mention the plant before the end of the sixteenth
century.^ If it be remembered with what rapidity the
use of tobacco has spread wherever it has been intro-
duced, these data about Asia have an incontestable force.

C. The common names of tobacco confirm its
American origin. If there had been any indigenous
species in the old world there would be a great number
of different names; but, on the contrar^^, the Chinese,
Japanese, Javanese, Indian, Persian, etc., names are
derived from the American names, petitm, or tabak,
tahok, tamboc, slightly modified. It is true that Pid-
dington gives Sanskrit names, dhumrapatra and tom-
rakouta,^ but Adolphe Pictet informs me that the first of
these names, which is not in Wilson's dictionaiy-, means
only leaf for smoking, and appears to be of modern com-
position; while the second is probably no older, and
seems to be a "modern modification of the Amei'ican
names. The Arabic word docchan simply means smoke.'^

Lastly, we must inquire into the two so-called Asiatic
Nicotiance. The one, called by Lehmann Nicotiana
chinensis, came Irom the Russian botanist Fischer, who
said it was Chinese. Lehmann said he had seen it in a
garden. Now, it is well known how often an eiToneous
origin is attributed to plants grown by horticulturists
and besides, from the description, it seems that it was
simply N. Tubacum, of which the seeds had perhaps
couie from China.^ The second species is N. persica,

• Klemm, quoted by Tiedemann, p. 256.

* Staaislas Julien, in de CandoUe, G4nqr. Bot. Rais., p. 851 ;
Bretschneider, Studij and Value, etc., p. 17.

• Piddington, Index. * Forskal, p. G3.

* Lehmann, Historia I\icofinarum, p. IS. The epithet suffruiicosa
is an exaggeration applied to the tobacc( s, « hic'i are always annual. I
have said already that N. snffruticoF-a of ditfcrent r.nlh irs is N. Tabacum,

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 145

Lindley, figured in the Botanical R'^gister (pi. 1592),
of which the seeds had been sent from Ispahan to the
Horticultural Society of London, as those of the best
tobacco cultivated in Persia, that of Schiraz. Lindley
did not observe that it corresponded exactly to N. alata,
drawn three years before by Link and Otto^ from a
plant in the gardens at Berlin. The latter was grown
from seed sent by Sello from Southern Brazil. It is
certainly a Brazilian species, with a white elongated
corolla, allied to N. suaveolens of New Holland. Thus
the tobacco cultivated sometimes in Persia along with
the common species, is of American origin, as I declared
in my Geographical Botany of 1855. I do not under-
stand how this species was introduced into Persia. It
must have been from seed taken from a garden, or
brought by chance from America, and it is not likely
that its cultivation is common in Persia, for Olivier and
Bruizuiere, and other naturalists who have observed the
tobacco plantations in that country, make no mention
of it.

From all these reasons I conclude that no species of
tobacco is a native of Asia. They are all American,
except N. suaveolens of New Holland, and K. fragrans
of the Isle of Pines to the south of New Caledonia.

Several NicotiancB, besides N. Tahacum and A\ rus-
tica, have been cultivated here and there by savages,
or as a curiosity by Europeans. It is strange that so
little notice is taken of these attempts, by means of
which very choice tobacco might be obtained. The
species with white flowers would yield probably a light
and perfumed tobacco, and as some smokers seek the
stroncjest tobaccos and the most disaj^reeable to non-
smokers, I would recommend to their notice A. angustr-
folia of Chili, which the natives call tabaco del diahlo.^

' Link and Otto, Icones Plant. Bar. Horf. Ber., in 4to, p. 63, t. 32.
Sendtner, in Flora Brasil, vol. x. p. 167, describes the same plant aa
Sello, as it seems from the specimens collected by this traveller; and
Grisebach, SymholcB Fl. Argent., p. 243, mentions N. alata in the pro-
vince of Entrerios^ of the Argentine repnblic.

• Bertero, in De Cand., Prodr., xii., sect. 1, p. o68.

14G ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Cinnamon — Cinnamonum zetjlanicum, Breyn.

This little tree, belonging to the laurel triVje, of which
the bark of the young branches forms the cinnamon of
commerce, grows in great quantities in the forests of
Ceylon. Certain varieties which grow wild on the con-
tinent of India were formerly considered to be so many
distinct species, but Anglo-Indian botanists are agreed
in connecting them with that of Cevlon.^

The bark of C. zeylaniciim, and that of several uncul-
tivated species of Cinnamonum, which produce the
cassia, or Chinese cassia, have been an important article
of commerce from a very early period. Fliickiger and
Hanbury ^ have treated of this historical question with
so much learning and thoroughness, that we need only
refer to their work, entitled Fharmacogixqjhia, or His-
tory of the Principal Drugs of Vegetable Origin. It is
important from our point of view to note how modern
the culture is of the cinnamon tree in comparison with
the trade in its product. It was only between 1765 and
1770 that a Ceylon colonist, named de Koke, aided by
Falck, the governor of the island, made some planta-
tions which were wonderfully successful. They have
diminished in Ceylon in the last few years, but others
have been established in the tropical regions of the old
and new worlds. The species becomes easily naturalized
bej^ond the limits of cultivation,^ as birds are fond of the
fruit, and drop the seeds in the forests.

China Grass — Boehmeria nivea, Hooker and Arnott.

The cultivation of this valuable Urticacea has been
introduced into the south of France and of the United
States for about thirty years, but commerce had pre-
viously acquainted us with the great value of its fibres,
more tenacious than hemp and in some cases flexible as
silk. Interesting details on the manner of cultivating

' Thwaites, Enum. PL Zelanim, p. 252 ; Brandis, Forest Flora of India,
p. 375.

* Fliickiger and Hanbury, Pharmacographia, p. 467 ; Porter, The
Tropical Agriculturist, p. 268.

' Brandis, Forest Flora; Grisebach, Flora of Bnt. W. India Is.,
p. 179.

FLAXTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 117

the plant and of extracting its fibres ^ may be found in
several books ; I shall confine myself here to defining as
clearly as I can its geographical origin.

To attain this end we must not trust to the vague
expressions of most authors, nor to the labels attached
to the specimens in herbaria, since frequently no dis-
tinction has been made between cultivated, naturalized,
or truly wild plants, and the two varieties of Boehmeria
nivea (Urtica nivea, Linnaeus), and Boehmeria tenacis-
sima, Gaudichaud, or B. cancUcans, Hasskarl, have been
confounded together; forms which appear to be varieties
of the same species, because transitions between them
have been observed by botani.sts. There is also a sub-
variety, with leaves green on both sides, cultivated by
Americans and by M. de Maiartic in the south of France.

The variety earliest known {Urtica nivea, L.), with
leaves white on the under side, is said to grow in China
and some neighbouring countries. Linnieus says it is
found on walls in China, which would imply a plant
naturalized on rubbish-heaps from cultivation. But
Loureiro ^ says, " habitat et ahundanter colitur in Cochin-
China et China," and according to Bentham,^ the collector
Champion found it in abundance in the ravines of the
island of Hongkong. According to Franchet and Sava-
tier,* it exists in Japan in clearings and hedges {infruti-
cetis umhrosis et sepibiis). Blanco ^ says it is common in
the Philippine Isles. I find no proof that it is wild in
Java, Sumatra, and other islands of the Malay Archi-
pelago. Rumphius ^ knew it only as a cultivated plant
Roxburgh' believed it to be a native of Sumatra, but
Miquel ^ does not confirm this belief. The other varieties

> De Maiartic, Journ. d'Agric. Pratique, 1871, 1872, vol. ii. Ko. .31;
de la Eoqne, ibid., No. 29, Bull. Soc. d'AccJim., 1872, p. 463; Yilmoriii,
Bon Jardinier, 1880, pt. 1, p. 700; Vetillart, Etudes sur lea Fihrej
Vegetales Textiles, p. 99, pi. 2.

^ Loureiro, Fl. Cochin., ii. p. 683.

3 Bentliam, Fl. Hongkong, p. 331.

* Franchet and Savatier, Enum. Plant. Jap., i. p. 439.
» Blanco, Flora de Filip., edit. 2, p. 484.

' Riimphias, Amboin, v. p. 214.
' Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., iii. p. 590.

• iliquel, Sumatra, Germ, edit., p. 179.

14-8 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

have nowhere been found wild, which supports the
theory that they are only the result of cultivation.

Hemp — Cannabis saliva, Linnasus.

Hump is mentioned, in its two forms, male and female,
in the most ancient Chinese works, particularly in the
IShii-King, written 500 B.c.^

It has Sanskrit names, bhanga and gangika.^ The
root of these words, ang or an, recurs in all the Indo-
Kuropean and modern Semitic languages : hang in Hindu
and Persian, ganga in Bengali,^ harif in German, hemp
in English, chanvre in French, kanas in Keltic and
modern Breton,* cannabis in Greek and Latin, cannab
in Ara,bic.^

According to Herodotus (born 484 B.C.), the Scythians
used hemp, but in his time the Greeks were scarcely
acquainted with it.® Hiero II., King of Syracu.se, bought
the hemp used for the cordage of his vessels in Gaul, and
Lucilius is the earliest Roman writer who speaks of the
plant (100 B.C.). Hebrew books do not mention hemp.'
It was not used in the fabrics which enveloped the
mummies of ancient Egypt. Even at the end of the
eighteenth century it was only cultivated in Egypt for the
sake of an intoxicating liquid extracted from the plant.^
The compilation of Jewish laws known as the Talmud,
made under tlie Roman dominion, speaks of its textile
properties as of a little-known fact.^ It seems probable
that the Scythians transported this plant from Central
Asia and from Russia when they migrated westward
about 1500 B.C., a little before the Trojan war. It may
also have been introduced by the earlier incursions of the
Aryans into Thrace and Western Europe ; yet in that case
it would have been earlier known in Italy. Hemp has

' Bretschncider, On the Sfvdij and Value, etc., pp. 5, 10, 48.

* Piddington, Index ; lloxburgh, Fl. Ind., edit. 2, voL iii. p. 772.
' Roxburgh, ibid.

* Ticynier, £conoynie des Celfes, p. 44S; Jjegnmdec, Diet. Bas-Breton.

* J. Humbert, formerly professor of Arabic at Geneva, says the name
is kannah, kon-nab, hon-nah, hen-7iah, kanedir, according' to the locality.

° Athenaeus, quoted by Hehn, Culturpf.anzen, p. 1G8.

' Rosenmiiller, Hand. Bihl. Alterth.

* Forskal, F^om ; DeVi]e, Flore d'Egypte.
" Rrynier, J^conomie rfes Ardbes, p. 434.

PliANTS CULTIVATED FOE, THEIH STEMS OR LEAVES. 149

not been found in the lake-dwellinojs of Switzerland^ and
Northern Italy .^

The observations on the habitat of Cannabis sativa
agree perfectly with the data furnished by history and
philolog}^ I have treated specially of this subject in a
monograph in Prodromus, 1869.^

The species has been found wild, beyond a doubt, to
the south of the Caspian Sea,* in Siberia, near the Irtysch,
in the desei't of the Kirghiz, beyond Lake Baikal, in
Dahuria (government of Irkutsh). Authors iliention it
also throughout Southern and Central Russia, and to the
south of the Caucasus/ but its wnld nature is here less
certain, seeing that these are populous countries, and that
the seeds of the hemp are easily diffused from gardens.
The antiquity of the cultivation of hemp in China leads
me to believe that its area extends further to the east,
although this has not yet been proved by botanists.^
Boissier mentions the species as " almost wild in Persia."
I doubt whether it is indigenous there, since in that case
the Greeks and Hebrews would have known of it at an
earlier period.

"White Mulberry — Moms alba, Linnreus.

The mulberry tree, which is most commonly used
in Europe for rearing silkworms, is Morus alba. Its
very numerous varieties have been carefully described by
Seringe,'' and more recently by Bureau." That most
W'idely cultivated in India, Morus indica, Linnaeus
(Morus alba, var. Indica, Bureau), is wild in the Punjab
and in Sikkim, according to Brandis, inspector-general of
forests in British India.^ Two other varieties, serrata
and cuspidata, are also said to be wdld in different pro-

' Heer, Ueher d. Flachs, p. 25.

* Sordelli, Notizie sull. Staz. di Lagozza, 1880.
» Vol. xvi. sect. 1, p. 30.

* De Baiige, Bull. Soc. Bot. de J'r., 1860, p. 30.

* Ledebonr, Flora Rossica, iii. p. 634.

* Bunge found heuip in the nortli of China, but among rubbish {Enum .
No. 338).

' Seringe, Description et Culture des M&riers.

* Bureau, in De Caudolle, Prodromus, xvii. p. 238.

* Brandis, Forest -Flora of Noi-th-West and Central India, 1874,
p. 408. This variety has black fruit, like that of Morus nigra.

loO ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

vinces of Northern India.^ The Abh^ David found a
perfectly wild variety in Mongolia, described under the
name of mongolica by Bureau; and Dr. Bretschueider^
quotes a name yen, from ancient Chinese authors, for the
wild mulberry.

It is true he does not say whether this name applies
to the white mulberry, pe-sang, .z»f the Chinese planta-
tions.^ The antiquity of its culture in China,* and in
Japan, and the number of different varieties grown there,
lead us to believe that its original area extended east-
ward as far as Japan; but the indigenous flora of Soutliern
China is little known, and the most trustworthy authors
do not affirm that the plant is indigenous in Japan.
Franchet and Savatier^ say that it is "cultivated from
time immemorial, and become wild here and there." It
is worthy of note also that the white mulberry appears
to thrive especially in mountainous and temperate coun-
tries, whence it may be argued that it was formerly
introduced from the north of China into the plains of
the south. It is known that birds are fond of the fruit,
and bear the seeds to great distances and into unculti-
vated ground, and this makes it difficult to discover its
really original habitat.

This facility of naturalization doubtless explains the
presence in successive epochs of the white mulberry in
Western Asia and the south of Europe. This must have
occurred especially after the monks brought the silk-
worm to Constantinople under Justinian in the sixth
century, and as the culture of silkworms was gradually
propagated Avestwards. However, Targioni has proved
that only the black mulberry, M. nigra, was known in
yicily and Italy when the manufacture of silk was intro-
duced into Sicily in 1148, and two centuries later into

* Bureau, ihid., from the specimens of several travellers.

* Bretpcbrcider, Study and Vcdue, etc., p. 12.

* This name occurs in the Pent-sao, according to Ritter, Erdkunde,
xvii. p. 489.

* Piatt says (Zeitschriff d. Gesellsch. ErdJcunde, 1871, p. 162) that
its cultivation dates from 4000 years u.r.

* Franchet and Savatier, Enum. Plant. Jap., i. p. 433.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 151

Tuscany.^ According to the same author, the introduction
of the white mulberry into Tuscany dates at the earliest
from the year ISiO. In like manner the manufacture of
silk may have begun in China, because the silkworm is
natural to that country ; but it is very probable that the
tree grew also in the north of India, where so many
travellers have found it wild. In Persia, Armenia, and
Asia Minor, I am inclined to believe that it was natura-
lized at a very early epoch, rather than to share Grise-
bach's opinion that it is indigenous in the basin of the
Caspian Sea. Boissier does not give it as wild in that
region.^ Buhse^ found it in Persia, near Erivan and
Bashnaru.schin, and he adds, " naturalized in abundance
in Ghilan and Masenderan." Ledebour,* in his Russian
flora, mentions numerous localities round the Caucasus,
but he does not specify whether the species is wild or
naturalized. In the Crimea, Greece, and Italy, it exists
only in a cultivated state.^ A variety, tatarica, often
cultivated in the south of Russia, has become naturalized
near the Volga.^

If the wdiite mulberry did not originally exist in
Persia and in the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea, it
must have penetrated there a long while ago. I may
quote in proof of this the name tut, tutti, tida, wdiich is
Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and Tartar. There is a Sanskrit
name, tida^ which must be connected with the same root
as the Persian name; but no Hebrew name is known,
which is a confirmation of the theory of a successive
extension towards the west of Asia.

I refer those of my readers who may desire more de-
tailed information about the introduction of the mulberry
and of silkworms to the able works of Targioni and

* Ant. Targioni, Cenni Storici suW Introduzione di Varie Piante nelV
Agricoltura Toscana, p. 188.

* Boissier, Fl. Orient., iv. p. 1153.

' Buhse, Avfzahlung der Transcaucasien v.nd Persien Pflanzen, p. 203.

* Ledebour, Fl. Ross., iii. p. 643.

* Steven, Verseichniss d. Taurisch. Halhins, p. 313 ; Heldreich, Pflan-
zen des Attischen Ebene, p. 508; Bertoloni, FL Hal., x. p. 177; Caruel,
F.. Toscana, p. 171.

^ Bureau, de Cand., Prodr., xvii. p. 238.
' Roxburgh, Fl. Ind. ; I'iddington, Index.

152 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Ritter, to which I have already referred. Recent dis-
coveries made by various botanists have permitted me
to add more precise data than those of Kitter on the
question of origin, and if there are some apparent contra-
dictions in our opinions on other points, it is because the
famous geogiapher has considered a number of varieties
as so many ditiVrent species, whereas botanists, after a
careful examination, have classed them together.

Black Mulberry — Morui nigra, Linnajus.

This tree is more valued for its fruit than for its
leaves, and on that account I should have included it
in the list of fruit trees ; but its history can hardly be
sepai'ated from that of the white mulberry. Moreover,
its leaves are employed in many countries lor the feeding
of silkworms, although the silk produced is of inferioi'
quality.

The black mulberry is distinguished from the white
by several characters independently of the black colour
of the fruit, which occurs also in a few varieties of the
M. alba} It has not a great number of varieties like
the latter, which argues a less ancient and a less genei-al
cultivation and a narrower primitive area.

Greek and Latin authors, even the poets, have men-
tioned Morns nigra, which they compare to Ficus syco-
onorus, and which they even confounded originally with
this Egyptian tree. ■

Commentators for the last two centuries have quoted
a number of passages which leave no doubt on this head,
but which are devoid of interest in themselves.^ They
furnish no proof touching the origin of the species, which
is presumably Persian, uidess we are to take seriously
the fable of Pyramus and Thisbe, of which the scene was
in Babylonia, according to Ovid.

Botanists have not yet furnished any certain proof
that this species is indigenous in Persia. Boissier, who
is the most learned in the lioras of the East, contents

' Eeichenbach gives good figures of both species in his Icones Fl.
Germ., 657, 658.

• Fraas, Syn. Fl. Chi.ti^., p- 230; Lenz, Bof. der Alfcn Or. vnd Fihn.,
])■ 419; Hitter, Erdkunde, xvii. p. 482; Uebu, Culturpflanzen, edit. 3,
p- 336,

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STExMS OR LEAVES. 153

himself with quoting Hohenacker as the discoverer of
M. nigra in the forests of Lenkoran, on the south coast
of the Caspian Sea, and he adds, " probably wild in the
north of Persia near the Caspian Sea." ^ Ledebour, in his
Russian flora, had previously indicated, on the authority
of different travellers, the Crimea and the provinces south
of the Caucasus ; ^ but Steven denies the existence of the
species in the Crimea except in a cultivated state.^ Tchi-
hatcheff and Koch found the black mulberry in high
Vv^ld districts of Armenia. It is very probable that in
the region to the south of the Caucasus and of the
Caspian Sea Morus nigra is wild and indigenous rather
than naturalized. What leads me to this belief is (1)
that it is not known, even in a cultivp.ted state, in India,
China, or Japan ; (2) that it has no Sanskrit name ; (3)
that it was sc early introduced into Greece, a country
which had intercourse Avith Armenia at an early period.'*

Morus nigra spread so little to the south of Persia,
that no certain Hebrew name is known for it, nor even
a Persian name distinct from that of Morus alba. It
was widely cultivated in Italy until the superiority
of the white mulberry for the rearing of silkworms was
recognized. In Greece the black mulberry is still the
most cultivated.^ It has become naturalized here and
there in these countries and in Spain.^

American Aloe — Agave Americana, Linnaeus.

This ligneous plant, of the order of Amaryllidacece,
has been cultivated fi'om time immemorial in Mexico under
the names maguey or metl, in order to extract from it, at
the moment when the flower stem is developed, the wine
known as pulque. Humboldt has given a full descrip-
tion of this culture,'^ and he tells us elsewhere ^ that ihe

' Boissier, Fl. Orient., iv. p. 1153 (published 1879).

* Ledebour, Fl. Ross., iii. p. 641.

* Steven, Verseichniss d. Taur. Halb. Fflan., p. 31.S.

* Tchihatcheff, trans, of Grisebacli's Vegetation, da Glole, i. 424).

* Heldreich, Nutzpjlanzen Griechenlands, p. 19.

* Bertoloui, Flora Hal., x. p, 179; Viviani, Fl. Dalmat., i, p. 220;
Willkomm and Lange, Prodr. Fl. Hisp., i. p. 250.

' Humboldt, Nouvelle Espagne, ed. 2, p. 487.

* Humboldt, in Kunth, Nova Genera, i. p. 297.

154 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

species grows in the whole of South Ameiiea as far as
five thousand feet of altitude. It is mentioned^ in
Jamaica, Antigua, Dominica, and Cuba, but it must
be obsei-ved that it multiplies easily by suckers, and
that it is often planted far from dwellings to form
fences or to extract from it the fibre known as ^9<7«?, and
this makes it dithcult to ascertain its original habitat.
Transported long since into the countries which border
the Mediterranean, it occurs there with every appearance
of an indigenous species, although there is no doubt as
to its origin.^ Probably, to judge from the various uses
made of it in Mexico before the arrival of the Euro-
peans, it came originally from thence.

Sugar-Cane — Saccharum offLcinariim., Linnteus.

The origin of the suo-ar-cane, of its cultivation, and
of the manufacture of sugar, are the subject of a very
remarkable work by the geographer, Karl Ritter.^ I need
not follow his purely agricultural and economical details;
but for that which interests us particularly, the primitive
habitat of the species, he is the best guide, and the facts
observed during the last forty years for the most part
support or confirm his opinions. •

The sugar-cane is cultivated at the present day in all
the warm regions of the globe, but a number of historical
facts testify that it was first grown in Southern Asia,
whence it spread into Africa, and later into America.
The question is, therefore, to discover in what dL^^tricts
of the continent, or in which of the southern islands of
Asia, the plant exists, or existed at the time it was first
employed.

Ritter has followed the best methods of arrivmg at a
solution. He notes first that all the si)ecies known in a

' Grisebach, Fl. of Br if. W. Ind. I.<t., p. 582.

* Alph. de Caudolle, Geogr. Bot. Raisonnee, p. 739; H. Hoffmann, in
Rejiel's Garfcvflora, 1875, p. 70.

• K. Ritter, Ueber die GeographiscTie Verhreitung des Zucl-errohrx,
in 4to, 108 pages (according to Pritzel, Thee Lit. Bot.) ; Die Cidfur
des Zuckerrohrs, Saccharuin, in Asien, Gengr. Verbreitinig, etc., etc., in
8vo, 64 pages, without date. This naonograph is fnll of learning and
judgment, worthy of the best epoch of German science, when English
or French authors were quoted by all authors with as much cai'e as
Girniaus.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 155

wild state, and undoubtedly belonging to the genus Sac-
charum, grow in India, except one in Egypt.^ Five
species have since been desci'ibed, growing in Java, New
Guinea, Timor, and the Philippine Isles.^ The proba-
bilities ai-e all in favour of an Asiatic origin, to judge
from the data furnished by geographical botany.

Unfortunately no botanist had discovered at the time
when Ritter wrote, or has since discovered, Saccharum
officinariiin wild in India, in the adjacent countries or
in the archipelago to the south of Asia. All Anglo-
Indian authors, Roxburgh, Wallich, Royle, etc., and more
recently Aitchison,^ only mention the plant as a culti-
vated one. Roxburgh,' who was so long a collector in
India, says expressly, " where wild I do not know." The
family of the Graininece has not yet appeared, in
Sir Joseph Hooker's flora. For the island of Ceylon,
Thwaites does not even mention the cultivated plant."*
Rumphius, who has carefully described its cultivation
in the Dutch colonies, says nothing about the home
of the species. Micpel, Hasskarl, and Blanco mention no
wild specimen in Sumatra, Java, or the Philippine Isles.
Crawfurd tried to discover it, but failed to do so.^ At the
time of Cook's voyage Forster found the sugar-cane only
as a cultivated, plant in the small islands of the Pacific.^
The natives of New Caledonia cultivate a number of
varieties of the sugar-cane, and use it constantly, sucking
the syrup from the cane ; but Vieillard '^ takes care to say,
" From the fact that isolated plants of Saccharum offici-
narum are often found in the middle of the bush and
even on the mountains, it would be wrong to conclude
that the plant is indigenous ; for the.se specimens, poor
and weak, only mark the site of old plantations, or

* Kunth, Enum. Plant. (1838), voL i. p. 474. There is no more
recent descriptive work on tlie i'auiily of the Graminece, nor the genu?!
Saccharum.

* Miquel, Florw Tndim Batavce, 1855, vol. iii. p. oil.

2 Aitchison, Catalogue of Punjab and Sindh Plants, 1869, p. 173.

* Thwaites, Enum. PL Zeyloniw.

* Crawfurd, Indian Archip., i. p. 475.
° Forster, De Plantis Esculentis.

' Vieillard, Annales des Sc. Nat , 4th series, vol. xvi. p. 32.

8

156 OKIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

are sprung from fragments of cane left by the natives,
wlio seldom travel without a piece of cane in the hand."
In 18G1, Bentham, who had access to the rich herbarium
of Kew", says, in his Flora of Hovf/Jcoiig, " We have no
authentic and certain proof of a locality where the
common sugar-cane is wild."

I do not know, however, Avhy Ritter and every one
else has neglected an assertion of Loureiro, in his Flora
of Cochin-China} " Habitat, et colitur abundantissime
in omnibus provinciis regni Cochin-Chinensis : siraul in
aliquibus imperii sinensis, sed minori copia." The word
habitat, separated by a comma from the rest, is a distinct
assertion. Loureiro could not haf e been mistaken aboiit
the Saccharmn officinariim, which he saw cultivated all
about him, and of which he enumerates the principal
varieties. He must have seen plants wild, at least in
appearance. They may have spread from some neigh-
bouring plantation, but I know nothing which makes it
unlikely that the plant should be indigenous in this warm
moist district of the continent of Asia.

Forskal ^ mentions the species as wild in the moun-
tains of Arabia, under a name which he believes to be
Indian. If it came from Arabia, it would have spread
mto Egypt long ago, and the Hebrews would have
known it.

Roxburgh had received in the botanical gardens of
Calcutta in 171)6, and had introduced into the planta-
tions in Bengal, a Saccharum- to which he gave the name
of S. sinense, and of which he published an illustration
in his great work Plantoi Coromandeliance, voL iii.
pi. 232. It is perhaps only a form of S. ofUcinarum.,
and moreover, as it is only known in a cultivated state,
it tells nothing about the primitive country either of
this or of any other variety.

A few botanists have asserted that the sugar-cane
flowers more often in Asia than in America or Africa,
and even that it produces seed ^ on the banks of the

• Loureiro, Cochin-Ch., edit. 2, vol. i. p. 66.

* Foi-rikal, Fl. JErjypto-Aruhica, p. 103.

' M:i(;t'a(lyen, On the Botanical Characterf: of the Si'.rtar-Cane, in
Iloiikei's Bot. Miscell., i. p. 101 ; Maycock, Fl. Burhad., p. 50.

I

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 157

Ganges, which they regard as a proof that it is indigenous.
Macfadyen says so without giving any proof. It was an
assei tion made to him in Jamaica by some traveller ; but
Sir W. Hooker adds in a note, " Dr. Eoxburgh, in spite
of his long residence on the banks of the Ganges, has
never seen the seeds of the sugar-cane." It rarely liowers,
and still more rarely bears fruit, as is commonly the case
with plants propagated by buds or suckers, and if any
variety of sugar-cane were disposed to seed, it would
probably be less productive of sugar and would soon be
abandoned. Rumphius, a better observer than many
modern botanists, has given a good description of the
cultivated cane in the Dutch colonies, and makes an
interesting remark.^ " It never produces Howers or fruit
unless it has remained several years in a stony place."
Neither he, nor any one else to my knowledge, has de-
scribed or drawn the seed. The flower, on the contrary,
has often been figured, and I have a fine specimen from
Martinique.^ Schacht is the only person who has given
a good analysis of the flower, including the pistil ; he
had not seen the seed ripe.^ De Tussac,* who gives a
poor analysis, speaks of the seed, but he only saw it
young in the ovary.

In default of precise information as to the native
country of the species, accessory means, linguistic and
historical, of proving -an Asiatic origin, are of some
interest. Hitter gives them carefully; I will content
myself with an epitome. The Sanskrit name of the sugar-
cane was ikshu, ikshura, or ikshava, but the sugar was
called sarkara, or sakkara, and all its names in our Euro-
pean languages of Aryan origin, beginning w4th the
ancient ones^Greek, for example — are clearly derived
from this. This is an indication of Asiatic origin, and that
the produce of the canewas of ancient use in the southern
regions of Asia with which the ancient Sanskrit-speak-
ing nation may have had commercial dealings. The
two Sanskrit words have remained in Bengali under the

' Enmphius, Amhoin, vol. v. p. 186. * Helm, No. 480.

• Schacht, Madeira und Teneriffe, tab. i.

* Tussac, Flore des Antilles, i. p. 153, pi. 23.

158 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

forms ik and ahh} But in other languages beyond the
Indus, we find a singular variety of names, at least when
they are not akin to that of the Aryans; for instance:
panchadara in Telinga, hyam in Burmese, tyiici in the
dialect of Cochin-China, kana,n(\ tche, or tscfie, in Chinese ;
and further south, among the Malays, tubw or tabu for
the plant, and gula for the product. This diversity
proves the great antiquity of its cultivation in those
regions of Asia in which botanical indications point out
the origin of the species.

The epoch of its introduction into different countries
agrees with the idea that its origin was in India, Cocliin-
China, or the Malay Archipelago.

The Chinese were not acquainted with the sugar-cane
at a very remote period, and they receiv^ed it from the
West. Bitter contradicts those authors who speak of a
very ancient cultivation, and I find most positive con-
firmation of his opinion in Dr. Bretschneider's pamphlet,
drawn up at Pekin with the aid of all the resources of
Chinese literature.^ " I have not been able to discover,"
he says, "any allusion to the sugar-cane in the most
ancient Chinese books (the five classics)." It appears to
have been mentioned for the first time by the authors of
the second century before Christ. The first description
of it appears in the Nan-fang -tsao-niii-cliuang, in the
fourth century : " The die chS, kan-che (kan, sweet, che,
bamboo) grows," it says, " in Cochin-China. It is several
inches in circumference, and resembles the bamboo. The
stem, broken into pieces, is eatable and very sweet. The
sap which is drawn from it is dried in the sun. After a
few days it becomes sugar (here a compound Chinese
character), which melts in the mouth. ... In the year
286 (of our era) the kingdom of Funan (in India, beyond
the Ganges) sent sugar as a tribute." According to the
Pent-Sao, an empero]- who reigned from 627 to 650 A.D.,
sent a man into the Indian province of Behar to learn
how to manufjieture sugar.

There is nothing said in these works . of the plant

* Piddington, IinJex.

* BretscliDeider, On the Study and Value, etc., pp. 45-47.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 159

growing wild in China ; on the contrary, the origin in
Cochin-China, indicated by Loureiro, finds an unexpected
confirmation. It seems to me most probable that its
primitive range extended from Bengal to Cochin-China.
It may have included the Sunda Isles and the Moluccas,
whose climate is very similar ; but there are quite as
many reasons for believing that it was early introduced
into these from Cochin-China or the Malay peninsula.

The propagation of the sugar-cane from India west-
ward is well known. The Greco-Roman world had a
vague idea of the reed {calamus) which the Indians
delighted to chew, and from which they obtained sugar.^
On the other hand, the Hebrew writings do not mention
sugar ; ^ whence we may infer that the cultivation of the
su!xar-cane did not exist west of the Indus at the time
of the Jewish captivity at Babylon. The Arabs in the
Middle Ages introduced it into Egypt, Sicily, and the
south of Spain,^ where it flourished until the abundance
of sugar in the colonies caused it to be abandoned. Don
Henriquez transported the sugar-cane from Sicily to
Madeira, whence it was taken to the Canaries in 1503.*
Hence it was introduced into Brazil in the beofinnino; of
the sixteenth century.^ It was taken to St. Domingo
about 1520, and shortly afterwards to Mexico ; ^ to
Guadeloupe in 1G44, to Martinique about 1650, to Bour-
bon when the colony was founded.' The variety known
as Otahiti, which is not, however, wild in that island,
and which is also called Bourbon, was introduced into
the French and English colonies at the end of the last
and the beginning of the present century.^

' See the quotations from Sti-abo, Dioscorides, Plir.y, etc., in Lenz,
Botanik der Alten Griechen U7id Romer, 1859, p. 207 ; Fiugerhat, in Flora,
1839, vol. ii. p. 529 ; and many other authors.

' Rosenmiiller, Handhuch der Bihl. Alterth.

* Calendrier Rural de Uarib, written in the tenth century for S[iain,
translated by Bureau de la Mails in his Climatologie de I'ltalie et de
I'Andalousie, p. 71.

* Von Buch, Canar. Ins. ® Piso, Brdsil, p. 49.

• Humboldt, Nouv. Espagne, ed. 2, vol. iii. p. 34.
» Not. Stat, sur les Col. Franc, i. pp. 207, 29, 83.

• Macfadyen, in Hooker, Bot. MiscelL, i. p. 101 ; Maycock, Fl. Barhad.,
p. 50.

IGO

ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

The processes of cultivation and preparation of tlie
sugar are described in a number of works, among wliich
the following may be recommended : de Tussac, Flore
cles Antilles, 3 vols., Paris; vol. i.
Macfadyen, in Hooker's Bo'anical
vol. i. pp. 103-llG.

pp. 151-182

Miscellany,

and
1830,

CHAPTEPv III.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FLOWERS, OR FOR THE
ORGANS WHICH ENVELOP THEM.

Clove — Caryojjhylhis aromaticus, Liniifieus.

The clove used for domestic purposes is the calix and
flower-bud of a plant belonging to the order of Myr-
tacese. Although the plant has been often described and
very well drawn from cultivated specimens, some doubt
remains as to its nature when wild. I spoke of it in my
Geographical Botany in 1855, but it does not appear
that the question has made any further progress since
then, which induces me to repeat here what I said then.

" The clove must have come originally from the Moluc-
cas," as Rumphius asserts,-^ for its cultivation was limited
two centuries ago to a few little islands in this archipelago.
I cannot, however, find any proof that the true clove tree,
with peduncles and aromatic buds, has been found in a
wild state. Rumphius ^ considers that a plant of which
he gives a description, and a drawing under the name
Caryophyllit7}i sylvestre, belongs to the same species, and
this plant is wild throughout the Moluccas. A native
told him that the cultivated clove trees degenerate into
this form, and Rumphius himself found a plant of G.
sylvestre in a deserted plantation of cultivated cloves.
Nevertheless plate 3 differs from plate 1 of the cultivated
clove in the shape of the leaves and of the teeth of the
calix. I do not speak of pl.'i.te 2, which appears to be an

* ii. p. 3. • iL tub. 3.

1G2 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

abnormal form of the cultivated clove. Rumphius says
that C. sylvesire has no aromatic properties; now, as
a rule, the aromatic properties are more developed in the
wild plants of a species than in the cultivated plants.
Sonnerat ^ also publishes figures of the true clove and of
a spurious clove found in a small island near the country
of the Papuans. It is easy to see that his false clove
differs completely by its blunt leaves from the true clove,
and also from the two species of Rumphius. I cannot
make up my mind to class all these diflerent plants, wild
and cultivated, togtither, as all auth( rs have done.^ It
is especially necessary to exclude plate 120 of Sonnerat,
which is admitted in the Botanical Magazine. An
historical account of the cultivation of the clove, and of
its introduction into different countries, will be found in
the last-named work, in the Dictionnair3 cf Agriculture,
and in the dictionaries of natural history.

If it be true, as Roxburgh says,^ that the Sanskrit
language had a name, luvunga, for the clove, the trade
in this spice must date from a very early epoch, even
supposing the name to be more modern than the true
Sanskrit. But I doubt its genuine character, for the
Romans would have known of a substance so easily trans-
ported, and it does not appear that it was introduced
into Europe before the discovery of the Moluccas by the
Portuguese.

ILo'g—Huvinlus Lupulus, Linnreus.

The hop is wild in Europe from England and Sweden
as far south as the mountains of the Mediterranean basin,
and in Asia as far as Damascus, as the south of the
Caspian Sea, and of Eastern Siberia,* but it is not found in
India, the north of China, or the basin of the river Amur.*^

• Sonnerat, Voy. Nouv. Guin., tab. 119, 120.

* Tliunberg, T>iss., u. p. 326 ; De Candolle, Prcdi:, iii. p. 202 ; Hcxtkcr,
But. Mag., tab. 2749; Hasskarl, Cat. Hort. Bogor. AH., p. 2G1.

' Koxburgh, Flora Imlica, edit. 1832, vol. ii. p. 194.

* Alph. do Candolle, in Prodromus, vol. xri., sect. 1, p. 29 ; Boissier,
Fl. Orient., W. p. 1152 ; Hohcnackor, Enum. Plant. TaJi/gch,i>. 30; Bubbe
Aufzdhlung I'ranscaucasien, p. 202.

• An erroneous transcription of what Asa Gray (Botany of North.
JJvifed States, edit. 5) says of the bemp, wrongly attributed to the hop
in Prodromus, and ropeatod in the French edition of this wo.'k, should

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FLOWERS, ETC. 163

In spite of the entirely wild appearance of the hop in
Europe in districts far from cultivation, it has been some-
times asked if it is not of Asiatic origin.^ I do not think
this can be proved, nor even that it is likely. The fact
that the Greeks and Latins have not spoken of the use
of the hop in making beer is easily explained, as they
were almost entirely unacquainted with this drink. If
the Greeks have not mentioned the plant, it is simply
perhaps because it is rare in their country. From the
Italian name lupulo it seems likely that PHny speaks of
it with other vegetables under the name Iuidus salidarius.^
That the custom of brewing with hops only became
general in the Middle Ages proves nothing, except that
other plants were formerly employed, as is still the case
in some districts. The Kelts, the Germans, other peoples
of the north and even of the south wdio had the vine,
made beer ^ either of barley or of other fermented grain,
addingf in certain cases different vegetable substances — the
1 lark of the oak or of the tamarisk, for instance, or the
fruits of Myrica gale} It is very possible that they
did not soon discover the advantages of the hop, and that
even after these were recognized, they employed wild
hops before beginning to cultivate them. The first men-
tion of hop-gardens occurs in an act of donation made by
Pepin, father of Charlemagne, in 708.^ In the fourteenth
century it was an important object of culture in Germany,
but it began in England only under Henry VIII.^

The common names of tlie hop only furnish negative
indications as to its origin. There is no Sanskrit name,''

be corrected. Uumulus Luptihjs is indigenous in the east of the United
States, and also in the island of Yeso, accordiug to a letter from
Maximowicz. — Authgu's Note, 1884.

' S.ehn, Nutzpflanzeti und Hausthiere in ihren Uehergang aus Asien,
edit. 3, p. 415.

^ Pliny, Hi^t., bk. 21, c. 15. He mentions asparagns in this con-
nection, and the young shoots of the hop are scmdlinies eaten in this

manner,

3

Tacitns, Germania, cap. 25 ; Pliny, bk. 18, c. 7 ; Hehn, Kidiur-
pflanzen, edit. 3, pp. 125-137.

* Volz, Beitrage zur CulturgeschicJife, p. 149. * Ihid.

• Beckmann, Erjindungen, quoted by Volz.

^ Piddington, Index; Fick, ^yorterh. Indc-Germ, Sjprachen, i. ; Ur-
spi'aohe.

104 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

and this agrees with the absence of the species in the regie n
of the Himalayas, and shows that the early Aryan peoples
had not noticed and employed it. I have quoted before ^
some of the European names, showing their diversity,
although some few of them may be derived from a com-
mon stock. Hehn, the philologist, has treated of their
etymology, and shown how obscure it is, but he has not
mentioned the names totally distinct from humle, hopf or
ho}), and chuncli of the Scandinavian, Gothic, and Slav
races ; for example, Apini in Lette, Apwynis in Lithua-
nian, tap in Estlionian, hlust in Illyrian,^ which have
evidently other roots. This variety tends to confirm the
theory that the species existed in Europe before the
arrival of the Aryan nations. Several different peoples
must have distinguished, known, and used this plant suc-
cessively, which confirms its extension in Europe and in
Asia before it w^as used in brewing,

Carthamine — Carthamus tinctorius, Linnseus.

The composite annual which produces the dye called
carthamine is one of the most ancient cultivated species.
Its flowers are used for dyeing in red or yellow, and the
seeds yield oil.

The grave-cloths which wrap the ancient Egyptian
mummies are dyed -with carthamine,^ and quite recently
fragments of the plant have been found in the tombs
discovered at Deir el Bahari."^ Its cultivation must also
be ancient in India, since there are two Sanskrit names
for it, cusumhha and kamalottara, of which the first has
several derivatives in the modern languages of the
peninsula.^ The Chinese only received carthamine in
the second century B.C., when Chang-kien brought it
back from Bactriana.^ The Greeks and Latins were
probably not acquainted with it, for it is very doubtful
whether this is the plant which they knew as cnikos or
cnicns? At a later jjeriod the Ai-abs contributed largely

' A. de Candolle, G^ogr. Bof. Bais., p. 857.

* Diet. MS; compiled from floras, Moritzi.

* Un<^er, Die Pjianzen des Alten JEgypiens, p. 47.

* Scliweinfurtli, in a letter ^o M. Boissier, 1882. * Tiddiugton, Inde.r.

* Bre'schtieider, Study and Value, eta, p. 15.

» P

ee

Targioiii, Ce)ini Storici, p. 108.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FLOWERS, ETC. IGo

to diffase tlie cultivation of cartharaine, which thev
uamed qorton, kurtum, whence carthamine, or usfur,
or ihridh, or inorabu} a diversity indicating an ancient
existence in several countries of Western Asia or of
Africa. The progress of chemistry threatens to do away
with the cultivation of this plant as of many others, but
it still subsists in the south of Europe, in the East, and
throughout the valley of the Nile.^

No botanist has found the carthamine in a really
wild state. Authors doubtfully assign to it an origin in
India or Africa, in Abyssinia in particular, but they have
never seen it except in a cultivated state, or with every
appearance of having escaped from cultivation.^

Mr. Clarke,^ formerly director of the Botanical Gardens
in Calcutta, who has lately studied the Compositce of
India, includes the species only as a cultivated one.
The summary of our modern knowledge of the plants
of th^ Nile region, including Abyssinia, by Schweinfurth
and Ascherson,^ only indicates it as a cultivated species,
nor does the list of the plants observed by Rohlfs on his
recent journey mention a wild carthamine.®

As the species has not been found wald either in
India or in Africa, and as it has been cultivated foi-
thousands of years in botli countries, the idea occurred
to me of seeking its origin in the intermediate region ; a
method wdiich had been successful in other cases.

Unfortunately, the interior of Arabia is almost un-
known. Forskal, who has visited the coasts of Yemen
has learnt nothing about the carthamine ; nor is it
mentioned among the plants of Botta and of Bovd But
an Arab, Abu Anifa, quoted by Ebn Baithar, a thirteenth-
century writer, expressed himself as follows : ' — " Usfur,
this plant furnishes a substance used as a dye ; there are
two kinds, one cultivated and one wild, which both grow

* Forskal, Fl. ^gijpt., p. 73; Ebn Baitha', Germ, trans., ii. pp. 196.
293 ; i. p. 18.

* See Gasparin, Cours d'Agric, iv. p. 217.

' Boissier, Fl. Orient., iii. p. 710 ; Oliver, Flora of Trop. Afr., iii. p. 439.

* Clarke, Composiioe IndiccB. 1876, p. 2-il-.

* Schweiafurth and Ascberson, Aufzdhhmg p. 28"^.

* Roblfs, Kufra, in Svo, IhSl. ' Ebi_ Baithir, ii. p. 1C6.

lOU OEIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

in Arabia, of which the seeds are called elLarthum."
A.bu Anifa was very likely right.

Saffron — Crocus sativus, Linna?us.

The saffron was cultivated in very early times in the
w^cst of Asia. The Romans praised the saffron of Cilicia,
which they preferred to that grown in Italy.^ Asia Minor,
Persia, and Kashmir have been for a long time the
countries wdiich export the most. India gets it from
Kashmir ^ at the present day. Eoxburgh and "Wallich
do not mention it in their works. The two Sanskrit
names mentioned by Piddington ^ probably applied to the
substance saffron brought from the West, for the name
kasmirajamriia appears to indicate its origin in Kashmir.
The other name is kxmkuma. The Hebrew word karl-om
is commonly translated saffron, but it more probably
applies to caith amine, to judge from the name of the
latter in Arabic* Besides, the saffron is not cultivated
in Egypt or in Arabia. The Greek name is Jcrokos.^
Saffron, which recurs in all modern European languages,
comes from the Arabic sakafaran,'^ zafranJ Tlie
Spaniards, nearer to the Arabs, call it azafran. The
Ai-abic name itself comes from assfar, yellow.

Trustworthy authors say that G. sativus is wild
in Greece^ and in the Abruzzi mountains in Italy.^
Maw, who is preparing a monograph of the genus Crocus,
based on a long series of observations in gardens and
in herbaria, connects with C. sativus six forms which
are found wild in mountainous districts from Italy to
Kurdistan. None of these, he says,^*^ are identical with
the cultivated variety; but certain forms described
under otlier names (C. Orisnii, C. Cartwrvjldianus, G.
Thomasii), hardly differ from it. These are from Italy
and Greece.

> riiny, bk. xxi. c. 6. « Eojlc, III. Himah, p. 372.

' Index, p. 25.

* According to Forskal, Dclile, Eoynier, Schweiufurth, and Ascherscn.

* Tlieophrastus, Hist., 1. G, c. 6.

6 J. Bauhin, Hist., ii. p. 637. ' Royle, III. Himal,

* Sibthorp, Prodr. ; Fraas, Syn. Fl. Class., p. 292.
' J. Gay, quoted by Babington, Man. Brit. Fl.

•" Maw, in the Gardener's Chron., ISSl, vol. xvi.

PLA^'TS CULTIVATED FOU THEIR FLOWERS, ETC. 1G7

The cultivation of saffron, of which the conditions
are giv^en in the Coitrs cV Agriculture by Gasparin, and
in the Bulletin de la Societe cVAcclimatation for 1870, is
becoming more and more rare in Europe and Asia.-*- It
has sometimes had the effect of naturalizing the species
for a few years at least in localities where it appears to
be wild.

^ Jaccjuemont, Voyage, vol. iii. p. 2C8.

CHAPTER IV.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS.*

Sweet Sop, Sugar Apple ^ — Anona squamosa, Linnaeus,
(In British India, Custard Apple ; but this is the name
of Anona ninricata in America.)

The original home of this and other cultivated
Anonacepe has been the subject of doubts, which make
it an interesting problem. I attempted to resolve them
in 1855. The opinion at which I then arrived has been
confirmed by the subsequent observations of travellers,
and as it is useful to show how far probabiUties based
upon sound methods lead to true assertions, I will trans-
cribe what I then said,^ mentioning afterwards the more
recent discoveries.

" Robert Brown proved in 1818 that all the species
of the genus Anona, excepting Anona Senegal en sis,
belong to America, and none to Asia. Aug. de Saint-
Hilaire says that, according to Vellozo, A. squamosa was
introduced into Brazil, that it is known there under
the name of pinha, from its resemblance to a fir-cone,
and of ata, evidently borrowed from the names atfoa and
atis, which are those of the same plant in Asia, and
which belong to Eastern languages. Therefore, adds de

* The word frait is here eitiplorerl in the vulgar sense, for any fleshy
part which enlarges after the flowering. In the strictly botanical sense,
the Anonaceae, strawberries, cashews, pine-apple?, and breadfruit are not
frnits.

* A. sqv.amosa is figured in Descouriilz, Flore des Antilles, ii. pi. 83 ;
Hooker's Bot. Mag., GOiio ; and Tussac, Five des Ant.lles, iii. pi. 4,

» A. de Candolle, G^ogr. Bot. Rais., p. 859.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 169

Salnt-Hilaire,-^ the Portuguese transported A. squamosa
from their Indian to their American possessions, etc."

Having made in 1832 a review of the family of the
Anonacese,"^ I noticed how Mr. Brown's botanical argument
was ever growing stronger; for in spite of the considerable
increase in the number of described Anonacese, no Anona,
nor even any species of Anonacese with united ovaries,
had been found to be a native of Asia. I admitted^
the probability that the species came from the West
Indies or from the neighbouring part of the American
continent ; but I inadvertently attributed this opinion to
Mr. Brown, who had merely indicated an American origin
in general.*

Facts of different kinds have since confirmed this
view.

" Avona squamosa has been found wild in Asia,
apparently as a naturalized plant ; in Africa, and espe-
cially in America, with all the conditions of an indigenous
plant. In fact, according to Dr. Royle,^ the species has
been naturalized in several parts of India ; but he only
saw it apparently growing wild on the side of the moun-
tain near the fort of Adjeegurh in Bundlecund, among
teak trees. When so remarkable a tree, in a country so
thoroughly explored by botanists, has only been discovered
in a single locality beyond the limits of cultivation, it is
most probable that it is not indigenous in the country.
Sir Joseph Hooker found it in the isle of St. lago, of the
Cape Verde group, forming woods on the hills which over-
look the valley of St. Domingo.*^ Since A. squaTnosa
is only known as a cultivated plant on the neighbouring
continent ; '^ as it is not even indicated in Guinea by
Thonning,^ nor in Congo,^ nor in Senegambia/^ nor in

■ Aug. de Saint-Hilaire, Plantes ^ifuelles des Br^sili'ms, bk, vi. p. 5.

* Alph. de Candolle, Mem. Sf^c. Phys. et d'Hist. Nat. de Geneve.
' Ihid., p. 19 of Mem. printed separately.

* See Botany of Congo, and the Geiman translation of Brown's works,
(\hich has alphabetical tables.

» Royle, III. Himal., p. 60.

* Webb, in Fl. Nvir., p, 97. * Ihid., p. 204.

* Thonning, PL Guin. * Browu, Congo, p. 6.
'" Guillemin, Perrottet, and Richard, Tentamen Fl. Seneg.

170 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Abyssinia and Egypt, which proves a recent introduction
into Africa ; lastly, as the Cape Verde Isles have lost a
great part of tlieir primitive forests, I believe that this
is a case of naturalization from seed escaped from gardens.
Authors are agreed in considering the species wild in
Jamaica. Formerly the assertions of Sloane^ and Brown^
might have been disregarded, but they are confirmed by
Macfadyen.^ Martius found the species wild in the
virgin forests of Para.* He even says, ' St/lvescentem in
nemorihus paraensibus inveni,' whence it may be in-
ferred that these trees alone formed a forest. Sj^litgerber^
found it in the forests of Surinam, but he says, 'An
spontanea V The number of localities in this part of
America is significant. I need not remind my readei's
that no tree ffrowincr elsewhere than on the coast has
been found truly indigenous at once in tropical Asia,
Africa, and America.^ The result of my researches renders
such a fact almost impossible, and if a tree were robust
enough to extend over such an area, it would be extremely
common in all tropical countries.

"Moreover, historical and philological facts tend also
to confirm the theory of an American origin. The details
given by Rumphius ' show that Anona squamosa vras
a plant newly cultivated in most of the islands of the
Malay Ai'chipelago. Forster does not mention the culti-
vation of any Anonacea in the small islands of the
Pacific.^ Rheede ^ says that A. squamosa is an exotic
in Malabar, but was brought to India, first by the Chinese
and the Arabs, afterwards by the Portuguese. It is cer-
tainly cultivated in China and in Cochin-China,^'^ and in
the Philippine Isles,^^ but we do not know from what
epoch. It is doubtful whether the Arabs cultivate it.^^

' Sloane, Jam., ii. p. 1G8. * P. Brown, Jam., p. 257.

• Macfadyen, Fl. Jam., p. 9. * Martins, Fl. Jj^as., fasc. ii. p. 15.

* Splitgei'ber, Nederl. Kruidk. Arch., ii. p. 230.
' A. de CandoUe, Gcngr. Bvt. Fuiis., chap. x.

' Eumpliius, i. p. 139. * Forster, Planice Esculentce.

» Eheede, MalaVar, iii. p. 22. " Louroiro, Fl. Cochin., p. 427.

" Blanco, f7. Filip.

'* Thi.s depends upon tlie opinion formed with respect to A. glabra,
Forsknl {A. Asiatica, B. Dun. Aiioyi., p. 71 ; A. Forsl-alii, D. C. Syst.,
i. p. 472), which was sometimes cultivated in gardens in Egypt when

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 171

II was cultivated in India in 'Roxljurgli's day;^ lie had
not seen the wild plant, and only mentions one common
name in a modern language, the Bengali ata, which is
already in Rheede. Later the name ganda-gatra ^ was
believe 1 to be Sanskrit, but Dr. Royle^ having consulted
Wilscn, the famous author of the Sanskrit dictionary,
touching the antiquity of this name, he replied that it
was taken from the Sahda Chanrika, a comparatively
modern compilation. The names of ata, ati, are found
in Rheede and Rumphius.* This is doubtless the founda-
tion of Saint-Hilaire's argument; but a nearly similar
rame is given to Anona squamosa in Mexico. This
name is ate, ahate di Panucho, found in Hernandez^
with two similar and rather poor figures which may be
attributed either to A. squamosa, as Dunal*^ thinks, or
to A. cherimolia, according to Martins.'' Oviedo uses*
the name anon.^ It is very possible that the name ata
was introduced into Brazil from Mexico and the neigh-
Viouring countries. It may also, I confess, have come
from the Portug-uese colonies in the East Indies. Mar-
tins says, however, that the species was imported from
the West India Islands.^ I do not know whether he had
any proof of this, or whether he speaks on the authority
of Oviedo's work, which he quotes and which I cannot
consult. Oviedo's article, translated by Marcgraf,^*^
describes A. squamosa without speaking of its origin.

Fiirskal visited that country ; it was called Iceschta, that is, coagulated
milk. The rarity of its cultivation and the silence of ancient anthers
thjvvs that it was of modern introduction into Egypt. Ebn Baitliar
(S jndtheimer's German translation, in 2 vols., 1840), an Arabian physician
of the thirteenth century, mentions no Anonacea, nor the name Iceschta.
I do not see that Forskal's description and illustration (Descr., p. 102. ic.
tab. 15) differ from A. squamosa. Coquebert's specimen, mentioned in
the Systema, agi-ees with Forskal's plate ; but as it is in flower while
the plate shows the fruit, its identity cannot be proved.

' Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., edit. 1832, v. ii. p. G57.

2 Piddington, Index, p. 6. ' R( yle, III. Hvni., p. 60.

* Rheede and Runiphiu?, i. p. 139.

s Hernandez, pp. 318, 454'. * Dunal, J/em. Anon., p. 70.

^ Martins, Fl. Bras., fasc. ii. p. 15.

* Hence the generic name -4no/Kt, which Linnajus changed to Annova
(provision), because he did not wish to have any savage name, and did
ui)t mind a pun.

' Martius, Fl. Bras., fasc. ii. p. 15. '" Marcgraf, Brazil, p. 94.

172 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

"The sum total of the facts is altosrether in favour of
an American origin. The locality where the species
usually appears wild is in the forests of Para. Its culti-
vation is ancient in America, since Oviedo is one of the
first authors (1.535) who has written about this country.
No doubt its cultivation is of ancient date in Asia like-
wise, and this renders the problem curious. It is not
proved, however, that it was anterior to the discovery
of America, and it seems to me that a tree of which the
fruit is so agreeable would have been more widely diffused
in the old world if it had always existed there. More-
over, it would be difficult to explain its cultivation in
America in the beginning of the sixteenth century, on the
hypothesis of an origin in the old world."

Since I wrote the above, I find the following facts
published by ditierent authors : —

1. The argument drawn from the fact that there is no
Asiatic species of the genus Anona is stronger than ever.
A. Asiatica, Linnaeus, was based upon errors (see my
note in the Geogr. Bot., p. 862). A. obtusifolia (Tussac,
Fl. des Antilles, i. p. 191, pi. 28), cultivated formerly
in St. Domingo as of Asiatic origin, is also perhaps
founded upon a mistake. I suspect that the drawing
represents the flower of one species (^4. Tiiuricata) and
the fruit of another {A. squamosa). No Anona has been
discovered in Asia, but four or five are now known in
Africa instead of only one or two/ and a larger number
than formerly in America.

2. The authors of recent Asiatic floras do not hesi-
tate to consider the Anonae, particularly A squamosa,
which is here and there found apparently wild, as
naturalized in the neighbourhood of cultivated ground
and of Eui'opean settlements.^

' See Baker, Flora of Mawilius, p. 3. The identity admitted by
Oliver, Fl. Trap. Afr., i. p. 16, of the Anona palusfris of America witli
that of Senegambia, appears to me very extraordinary, although it is a
species which grows in marshes ; that is, having perhaps a very wide
area.

* Hooker, Fl. of Brit. Ind., i. p. 78; Miqnel, Fl. Indo-Batava, i.part 2,
p. 33; Kurz, Forest Flora of Brit. Burm., L p. 46; Stewart and Brandis,
Forests of India, p. 6.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 173

3. In the new African floras already quoted, A.
squamosa and the others of which I shall speak presentl}'
are always mentioned as cultivated species.

4. McNab, the horticulturist, found A. squamosa in
the dry plains of Jamaica,^ which confirms the asser-
tions of previous authors. Eggers says^ that the species
is common in the thickets of Santa Cruz and Virgin
Islands. I do not find that it has been discovered wild
in Cuba.

.5. On the American continent it is given as culti-
vated.^ However, M. Andr^ sent me a specimen from a
stony district in the Magdalena valley, which appears to
belong to this species and to be wild. The fruit is want-
ino-, which renders the matter doubtful. From the note on
the ticket, it is a delicious fruit like that of A. squa-
mosa. Warming * mentions the species as cultivated at
Lagoa Santa in Brazil. It appears, therefore, to be
cultivated or natuialized from cultivation in Para,
Guiana, and New Granada.

In fine, it can hardly be doubted, in my opinion,
that its original country is America, and in especial the
West India Islands.

Sour Sop — A nona muricata, Linnseus.

This fruit-tree,^ introduced into all the colonies in
tropical countries is wild in the West Indies ; at least,
its existence has been proved in the islands of Cuba,
St. Domingo, Jamaica, and several of the smaller
islands.^ It is sometimes naturalized on the continent
of South America near dwellings.'' Andre brought
specimens from the district of Cauca in New Granada,

> Grisebach, Fl. of Brit. W. I. Isles, p. 5.

* Eggers, Flora of St. Croix and Virgin Ides, p. 23.

' Triana and Planchon, Prodr. Fl. Novo-Granatensis, p. 29; Sagot,
Journ. Soc. d'Hortic, 1872.

* Warming, SymbolcB ad. Fl. Bras., xvi. p. 43 1.

* Figured in Descourtilz, Fl. Med. des. Antilles, ii. pi. 87, and in
Tnssac, Fl. des Antilles, ii. p. 21-.

* KichsiTd, Plantes Vasculaires de Culit,p. 29; Swartz, Ohs.,y. 221;
P. Brown, Jamaica, p. 255 ; Macfadyen, Fl. of Jam., p. 7 ; Eggers, Fl.
of St. Croix, p. 23 ; Grisebach, Fl. Brit. W. T.. p. 4.

7 Martius, Fl. Brasil, fa.sc. ii. p. 4; Split^erbcr, PI. de Surinam, in
Nederl. Kruidk. Arch., i. p, 226.

174- ORIGIN OF CULTIVATt;D PLANTS.

but he does not say tliey were wild, and I see that
Triana {Prodr. Fl. Granat.) only mentions it as culti-
vated.

Custard Apple ii^ the West Indies, Bullock's Heart
in th«^ East Indies — Anona reticulata, Linnajus.

This Anona, figured in Descourtilz, Flore Medicate
des Antilles, ii. pi. 82, and in the Botanical Magazine,
pi. 2912, is wild in Cuba, Jamaica, St. Vincent, Guade-
loupe, Santa Cruz, and Barbados,^ and also in the island
of Tobago in the Bay of Panama, ^ and in the province
of Anlioquia in New Granada.^ If it is wild in the last-
named localities as well as in the West Indies, its area
probably extends into several states of Central America
and of New Granada.

Although the bullock's heart is not much esteemed
as a fruit, the species has been introduced into most
tropical colonies. Rheede and Rumphius found it in
plautations in Southern Asia. According to Welwitsch,
it has natural'zed itself from cultivation in Angola, in
Western Africa,^ and this has also taken place in British
India.^

Chirimoya — Anona Cherimolia, Lamarck.

The chirimoya is not so generally cultivated in the
colonies as the preceding species, although the fruit is
excellent. This is probably the reason that there is no
illustration of the fruit better than that of Feuillde
{Obs., iii. pi. 17), while the flower is well represented in
pi. 2011 of the Botanical Magazine, under the name of
A. trlpetcda.

In 1855, I wrote as follows, touching the origin of
the species:'^ " The chirimoya is mentioned by Lamarck
and Dunal as growing in Peru ; but Feuillee, who was
the first to speak of it,' says that it is cultivated. Mac-

» Rictard, Macfadyen, Grisebach, Eggers, Swartz, Maycock. Fl
Barhad., p. 233.

' Seemann, Bof. of the Herald, p. 75.

3 Triana and Planclion, Prodr. Fl. Novo-Granat-, p. 29.

* Oliver, Fl. Trop. Afr., i. p. 15.

* Sir J. Hooker, Fl. Brit. Ind., i. p. 78.
" Te CandoUe, Geogr. Bot. Rni:^., p. 8o3.
' Feuili:-o, Obs., iii. p. 23, t. 17.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 17o

fadyen* says it abounds in the Port E,05'al Mountains,
Jamaica ; but he adds that it came originally from Peru,
and must have been introduced long ago, whence it
appears that the species is cultivated in the higher
plantations, rather than wild. Sloane does not mention
it. Humboldt and Bonpland saw it cultivated in
Venezuela and New Granada ; Martins in Brazil,^ where
the seeds had been introduced from Peru. The species
is cultivated in the Cape Verde Islands, and on the
coast of Guinea,^ but it does not appear to have been
introduced into Asia. Its American origin is evident.
I might even go further, and assert that it is a native of
Peru, rather than of New Granada or Mexico. It will
probably be found wild in one of these countries. Meyen
has not brought it from Peru."^

My doubts are now lessened, thanks to a kind com-
munication from M. Ed. Andre. I may mention first,
that I have seen specimens from Mexico gathered by
Botteri and Bourgeau, and that authors often speak of
finding the species in this region, in the West Indies, in
Central America, and New Granada. It is true, they do
not say that it is wild. On the contrary, they remark
that it is cultivated, or that it has escaped from gardens
and become natui'alized.^ Grisebach asserts that it is
wild from Peru to Mexico, but he gives no proof. Andre
gathered, in a valley in the south-west of Ecuador,
specimens which certainly belong to the species as far
as it can be asserted without seeing the fruit. He says
nothing as to its wild nature, but the care with which
he points out in other cases plants cultivated or perhaps
escaped from cultivation, leads me to think that he
regards these specimens as wild. Claude Gay says that
the species has been cultivated in Chili from time im-
memorial.^ However, Molina, who mentions several fiu:t-

' Maofaclyen, Fl. Jam., p. 10. * Martius, Fl. Bras., fasc. iii. p. 15.
' Hooker, Fl. Nigr., p. 205. ■* Nov. Act. Nat. Cur., xix. suppl. 1.

* Richard, Plant. Vase, de Cuha; Grisebach, F?. Brit. W. Ind. Is.;
Hemsley, Biologia Centr. Am., p. 118 ; Kunth, in Hiiniboldt and Bon-
filand, Nova Gen., v. p. 57 ; Triaua and Plancbon, Prodr. Fl. Novo.
ilranat., p. 28.

• Giy, Flora ChiL, i. p. 66.

17G ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

trees in the ancient plantations of the country, does not
.speak of it.^

In conclus'on, I consider it most probable that the
species is indigenous in Ecuador, and perhaps in the
neighbouring part of Peru.

Oranges and Lemons — Cltrwi, L'nn^us.

Tlie ditierent varieties of citrons, lemons, oranges,
shaddocks, etc., cultivated in gardens have been the
subject of remarkable works by several horticultuiists,
among which Gallesio and Risso^ hold the lirst rank.
The difficulty of observing and classifying so many
varieties was very great. Fair results have been
obtained, but it must be owned that the method was
wrong from the beginning, since the plants from which
the observations were taken were all cultivated, that is
to say, more or less artificial, and perhaps in some cases
hybrids. Botanists are now more fortunate. Thanks to
the discoveries of travellers in British India, they are
able to distinguish the wild and therefore the true and
natural species. According to Sir Joseph Hooker,^ who
was himself a collector in India, the work of Brandis* is
the best on the Citrus of this region, and he follows it
in his flora. I shall do likewise in default of a mono-
graph of the genus, remarking also that the multitude
of garden varieties which have been described and
figured for centuries, ought to be identified as far as
possible with the wild species.^

The same species, and perhaps others also, probably
grow wild in Cochin-China and in China ; but this has
not been proved in the country itself, nor by means of
specimens examined by botanists. Perhaps the im-
portant works of Pierre, now in course of publication, will

' Molina, FrencTi trans.

' Gallesio, Traite da Cifrvs, in 8vo, Paris, ISll ; 771330 and Poiteau,
llistoire Naturelle des Oramjers, 1818, in fulio, 109 plates.
' Hooker, Fl. of Brit. Ind., i. p. 515.

* Brandis, Forest Flora, p. 50.

* For a work of this nature, the first step would be to publish good
figures of wild species, showing particularly the fruir, wtiic-h is not seen
in herbaria. It would then be seen which forms represent 'd in tha
plates of Risso, Duhamel, and others, are nearest to the wikl types.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 177

give information on this head for Cochin-China. "With
regard to China, I will quote the following passage from
Dr. Bretschneider/ which is interesting from the special
knowledge of the writer : — " Oranges, of which there are
a great variety in China, are counted b}^ the Chinese
among their wild fruits. It cannot be doubted that most
of them are indigenous, and have been cultivated from
very early times. The proof of this is that each species
or variety bears a distinct name, besides being in most
cases represented by a particular character, and is
mentioned in the Shu-hing, Rh-ya, and other ancient
works."

Men and birds disperse the seeds of Aurantiacere,
whence results the extension of its area, and its naturali-
zation in all the warm regions of the two worlds. It
was observed ^ in America from the first century after
the conquest, and now groves of orange trees have sprung
up even in the south of the United States.

Shaddock — Citrus decumana, Willdenow.

I take this species first, because its botanical character
is more marked than that of the others. It is a larger
tree, and this species alone has down on the young-
shoots and the under sides of the leaves. The fiuit is
spherical, or nearly spherical, larger than an orange,
sometimes even as large as a man's head. The juice is
slightly acid, the rind remarkably thick. Good illus-
trations of the fruit may be seen in Dubamel, Traite des
Arhres, edit. 2, vii. pi. 42, and in Tussac, Flore des Antilles,
iii. pis. 17, 18. The number of varieties in the Malay
Archipelago indicates an ancient cultivation. Its original
country is not yet accurately known, because the trees
which appear indigenous may be the result of naturaliza-
tion, following frequent cultivation. Roxburgh says that
the species was brought to Calcutta from Java,^ and
Rumphius * believed it to be a native of Southern China

• Bretschneider, On the Study and Value of Chinese Botanical Works,
p. 55.

' Acosta, Hist. Kat. des Indes, Fr. trans. 1598, p. 187.
" Roxburgh, Flora Tndica, edit. 1832 iii. p 393.

* Rumphius, Hortus Aiuheinensis, ii. p. 98.

178 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Neither he nor modern botanists saw it wild in the
Malay Archipelago.^ In China the species has a simple
name, ^ti; but its written character =^ appears too com-
plicated for a truly indigenous plant. According to
Loureiro, the tree is' common in China and Cochin-China,
but this does not imply that it is wild.^ It is in the
islands to the east of the Malay Archipelago that the
clearest indications of a wild existence are found.
Forster^ formerly said of this species, "ver^^ common
in the Friendly Isles." Seemann ^ is jet more positive
about the Fiji Isles. " Extremely common," he says,
"and covering the banks of the rivers."

It would be strange if a tree, so much cultivated in
the south of Asia, should have become naturalized to
such a degree in certain islands of the Pacific, while it
has scarcely been seen elsewhere. It is probably indi-
genous to them, and may perhaps yet be discovered
wild in some islands nearer to Java.

The French name, pompelmouse, is from the Dutch
pompelmoes. Shaddock was the name of a captain who
tirst introduced the species into the West Indies.*^

Citron, Lemon — Citrus medica, Linnaeus.

This tree, like the common orange, is glabrous in all
its parts. Its fruit, longer than it is wide, is sur^nounted
in most of its varieties by a sort of nipple. The juice
is more or less acid. The young shoots and the petals
are frequently tinted red. The rind of the fruit is often
rough, and very thick in some subvarieties.'

Brandis and Sir Joseph Hooker distinguish four
cultivated varieties : —

1. Citrus medica jproper {citron in English, cedra-
tier in French, cedro in Italian\ with large, not

' Miqnel, Flora Tndo-Batava, \. pt. 2, p. 526.

* Bretschneidor, Study and Value, etc.

* Loureiro, FL Cochin., ii. p. 572. For another species of the genu.--,
he says that it is cultivated and non-cultivated, p. 5G9.

* Forster, De Plantia Esculentis Oceani Australia, p. 35.

* Seemann, Flora Vitienais, p. 33.

" Plukenet, Almagestes, p. 239; Sloanc, Jamaica, i. p. 41.

* Cedrat a gros fruit of Duhamel, Traibi des Arhres, edit. 2, vii. p. 6S,
pi. 22.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 179

Spherical fruit, whoso highly aromatic rind is covered
with lumps, and of which the juice is neither abundant
nor very acid. According to Brandis, it was called
vijapura in Sanskrit.

2. Citrus mediea Limonum {citronnier in French,
lemon in English). Fruit of average size, not spherical,
and abundant acid juice.

3. Citrus mediea acida {C. acida,'Rox.hurg\i). Lime in
English. Small flowers, fruit small and variable in shape,
juice very acid. According to Brandis, the Sanskrit namt;
was jamhira.

4. Citrus mediea Limetta {C. Limetta and C. Lumia
of Risso), with flowers like those of the preceding variety,
but with spherical fruit and sweet, non-aromatic juice.
In India it is called the siveet litne.

The botanist Wight aflirms that this last variety is
wild in the Nilgheny Hills. Other forms, which answer
more or less exactly to the three other varieties, have
been found wild by several Anglo-Indian botanists^ in
the warm districts at the foot of the Himalayas, from
Garwal to Sikkim, in the south-east at Chittagong and
in Burmah, and in the south-west in the western Ghauts
and the Satpura Mountains. From this it cannot be
doubted that the species is indigenous in India, and even
under difterent forms of prehistoric antiquity

I doubt whether its area includes China or the Malay
Archipelago. Loureiro mentions Citrus mediea in Cochin-
China only as a cultivated plant, and Bretschneider tells
us that the lemon has Chinese names which do not
exist in the ancient writings, and for which the written
characters are complicated, indications of a foreign
species. It may, he says, have been introduced. In
Japan the species is only a cultivated one.^ Lastly,
several of Rumphius' illustrations show varieties culti-
va.ted in the Sunda Islands, but none of these are con-
sidered by the author as really wild and indigenous to the
country. To indicate the locality, he sometimes used

> B.o\\e, III. Himal., p 129; Brandis, Forest Flora, p. 52; Hookfr,
Ft. of Brit. Ind., i. p. 514.

• Franchet and Savatier, Enum. Plant. Jap., p. 129.

180 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

the expression "in hortis sylvestribus," which might be
translated shrubberies. Speaking of his Levion sassu
(vol. ii. pi. 25), which is a Citrus rnedica with ellipsoidal
acid fruit, he says it has been introduced into Amboyna,
but that it is commoner in Java, " usually in forests."
This may be the result of an accidental naturalization
from cultivation. Miquel, in his modern Hora of the
Dutch Indies,^ does not hesitate to say that Citrus medicc
and C. Limonum are only cultivated in the archipelago.

The cultivation of more or less acid varieties spread
into Western Asia at an early date, at least into Mesopo-
tamia and Media. This can hardly be doubted, for two
varieties had Sanskrit names; and, moreover, the Greeks
knew the fruit through the Medes, whence the name
Citrus medica. Theophrastus^ was the first to speak of
it under the name of apple of Media and of Persia, in a
phrase often repeated and commented on in the last two
centuries.^ It evidently applies to Citrus rnedica ; but
while he explains how the seed is first sown in vases,
to be afterwards transplanted, the author does not say
whether this was the Greek custom, or whether he was
describing the practice of the Medes. Probably the citron
was not then cultivated in Greece, for the Romans did
not grow it in their gardens at the beginning of the
Christian era.

Dioscorides,^ born in Cilicia, and who wrote in the
first century, speaks of it in almost the same terms as
Theophrastus. It is supposed that the species was, after
many attempts,^ cultivated in Italy in the third or fourth
century. Palladius, in the fifth century, speaks of it as
well established.

The ignorance of the Romans of the classic period
touching foreign plants has caused them to confound,
under the name of lignum citreum, the wood of Citrus,
with that of Cedrus, of which fine tables were made, and

* Miquel, Flora Indo-Batava, i. pt. 2, p. 528.

* Theophrastus, 1. 4, c. 4.

* Bodseus, in Theophrastus, edit. 1644, pp. 322, 343; Eisso, Traitd du
Citrus, p. 198; Targioni, Cenni Storici, p. 1[)R.

* Dif'snorides, i. p 166. • Targioni, Cenni Storiei.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 181

which was a cedar, or a Thuya, of the totally different
family of Coniferse.

The Hebrews must have known the citron before the
Romans, because of their frequent relations wdth Persia,
Media and the adjacent countries. The custom of the
modern Jews of presenting themselves at the synagogue
on the day of the Feast of Tabernacles, with a citron
in their hand, gave rise to the belief that the word haclar
in Leviticus signified lemon or citron; but Risso has
shown, by comparing the ancient texts, that it signifies a
fine fruit, or the fruit of a fine tree. He even thinks
that the Hebrews did not know the citron or lemon at
the beginning of our era, because the Septuagint Version
translates haclar by fruit of a fine tree. Nevertheless,
as the Greeks had seen the citron in Media and in Persia
in the time of Theophrastus, three centuries before Christ,
it would be stranoe if the Hebrews had not become
acquainted with it at the time of the Babylonish Captivity.
Besides, the historian Josephus says that in his time the
Jews bore Persian apples, malum loersicum, at their feasts,
one of the Greek names for the citron.

The varieties with very acid fruit, like Limonum
and acicla, did not perhaps attract attention so early
as the citron, however the strongly aromatic odour
mentioned by Dioscorides and Theophrastus appears to
indicate them. The Arabs extended the cultivation of
the lemon in Africa and Europe. According to Gallesio,
they transported it, in the tenth century of our era, froni
the gardens of Oman into Palestine and Egypt. Jacques
de Vitry, in the thirteenth century, well described the
lemon which he had seen in Palestine. An author
named Falcando mentions in 1260 some very acid
" lum^ias " w^hich were cultivated near Palermo, and
Tuscany had them also towards the same period.^

Orange — Citrus Aurantiuni, Linnaeus (excl. var. y) ;
Citrus Aurantium, Risso.

Oranges are distinguished from shaddocks (C. decu-
man':/,) by the complete absence of down on the young
shcots and leaves, by their smaller fruit, always sphei'ical,

» Targioni, p. 217.

182 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

and by a thinner rind. They differ from lemons and citrons
in their |)ure white flowers ; in the fruit, wdiich is never
elongated, and without a nipple on the summit ; in the rind,
smooth or nearly so, and adhering but lightly to the pulp.

Neither Risso, in his excellent monograph of Citrus,
nor modern authors, as Brandis and Sir Joseph Hooker,
have been able to discover any other character than the
taste to distinguish the sweet oranu^e from more or less
bitter fruits. This difference appeared to me of such
slight importance from the botanical point of view, w^hen
I studied the question of origin in 1855, that I was
inclined, with Risso, to consider these tw^o sorts of orange
as simple varieties. Modern Anglo-Indian authors do
the same. They add a third variety, wdiich they call
Bergamia, for the bergamot orange, of which the flower is
smaller, and the fruit spherical or pyriform, and smaller
than the common orange, aromatic and slightly acid.
This last form has not been found wild, and appears to
me to be rather a product of cultivation.

It is often asked whether the seeds of sweet orano-es
5'ield sweet oranges, and of bitter, bitter oranges. It
matters little from the point of view of the distinction
into species or varieties, for we know that both in the
animal and vegetable kingdoms all characters are more
or less hereditary, that certain varieties are habitually
so, to such a degree that they should be called races, and
that the distinction into species must consequently be
founded upon other considerations, such as the absence of
intermediate forms, or the failure of crossed fertilization
to produce fertile hybrids. However, the question is not
devoid of interest in the present case, and I must answer
that experiments have given results which are at times
contradictory.

Gallesio, an excellent observer, expresses himself as
follows : — " I have during a long series of years sown pips
of sweet oranges, taken sometimes from the natural tree,
sometimes from oranfjes ^rafted on bitter orano-e trees
or lemon trees. The result- has always been trees bearing
sweet fruit ; and tlie same has been observed for more
than sixty years by all the gardeners of Finale. There

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 183

is no instance of a bitter orange tree from seed of sweet
oranges, nor of a sweet orano-e tree from the seed of
bitter oranges. ... In 1709, the orange trees of Finale
having been killed by frost, the practice of raising sweet
orange trees from seed was introduced, and every one
of these plants produced the sweet-juiced fruit." ^

Macfadyen,^ on the contrary, in his Flora of Jamaica,
says, " It is a well-established fact, familiar to every one
who has been any length of time in this island, that the
seed of the sweet orange very frequently grows up into
a tree bearing the bitter fruit, numerous well-attested
instances of which have come to my own knowledge. I
am not aware, however, that the seed of the bitter orange
has ever grown up into the sweet-fruited variety. . . .
We may therefore conclude," the author judiciously goes
on to sav, " that the bitter orang-e was the orio-inal stock."
He asserts that in calcareous soil the sweet orange may
1 e raised from seed, but that in other soils it produces
fruits more or less sour or bitter. Duchassaing says that
in Guadeloupe the seeds of sweet oranges often yield
bitter fruit,^ while, according to Dr. Ernst, at Caracas
they sometimes yield sour but not bitter fiuit.* Brandis
relates that at Khasia, in India, as far as he can verify
the fact, the extensive plantations of sweet oranges are
from seed. These differences show the variable des^ree of
heieJity, and confirm the opinion that these two kinds
of orange should be considered as two varieties, not two
species.

I am, however, obliged to take them in succe.ssion,
to explain their origin and the extent of their cultivation
at ditferent epochs.

Bitter Orange — A rancio forte in ltaMa:n,higarad{er in
French, poTneranze in German. Citrus valgaris, Eisso ;
C. aurantium (var. higaradia), Brandis and Hooker.

It was unknown to the Greeks and Romans, as well
as the sweet orange. As they had had communication

' Gallesio, Traite da Citms, pp. 32, 67, 355, 357.

• Macfadyen, Flora of Jamaica, p. 129.

■ Quoted in Grisebach's Veget. Karaihen, p. 34.

* Ernst, in Seemaiin, Journ, of Bot., 18D7, p. 272.

184 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

with India and Ceylon, Gallesio supposed that these
trees were not cultivated in their time in the west of
India. He had studied from this point of view, ancient
travellers and geographers, such as Diodorus Siculus,
Nearchus, Arianus, and he finds no mention of the orange
in them. However, there was a Sanskrit name for the
oiange — nagarunga, nagrunga} It is from this that the
word orange came, for the Hindus turned it into narun-
gee (pron. naroudji), according to Royle, nerunga accord-
ing to Piddington ; the Arabs into narunj, according to
Gallesio, the Italians into naranzi, arangi, and in the
medieeval Latin it was aranciuin, arangium, afterwards
aurantiuTn.^ But did the Sanskrit name apply to the
bitter or to the sweet orange ? The philologist Adolphe
Pictet formerly gave me some curious information on
this head. He had sought in Sanskrit works the de-
scriptive names given to the orange or to the tree, and
had found seventeen, w^hich all allude to the colour, the
odour, its acid nature (danta catha, harmful to the
teeth), the place of growth, etc., never to a sweet or
agreeable taste. This multitude of names similar to
epithets show that the fruit had long been known, but
that its taste was very ditferent to that of the sweet
orange. Besides, the Arabs, who carried the oi'ange tree
with them towards the West, were first acquainted with
the bitter orange, and gave it the name narunj,^ and
their physicians from the tenth century prescribed the
bitter juice of this fruit.* The exhaustive researches of
Gallesio show that after the fall of the Empire the species
advanced from the coast of the Persian Gulf, and by the
end of the ninth century had reached Arabia, through
Oman, Bassora, Irak, and Syria, according to the Arabian
author Massoudi. The Crusaders saw the bitter orange
tree in Palestine. It was cultivated in Sicily from the
j-^ear 1002, probably a result of the incursions of the

> Eoxbnrgh, Fl. Indica, edit. 1832, vol. ii. p. 392; Piddington, Index.

' GaUesio, p. 122.

" In the modern langnages of India the Sanskrit name has been
applied to the sweet orange, so says Brandis, by one of those transposi-
tions which are so common in popular language.

* Gallesio, pp. 122, 217, 218.

PLAXTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 185

Arabs. It was they vrho introduced it into Spain, and
most likely also into the east of Africa. The Portuguese
found it on that coast when they doubled the Cape in
1498.^ There is no ground for supposing that either the
bitter or the sweet orange existed in Africa before the
Middle Ages, for the myth of the garden of Hesperides
may refer to any species of the order Aurantiacece, and
its site is altogether arbitrary, since the imagination of
the ancients was wonderfully fertile.

The early Anglo-Indian botanists, such as Roxburgh,
Royle, Grithth, Wight, had not come across the bitter
orange wild; but there is every probability that the
eastern recrion of India was its orio;inal country. Wallich
mentions Silhet,^ but without asserting that the species
was wild in this locality. Later, Sir Joseph Hooker ^
saw the bitter orange certainly wild in several districts
to the south of the Himalayas, from Garwal and Sikkim
as far as Khasia. The fruit was spherical or slightly
flattened, two inches in diameter, bright in colour, and
uneatable, of mawkish and bitter taste (" if I remember
right," says the author). Citi'us fusca, Loureiro,* similar,
he says, to pi. 23 of Rumphius, and wild in Cochin-China
and China, may very likely be the bitter orange whose
area extends to the east.

Sweet Orange — Italian, Arancio dolce ; German,
Apfelsine. Citrus Aurantiuin sinense, Gallesio.

Royle ^ says that sweet oranges giow wild at Silhet
and in the Nilgherry Hills, but his assertion is not
accompanied with suthcient detail to give it importance.
According to the same author. Turner's expedition
gathered " delicious " wild oranges at Buxedwar, a
locality to the north-east of Rungpoor, in the province
of Bengal. On the other hand, Brandis and Sir Joseph
Hooker do not mention the sweet orange as wild in

' Gallesio, p. 240. Goeze, Beitrag zurKennfniss der Orangengeudchse,
1874, p. 13, quotes early Portuguese travelltrs on this head.

* Wallich, Catalogue, No. 6384.

» Hooker, Fl of Brit. Ind., i. p. 515.

* Loureiro, Fl. Cochin., p. 571.

* Eovle, Illustr. of HiynaL, p. 129. He quotes Turner, Journey to
Thibet, pp. 20, 387.

186 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

British India ; tiiey only give it as cultivated. Kurz
does not mention it in his forest flora of British Burmah.
Further east, in Cochin-China, Loureiro ^ describes a C.
Aurantiuin, with bitter-sweet {acido-dulcis) pulp, which
appears to be the sweet orange, and which is found both
wild and cultivated in China and Cochin-China. Chinese
authors consider orange trees in general as natives of
their country, but precise information about each species
and variety is wanting on this head.

From the collected facts, it seems that the sweet
orange is a native of Southern China and of Cochin-
China, with a doubtful and accidental extension of area
by seed into India.

By seeking in what country it was first cultivated,
and how it was propagated, some light may be thrown
upon the origin, and upon the distinction between the
bitter and sweet orange. So large a fruit, and one so
agreeable to the palate as the sweet orange, can hardly
have existed in any district, without some attempts
having been made to cultivate it. It is easily raised
from seed, and nearly always produces the wished-for
quality. Neither can ancient travellers and historians
have neglected to notice the introduction of so remark-
able a fruit tree. On this histoi'ical pomt Gallesio's
study of ancient authors has. produced extremely in-
teresting results.

He first proves that the orange trees brought from
India by the Arabs into Palestine, Egypt, the south of
Europe, and the east coast of Africa,, were not the sweet-
fruited tree. Up to the fifteenth century, Arab books
and chronicles only mention bitter, or sour oranges.
However, when the Portuguese arrived in the islands of
Southern Asia, they found the sweet orange, and ap-
parently it had not previously been unknown to them.
The Florentine who accompanied Vasco de Gama, and
who published an account of the voyage, says, " Sonvi
onelarancie assai, ona tutfe dolci" (there are plenty of
oranges, but all sweet.) Neither this writer nor subsequent
travellers expressed surprise at the pleasant taste of the

' Loureiro, Fl. Corhin., p. 569.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS, 187

fruit. Hence Gallesio infers that tbe Portuguese were
not the first to bring the sweet orano-e from India, which
they reached in 1498, nor from China, which they
reached in 1518. Besides, a number of writers in the
beginning of the sixteenth century speak of the sweet
orange as a fruit ah-eady cultivated in Spain and Italy.
There are several testimonies for the years 1523, and
1525. Gallesio goes no further than the idea that the
sweet orange was introduced into Europe towards the
beginning of the fifteenth century ; ^ but Targioni quotes
from Valeriani a statute of Fermo, of the fourteenth
century, referring to citrons, sweet oranges, etc. ; ^ and
the information recently collected from early authors by
Goeze,^ about the introduction into Spain and Portugal,
agrees with this date. It therefore appears to me prob-
able that the oranges imported later from China by the
Portuguese were only of better quality than those
already known in Europe, and that the common expres-
sions, Portugal and Lisbon oranges, are due to this cir-
cumstance.

If the sweet orange had been cultivated at a very
early date in India, it would have had a special name
in Sanskrit; the Greeks would have known it after
Alexander's expedition, and the Hebrews would have
early received it through Mesopotamia. This fruit would
certainly have been valued, cultivated, and propagated
in the Roman empire, in preference to the lemon, citron,
and bitter orange. Its existence in India must, there-
fore, be less ancient.

In the Malay Archipelago the sweet orange was
believed to come from China.* It was but little diffused
in the Pacific Isles at the time of Cook's voyages.^

We come back thus by all sorts of ways to the idea
that the sweet variety of the orange came from China

1 Gallesio, p. 321.

^ The date of this statuto is given by Targioni, on p. 205 of tlie Cenni
Storici, as 1379, and on p. 213 as 1309. The errata do not notice this
discrepancy,

* Goeze, Ein Beitrag zur Kenntniss der Orangengewdchse. Hamburg,
1874, p. 26

* Enmphius, Amhoin., ii. o. 42. Forster, Plantis Eaculentis, p. 3n,

188 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

and Cochin- China, and that it spread into India perhaps
towards the beginning of the Christian era. It may have
become naturalized from cultivation in many parts of
India and in all tropical countries, but we have seen that
the seed does not always yield trees bearing sweet fruit.
This defect in heredity in certain cases is in support of
the theory that the sweet orange was derived from the
bitter, at some remote epoch, in China or Cochin-China,
and has since been carefully propagated on account of
its horticultural value.

Mandarin — Citrus nohilis, Loureiro.

This species, characterized by its smaller fruit, uneven
on the surface, spherical, but flattened at the top, and of
a peculiar flavour, is now prized in Europe as it has been
from the earliest times in China and Cochin-China.
The Chinese call it kan} Rumpliius had seen it culti-
vated in all the Sunda Islands,^ and says that it was
introduced thither from China, but it had not spread into
India, Roxburgh and Sir Joseph Hooker do not mention
it, but Clarke informs me that its culture has been
greatly extended in the district of Khasia. It was new
to European gardens at the beginning of the present
century, when Andrews published a good illustration of
it in the Botanist's Repository (pi. GOS).

According to Loureiro,^ this tree, of average size,
grows in Cochin-China, and also, he adds, in China,
although he had not seen it in Canton. This is not very
precise information as to its wild character, but no other
origin can be supposed. According to Kurz,* the species
is only cultivated in British Burmah. If this is confirmed,
its area would be restricted to Cochin-China and a few
provinces in China.

Mangosteen — Garcinia mangostana, Linnoeus.

There is a good illustration in the Botanical Magazine,
pi 4847, of this tree, belonging to the order Guttiferse, of
which the fruit is considered one of the best in existence.

• Bretschneider, On the Study and Value, etc., p. 11.

• Kumphius, Amboin., ii. pis. 3-i, 35, where, however, the form of the
fruit is not that of our niaadarin.

• Loureiro, Fl. Cochin., p. 570. * Kurz, Forest Fl. of Brit. Bur.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 189

It demands a very hot climate, for Roxburgh could not
make it grow north of twenty-three and a half degrees
of latitude in India/ and, transported to Jamaica, it bears
but poor fruit.^ It is cultivated in the Sunda Islands, in
the Malay Peninsula, and in Ceylon.

The species is certainly wild in the forests of the Sunda
Islands ^ and of the Malay Peninsula.* Among cultivated
plants it is one of the most local, both in its origin,
habitation, and in cultivation. It belongs, it is true, to
one of those families in which the mean area of the
species is most restricted.

Mamey, or Mammee Apple — Martimea Amei^ana,
Jaequin.

This tree, of the order Guttiferse, requires, like the
mangosteen, great heat. Although much cultivated in
the West Indies and in the hottest parts of Venezuela,^
its culture has seldom been attempted, or has met with
but little success, in Asia and Africa, if we are to judge
by the silence of most authors.

It is certainly indigenous in the forests of most of the
West Indies.^ Jaequin mentions it also for the neigh-
bouring continent, but I do not find this confirmed by
modern authors. The best illustration is that in Tussac's
Flore des Antilles, iii. pi. 7, and this author gives a
number of details respecting the use of the fruit.

Ochro, or Gombo — Hibiscus escidentus, Linnseus.

The young fruits of this annual, of the order of
Malvaceae, form one of the most delicate of tropical
vesfetables. Tussac's Flore des Antilles contains a fine
plate of the species, and gives all the details a gourmet
could desire on the manner of preparing the caloulou, so
much esteemed by the Creoles of the French colonies.

» Royle, ni. Himol., p. 133, and Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., ii. p. 618.

* Macfaclyen, Flora of Jamaica, p. 13-4.

^ Rumphius, Amhoin., i. p. 133; Miquel, Plantos Junghun., i. p. 290;
Flora Indo-Batava, i. pt. 2, p. 506.

* Hooker, Flora of Brit. Ind., i. p. 260.

* Ernst in Seemann, Journal of Botany, 1SG7, p. 273; Triana and
I'lanchon, Prodr. Fl. Novo-Granat., p. 285.

* Sloane, Jamaica, i. p. 123; Jaequin, Amer., p. 268; Grisebach,
Fl. of Brit. W. Iild. Isles, p. 118.

190 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

When I formerly ^ tried to discover whence this plant,
cultivated in the old and new worlds, came originally, the
absence of a Sanskrit name, and the fact that the first
writers on the Indian flora had not seen it wild, led me
to put aside the hypothesis of an Asiatic origin. How-
ever, as the modem flora of British India ^ mentions it as
" probably ot native origin," I was constrained to make
further researches.

Although Southern Asia has been thoroughly explored
during the last thirty years, no locality is mentioned
where the Gombo is wild or half wild. There is no
indication, even, of an ancient cultivation in Asia. The
doubt, therefore, lies between Africa and America. The
plant has been seen wild in the West Indies by a good
observer,^ but I can discover no similar assertion on the
pait of any other botanist, either with respect to the
islands or to the American continent. The earliest writer
on Jamaica, Sloane, had only seen the species in a state of
cultivation. Marcgraf * had observed it in Brazilian plan-
tations, and as he mentions a name from the Congo and
Angola country, quillobo, which the Portuguese corrujited
into quiTigomho, the African origin is hereby indicated.

Schweinfurth and Ascherson ^ saw the plant wild in
the Nile Valley in Nubia, Kordofan, Senaar, Abyssinia,
and in the Baar-el-Abiad, where, indeed, it is cultivated.
Other travellers are mentioned as having gathered speci-
mens in Africa, but it is not specified whether these
plants were cultivated or wild at a distance from habita-
tions. We should still be in doubt if Fliickiger and
Hanbury'' had not made a bibliographical discovery
which settles the question. The Arabs call the fruit
hamyah, or bdmiat, and Abul-Abas-Elnabati, who visited
Egypt long before the discovery of America, in 121G, has

' A. <3e Candolle, GSogr. Bot. Rais., p. 768.
« Flora of Brit. Ind., i. p. 3-13.

* .Jacquin, Ohxervationes, iii. p. 11.

* Marcgraf, Hist. Plant., p. 32, with illnstrations.

* Schweinfurth and Ascherson, Axifzdhlung , p. 2G5, under the name
abelmoiichtos.

* Flii.'kiger and Hanbury, Pharmacograpliia, p. 86. The descrip-
tion is in Ebu Baithar, Sondtheimer's trans., i. p. 118.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 191

distinctly described the gomho then cullivated by the
Egyptians.

In spite of its undoubtedly African origin, it does not
appear that the species was cultivated in Lower Egypt
before the Arab rule. No proof has been found in ancient
monuments, although Rosellini thought he recognized
the plant in a drawing, which differs widely from it
accordmg to Unger.^ The existence of one name in
modern Indian languages, according to Piddington, con-
firms the idea of its propagation towards the East after
the beoinning of the Christian era.

Vine — Vitis vimfera, Lmnteus.

The vine grows wild, in the temperate regions of
Western Asia, Southern Europe, Algeria, and Marocco.^ It
is especially in the Pontus, in Armenia, to the south of
the Caucasus and of the Caspian Sea, that it grows with
the luxuriant wildness of a tropical creeper, clinging to
tall trees and producing abundant fruit without pruning
or cultivation. Its vigorous growth is mentioned in
ancient Bactriana, Cabul, Kashmir, and even in Badak-
khan to the north of the Hindu Koosh.^ Of course, it is
a question whether the plants found there, as elsewhere,
are not sprung from seeds carried from vineyards by
birds. I notice, however, that the most trustworthy
botanists, those who have most thoroughly explored the
Transcaucasian provinces of Russia, do not hesitate to
say that the plant is wild and indigenous in this region.
It is as we advance towards India and Arabia, Europe
and the north of Africa, that we frequently find in floras
the expression that the vine is " subspontaneous," per-
haps wild, or become wild (vtvwildert is the expressive
German tei'm).

The dissemination by birds must have begun very
early, as soon as the fruit existed, before cultivation,
before the migration of the most ancient Asiatic peoples,

' Unger, Die Pflanzen des Alien Mgyptens, p. 50.

* Grisebach, Veget. du Globe, French trans, by Tchibatcheff, i. pp.
162, 163, 442; Munbv, Cafal. Alger; Ball, Fi. Maroc. Spicel, p. 392.

' Adolphe Pietet", Origines Indo.Europ. edit. 2, voL 1, p. 295, quotes
several travellers for these regions, among others Wood's Journei/ to the
Sources of !he Oxus,

192 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

perhaps before the existence of man in Europe or even
in Asia. Nevertheless, the frequency of cultivation, and
the multitude of forms of the cultivated grape, may have
extended naturalization and introduced among wild vines
varieties which originated in cultivation. In fact, natural
agents, such as birds, winds, and currents, have always
widened the ai^ea of species, independently of man, as far
as the limits imposed in each age by geographical and
physical conditions, together with the hostile action of
other plants and animals, allow. An absolutely primitive
habitation is more or less mythical, but habitations
successively extended or restricted are in accordance
with the nature of things. They constitute areas more
or less ancient and real, provided that the species has
maintained itself wild without the constant addition ot
fresh seed.

Concerning the vine, we have proofs of its great
antiquity in Europe as in Asia. Seeds of the grape have
been found in the lake-dwellings of Castione, near Parma,
which date from the age of bronze,^ in a prehistoric settle-
ment of Lake Varese,^ and in the lake-dwellings of
Wangen, Switzerland, but in the latter instance at an un-
certain depth.^ And, what is more, vine-leaves have been
found in the tufa round Montpellier, where they were
probably deposited, before the historical epoch, and in the
tufa of Meyrargue in Provence, which is certainly prehis-
toric,^ though later than the tertiary epoch of geologists.^

A Russian botanist, Kolenati,^ has made some very
interestinof observations on the different varieties of the
vine, both wild and cultivated, in the country which may
be called the central, and perhaps the most ancient home
of the species, the south of the Caucasus. I consider his
opinion the more important that the author has based

' These are figured in Heer's PJlanzen der Pfahlhauten, p. 24, fig. 11.

• Ragazzoni, Ricista Arch, della Prov. di Como, 18S0, fasc. 17, p. 30.

• Heer, ibid.

• Planchou, Etude sur les Tvfs de Montpellier, 18CA, p. 63.

• De Saporta, La Flore des Tufs Quaternaires de Provence, 1867, pp.
15, 27.

• Kolenati, Bulletin de la Soci6t4 Imp^riale des Katuralistes de
Moecou, 1846, p. 279.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 193

his classification of varieties with reference to the downy
character and veining of the leaves, points absolutely
indifferent to cultivators, and which consequently must
far better represent the natural conditions of the plant.
He says that the wild vines, of which he had seen an
immense quantity between the Black and Caspian Seas,
may be grouped into two subspecies which he describes,
and declares are recognizable at a distance, and which
are the point of departure of cultivated vines, at least in
Armenia and the neighboui'hood. He recognized them
near Mount Ararat, at an altitude where the vine is
not cultivated, where, indeed, it could not be cultivated.
Other characters — for instance, the shape and colour of
the grapes — vary in each of the subspecies. We cannot
enter here into the purely botanical details of Kolenati's
paper, any more than into those of Kegel's more recent
work on the genus Vitis ; ^ but it is well to note that a
species cultivated from a very remote epoch, and which
has perhaps two thousand described varieties, presents
in the district where it is most ancient, and probably
presented before all cultivation, at least two principal
forms, with others of minor importance. If the wild
vines of Persia and Kashmir, of Lebanon and Greece,
were observed with the same care, perhaps other sub-
species of prehistoric antiquity might be found. The
idea of collecting the juice of the grape and of allowing
it to ferment may have occurred to different peoples,
principally in Western Asia, where the vine abounds and
thrives. Adolphe Pictet,^ who has, in common with
numerous authors, but in a more scientific manner, con-
sidered the historical, philological, and even mythological
questions relating to the vine among ancient peoples,

' Regel, Ada Horti Imp. Petrop., 1873. In this short review of the
genns, M. Regel gives it as his opinion that Vitis vinifera is a hybrid
between tvvo wild species, V. v-ulpina and V. lahrusca, modified by culti-
vation ; but he gives no j^roof, and his characters of the two wild
species are altogether unsatisfactory. It is much to be desired that
the wild and cultivated vines of Europe and Asia should be compared
with regard to their seeds, which furnish excellent distinctions, according
to Englemann's observations on the American vines.

« Ad. Pictet, Origines Indo-Eur., 2nd edit., vol. i. pp. 298-321.

i94< ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

admits that both Semitic and Aryan nations knew the
use of wine, so that they may have introduced it into all
the countries into which they migrated, into India and
Egypt and Europe. This they were the better able to
do, since the}^ found the vine wild in several of these
regions.

The records of the cultivation of the grape and of the
making of wine in Egypt go back five or six tliousand
years.-^ In the West the propagation of its culture by
the Phenicians, Greeks, and Romans is pretty well
known, but to the east of Asia it took place at a late
period. The Chinese who now cultivate the vine in
their northern provinces did not possess it earlier than
the year 122 B.c.^

It is known that several wild vines exist in the north
of China, but I cannot agree with M. Regel in consider-
ing Vitis Aniurensis, Ruprecht, the one most analogous
to our vine, as identical in species. The seeds drawn in
the GaHenflora, 18G1, pi. 33, differ too widely. If the
fruit of these vines of Eastern Asia had any value, the
Chinese would certainly have turned them to account.

Common Jujube — Zizyplais vulgaris, Lamarck.

According to Pliny ,^ the jujube tree was brought from
Syria to Rome by the consul Sextus Papinius, towards
the end of the reign of Augustus. Botanists, however,
have observed that the species is common in rocky
places in Italy ,^ and that, moreover, it has not yet been
found wild in Syria, although it is cultivated there, as
in the whole region extending from the Mediterranean
to China and Japan.^

The result of the search for the origin of the jujube
tree as a wild j)lant bears out Pliny's assertion, in spite

' M. Delchevalerie, in I'Tlhisf ration Horficole, 18S1, p. 28. He
niort'ons ia particular the touib of Plitah-Hotep, who lived at Memphis
4000 B.C.

* Bretschneider, Sfudy and Value, etc., p. 16.
» Pliny, Hist., lib. 15, c. 14.

* Bertoloni, Fl. ItaL, ii. p. 665 ; Gnssnne, Syn. FI. Siml., ii. p. 276.

* Wilikomm and Lange, Prod. FL Hisp., iii. p. 480; Desiontaines, Fl.
Atlanf., i. p. 200; Boissier, Fl. Orient., ii. p. 12 ; J. Hooker, Fl. Brit.Ind.,
i. p. 633 ; Buuge, Enum. PI. Chiii., p. 14; Franchet and Savatier, Enum,
PL Jap. , i. p. 81.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 195

of the objections I have just mentioned. According to
plant collectors and authors of floras, the species appears
to be more wild and more anciently cultivated in the
east than in the west of its present wide area. Thus, in
the north of China, de Bunge says it is " very common
and very troublesome (on account of its thorns) in moun-
tainous places." He had seen the thornless variety in
gardens. Bretschneider ^ mentions the jujube as one of
the fruits most prized by the Chinese, who give it the
simple name tsao. He also mentions the two varieties,
with and without thorns, the former wild.^ The species
does not grow in the south of China and in India proper,
because of the heat and moisture of the climate. It is
found again wild in the Punjab, in Persia, and Armenia.

Brandis ^ gives seven diti'erent names for the jujube
tree (or for its varieties) in modern Indian languages,
but no Sanskrit name is known. The species was there-
fore probably introduced into India from China, at no
very distant epoch, and it must have escaped from culti-
vation and have become wild in the dry provinces of the
west. The Persian name is anob, the Arabic unab. No
Hebrew name is known, a further sign that the species
is not very ancient in the west of Asia.

The ancient Greeks do not mention the common
jujube, but only another species, Zlzypkus lotus. At least,
such is the opinion of the critic and modern botanist,
Lenz.* It must be confessed that the modern Greek name
pritzuphuia has no connection with the names formerly
attributed in Theophrastus and Dioscorides to some
Zizyphus, but is allied to the Latin name zizyplius (fruit
zizyphumi) of Pliny, which does not occur in earlier
authors, and seems to be rather of an Oriental than of a
Latin character. Heldreich^ does not admit that the
jujube tree is wild in Greece, and others say " natural-
ized, half-wild," which confirms the hypothesis of a

' Bretschneirler, Study and Value, etc., p. 11.

* Zizyphus chinensis of some authors is the same species.

* Brandis, Forest Flora of British India, p. 8i.

* Lenz, BoTanik der Alien, p. 651.

* Heldvelch, Nutzpf.amen Griechenlands, p. 57.

193 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

recent introduction. The same arguments apply to
Italy, The species may have become naturalized there
after the introduction into gardens mentioned by
Pliny.

In Algeria the jujube is only cultivated or half-wild.^
So also in Spain. It is not mentioned in Marocco, nor in
the Canary Isles, which argues no very ancient existence
in the Mediterranean basin.

It appears to me probable, therefore, that the species
is a native of the north of China ; that it was intro-
duced and became naturalized in the west of Asia after
the epoch of the Sanskrit language, perhaps two thousand
five hundred or three thousand years ago ; that the
Greeks and Romans became acquainted with it at the
beofinnino^ of our era, and that the latter carried it in+o
Barbary and Spain, where it became partially naturalized
by the effect of cultivation.

Lotus Jujube — Zlzyphiis lotus, Desfontaines.
The fruit of this jujube is not worthy of attention
except from an historical point of view. It is said to have
been the food of the lotus-eater, a people of the Lybian
coast, of whom H^Md and Herodotos ^ have given a more
or less accurate account. The inhabitants of this country
must have been very poor or very temperate, for a berry
the size of a small cherry, tasteless, or slightly sweet,
would not satisfy ordinary men. There is no proof that
the lotus-eaters cultivated this little tree or shrub. They
doubtless gathered the fruit in the open country, for the
species is common in the north of Africa. One edition
of Theophrastus ^ asserts, however, that there were some
species of lotus without stones, which would imply culti-
vation. • They were planted in gardens, as is still done
in modern Egypt/ but it does not seem to have been a
common custom even among the ancients.

For the rest, widely dilierent opinions have been held

» Munby, Catah, edit. 2, p. 9.

* Odyssey, bk. 1, v. 84; Herodotos, 1. 4, p. 177, trans, in Lenz, Bot.
der Alt., p. 653.

» Theophrastus, Hist., 1. 4, c. 4, edit. 1644. The edition of 1613 does
not contain the words which refer to this detail.

* Schweinfurth and Ascherson, Beitr. zur Fl.Mthiop., p. 263.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 197

touching the lotus of the lotus-eaters,^ and it is needless
to insist upon a point so obscure, in which so much must
be allowed for the imagination of a poet and for popular
ignorance.

The jujube tree is now wild in dry places from Egypt
to Marocco, in the south of Spain, Tervacina, and the
neighbourhood of Palermo.^ In isolated Italian localities
it has probably escaped from cultivation.

Indian Jujube^ — Zizyphus jujube, Lamarck; her Simong
the Hindus and Anglo-Indians, niasson in the Mauritius.

This jujube is cultivated further south than the com-
mon kind, but its area is equally extensive. The fruit is
sometimes like an unripe cherry, sometimes like an olive,
as is shown in the plate published by Bouton in Hooker's
Journal of Botany, i. pi, 140. The great number of
known varieties indicates an ancient cultivation. It
extends at the present day from Southern China, the Malay
Archipelago, and Queensland, through Arabia and Egj'pt
as far as Marocco, and even to Senegal, Guinea, and Angola.'^
It grows also in Mauritius, but it does not appear to have
been introduced into America as yet, unless perhaps into
Brazil, as it seems from a specimen in my herbarium.^
Tlie fruit is preferable to the common jujube, according
to some writers.

It is not easy to know what was the habitation of
the species before all cultivation, because the stones sow
themselves readily and the plant becomes naturalized out-
side gardens.^ If we are guided by its abundance in a
wild state, it would seem that Burmah and British India
are its original abode. I have in my herbarium several
specimens gathered by Wallich in the kingdom of Burmah,

' See the article on the carob tree.

* Desfoutaines, VI. Atlant., i. p. 200; Mnnby, Catal. Alger., edit. 2, p
9; Ball, Spicilegium, Fl. Jl/fl?-oc., p. 301 ; Willkomm and Lange, Prodr. J^i
Hisp., iii. p. 481 ; Bertoloni, Fl. Lial., ii. p. 664.

* This name, which is little used, occurs in Bauhin, as Jvjuha Indira

* Sir J. Hooker, Fl. Brit, hid., i. p. 632 ; Brandis, Forest FL, i. 87 ;
Bentham, JPZ. Austral., i. p. 412; Boissier, Pi. Orient., ii. p. 13; Oliver
Fl. of Trap. Afr., i. p. 379.

* Received from Martins, No. 1070, from the Caho frio.

^ Bouton, in Hookers Journ. of Bot.; Baker, 11. of Mauriiius, p. 61;
Bi-andis.

198 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

and Kurz has often seen it in the dry forests of that
country, near Ava and Prome.^ Beddone admits the
species to be wild in the forests of British India, but
Brandis had only found it in the neighbourhood of
native settlements.^ In the seventeenth century Rheede ^
described this tree as wild on tlie Malabar coast, and
liotanists of the sixteenth century had received it from
Bengal. In support of an Indian origin, I may mention
the existence of three Sanskrit names, and of eleven other
names in modern Indian languages.*

It had been recently introduced into the eastern
islands of the Amboyna group when Rumphius was
living there,° and he says himself that it is an Indian
species. It was perhaps originally in Sumatra and in
other islands near to the Malay Peninsula. Ancient
Chinese authors do not mention it ; at least Bretschneider
did not know of it. Its extension and naturalization to
the east of the continent of India appear, therefore, to
have been recent.

Its introduction into Arabia and Eg3'pt appears to
be of yet later date. Not only no ancient name is
known, but Forskal, a hundred years ago, and Delile at
the beginning of the present century, had not seen the
species, of which Schweinfurth has recently spoken as
cultivated. It must have spread to Zanzibar from Asia,
and by degrees across Africa or in European vessels as
far as the west coast. This must have been quite
recently, as Robert Brown {Bot. of Congo) and Thonning
did not see the species in Guinea.^

Cashew — Anacardium occidentalc, Linnneus.

The most erroneous assertions about the origin of
this species were formerly made,' and in spite of what

' Karz, Foreat Flora of Burmah, i. p. 2GG.

« Beddone, Forest Flora of India, i. ])]. 119 (representing the wild
fruit, which is smaller thau that of the cultivated plant) ; Brandis.
' Rheede, iv. pi. 141.

* Piddingtori, Index.

' Rumphius, Amhoyna, ii. pL 36.

* Zizyphus ahyssiniciis, Hcchst, seems to he a different species.

* Tussac, fZore dcs Antillex, u\.y>. 55 (where there is an excellent
figure, pi. 13). He says that it is an East Indian species, thus aggra-
vating LinntKUs' mistake, who believed it to be Asiatic and American.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 199

I said on the subject in 18-35,1 j gj^^j them occasionally
reproduced.

The French name Pommier cTacajow (mahogany-
apple tree) is as absurd as it is possible to be. It is a
tree belonging to the order of Terebintacecc or Anacar-
diacecB, very different from the Rosacese and the Meliaceas,
to which the apple and the mahogany belong. The
edible part is more like a pear than an apple, and botani-
cally speaking is not a fruit, but the receptacle or sup-
port of the fruit, which resembles a large bean. The two
names, French and English, are both deriv^ed from a name
given to it by the natives of Brazil, acajii, ucajaiba,
quoted by eaidy travellei^s.^ The species is certainly wild
in the forests of tropical America, and indeed occupies a
wide area in that legion ; it is found, for example, in
Brazil, Guiana, the Isthmus of Panama, and the West
Indies.^ Dr. Ernst * believes it is only indigenous in the
basin of the Amazon River, although he had seen it also
in Cuba, Panama, Ecuador, and New Granada. His
opinion is founded upon the absence of all mention of 'the
plant in Spanish authors of the time of the Conquest — a
negative proof, which establishes a mere probability.

Rheede and Rumphius had also indicated this plant
in the south of Asia. The former says it is common on
the Malabar coast.^ The existence of the same tropical
arborescent species in Asia and America was so little
probable, that it was at first suspected that there was a
ditierence of species, or at least of variety; but this was
not confirmed. Different historical and philological
proofs have convinced me that its origin is not Asiatic.^
Moreover, Rumphius, who is always accurate, spoke of an
ancient introduction by the Portuguese into the IMalay
Archipelago from America. The Malay name he gives,

' Ge'rigr. B<>t. Rais., p. 873.

* Piso and Marcgraf, Hist. rer. Nafur. Urasil, lfi48, p. 57.

» Vide Piso and Marcgraf; Aublet, Guyane, p. 392 ; Seemann Bnt.
of the Herald, p. 106 ; Jacquin, Amer., p. 124 ; Macfadyen, PL Jainaic ,
p. 119; Greisbach, Fl of Brit. W. Ind., p. 17(J.

* Ernst in Seemann, Journ. of Bot., 18G7, p. 273.
» Rheede, Malabar, iii. pi. 54.

* Rumphius, Herh. Amhoin., i. pp. 177, 178.

200 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

cadju, is American ; that used at Amboyna means Portugal
fruit, that of Macassar was taken from the resemblance ot
the fruit to that of the jamhosa. Kumphius says that the
species was not widely diffused in the islands. Garcia ah
Orto did not find it at Goa in 1550, but Acosta after-
wards saw it at Couchin, and the Portuguese propagated
it in India and the Malay Archipelago. According to
Blume and Miquel, the species is only cultivated in Java.
Eheede, it is true, says it is abundant (jJwvenit ubique)
on the coast of Malabar, but he only quotes one name
which seems to be Indian, krqxf, mava ; all the others
are derived from the American name, Piddington gives
no Sanskrit name. Lastly, Anglo-Indian colonists, after
some hesitation as to its origin, now admit the importation
of the species from America at an early period. They
add that it has become naturalized in the forests of
British India.^

It is yet more doubtful that the tree is indigenous
in Africa, indeed it is easy to disprove the assertion.
Loureiro ^ had seen the species on the east coast of this
continent, but he supposed it to have been of American
origin. Thonning had not seen it in Guinea, nor Brown
in Congo.^ It is true that specimens from the last-named
country and from the islands in the Gulf of Guinea were
sent to the herbarium at Kew, but Oliver says it is cul-
tivated there.^ A tree which occupies such a large area
in America, and whicli has become naturalized in several
districts of India within the last two centuries, would
exist over a great extent of tropical Africa if it w^ere indi-
genous in that quarter of the globe.

Mango — Mangifera indica, Linnseus.

Belonging to the same order as the Cashew, this tree
nevertheless produces a true fruit, something the colour
of the apricot.^

It is impossible to doubt that it is a native of the
south of Asia or of the Malay Archipelago, when we see

> Beddone, Flora Sylvatica, t. 163 ; Honker, Fl. Brit. Ind., ii. p. 20.

* Loureiro, Fl. Cochin., p. 304. » Brown, Cotiyo, pp. 12, 19.

* Oliver, Fl. of Trap. Afr., i. p. 443.

* See plate 4510 of the Botanical Magazine.

I

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 201

the multitude of varieties cultivated in these countries,
the number of ancient common names, in particular a
Sanskrit namc,^ its abundance in the gardens of Bengal,
of the Dekkan Peninsula, and of Ceylon, even in
Rheede's time. Its cultivation was less ditiused in the
direction of China, for Loureiro only mentions its
existence in Cochin-China. According to Rumphius,^
it had been introduced into certain islands of the
Asiatic Archipelago within the memory of living men.
Forster does not mention it in his work on the fruits of
the Pacific Islands at the time of Cook's expedition.
Tlie name common in the Philippine Isles, manga,^
shows a foreign origin, for it is the Malay and Spanish
name. The common name in Ceylon is aiiibe, akin to
the Sanskrit avora, whence the Persian and Arab amfih,^
the modern Indian names, and perhaps the Malay,
onangka, raanga, rnanj^elaan, indicated by Rumphius.
There are, however, other names used in the Sunda
Islands, in the Moluccas, and in Cochin-China. TIkj
variety of these names argues an ancient introduction
int> the East Indian Aichipelago, in spite of the opinion
of Rumphius

The Mangifera which this author had seen wild i)i
Java, and Mangifera sylvatica which Roxburgh had
discovered at Silhet, are other species ; but the true
mango is indicated by modern authors as wild in the
forests of Ceylon, the regions at the base of the Himalayas,
especially towards the east, in Arracan, Pegu, and the
Andaman Isles.^ Miquel does not mention it as wild
in any of the islands of the Malay Archipelago. In
spite of its growing in Ceylon, and the indications, less
positive certainly, of Sir Joseph Hooker in the Flora of
Biitish India, the species is proljably rare or only
naturalized in the Indian Peninsula. The size of the
stone is too great to allow of its bting transported by

* Roxburgh, Flora Tndica, edit. 2, vol. ii. p. 435 ; Piddingtpn, Index.

* Rumphius, Herb. Avihoin., i. p. 95.

^ B\anco, Fl. Filip., p. 181. * Eumphins; Forskal, p. cvii.

' Thwaites, Env.m. Plant. CeyL, p. 75 ; Brandis, Forest Flora, p. 126
Hooker, Fl.Brit. Ind., ii. p. 13 ; Kurz, Forest Flora Brit. Burmah, i. p 304.

/

202

OKIGIX OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

birdsj but the frequency of its cultivation causes a
dispersion by man's agency. If the mango is only
naturalized in the west of British India, this must have
occurred at a remote epoch, as the existence of a San-
skrit name shows. On the other hand, the peoples of
Western Asia must have known it late, since they did
not transport the species into Egypt or elsewhere towards
the west.

It is cultivated at the present day in troi>icd Africa,
and even in Mauritius and the Seychelles, where it has
become to some extent naturalized in the woods.^

In the new Vv^orld it was first introduced into Brazil,
for the seeds were brouii'ht thence to Barbados in the
middle of the last century.^ A French vessel was
carrying some young trees from Bourbon to Saint
Domingo in 1782, when it was taken by the English,
who took them to Jamaica, where they succeeded won-
derfully. When the coffee plantations were abandoned,
at the time of the emancipation of the slaves, the mango,
whose stones the negroes scattered evcT-ywhere, formed
forests in every part of the islands, and these are now
valued both for their shade and as a form of food.^ It
was not cultivated in Cayenne in the time of Aublet,
at the end of the eighteenth centurj^, but now there are
mangoes of the finest kind in this colony. They are
grafted, and it is observed that their stones produce better
fruit than that of the original stock.*

Tahiti Apple — Spondias dulcis, Forster.

Tliis tree belongs to the family of the A nacardiacece,
and is indigenous in the Society, Friendly, and Fiji
Islands.^ The natives consumed c[uantities of the fruit
at the time of Cook's voyage. It is like a large plum, of

' Oliver, Flora of Trap. Afr., i. p. 142 ; Baker, Fl. of Maur. and Seych.,
p. G3.

* IIuc^lics, Bai-hadoa, p. 177. ■

' ^lacfadyeii, FL of Jam., p. 221; Sir J. Hooker, /SpeccTi at the Royal
Institute. ,

•* Sagot, Jour, de la Soc. Centr. d'Ajric. de France, 1872.

* For.ster, De Plantis E-icidentii Insulariim Oceani Aasfralin, p. 33 ; I
Sepniann, i'V'/C(t Vttiensis, p. 51; Nad.md, Enum. des Plantes de Ta'iti,^^
\). 75.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 203

the colour of an apple, and contains a stone covered with
long hooked bristles.^ The flavour, according to travel-
lers, is excellent. It is not among the fruits most widely
diffused in tropical colonies. It is, however, cultivated
in Mauritius and Bourbon, under the primitive Polynesian
name evi or hevi,^ and in the West Indies. It was in-
troduced into Jamaica in 1782,' and thence into Saint
Domingo. Its absence in many of the hot countries of
Asia and Africa is probably owing to the fact that the
species was discovered, only a century ago, in small
islands which have no communications with other
countries.

Strawberry — Fragaria vesca, Linnfpus.

Our common strawberry is one of the most widely'
diff"used plants, partly owing to the small size of its seeds,
which birds, attracted by the fleshy part on which they
are found, carry to great distances.

It grows wild in Europe, from Lapland and the
Shetland Isles ^ to the mountain ranges in the south ;
in Madeira, Spain, Sicily, and in Greece.* It is also
found in Asia, from Armenia and the north of Syria ^ to
Dahuria. The strawberries of the Himalayas and of
Japan,^ which several authors have attributed to this
species, do not perhaps belong to it,' and this makes me
doubt the assertion of a missionary ^ that it is found in
Cliina. It is wild in Iceland,^ in the north-east of the
United States,^*^ round Fort Cumberland, and on the
north-west coast,^^ perhaps even in the Sierra-Nevada of

' There is a good coloured illustration ia Tussac's Fl. des Antilles,
iii. pi. 28.

^ Boj'er, Hortus Mauritianus, p. 81.

* H. C.Watson, Compendium Cyhele Brit., i. p. 160 ; Pries, Summa
Veg. Scand., p. 44.

* Lowe, Man. Fl. of Madeira, p. 246 ; Willkomm and Lange, Prodr.
Fl. Hisp., iii. p. 224; Moiis, Fl. Sardoa, ii. p. 17.

^ Boissier, Fl. Orient. * Ledehour, Fl. Ross., ii. p. 64.

' Gay ; Hooker, Fl. Brit, hid., ii. p. 344 ; Franchet and Saratier,
Enum. PI. Japon., i. p. 129.

* Perny, Propag. de la Foi, quoted in Decaisne's Jardin Fruitier du
Mus., p. 27. Gay does not give Cbina.

* Babington, Journ. of Linncean Society, ii. p. 303 ; J. Gay.

'" Asa Gray, Botany of the Northern States, edit. 1868, p. 156.
*' fcir W. Ilooker, Fl. Bor. Amer., i. p. 184.

10

204. ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

California.^ Thus its area extends round the north pole,
except in Eastern Siberia and the basin of the river
Amur, since the species is not mentioned by Maximowicz
in his Primlike Fierce Amurensis. In America its area
is extended along the highlands of Mexico ; for Fragaria
mexicana, cultivated in the Jardin des Plantes, and
examined by Gay, is F. vesca. It also grows round
Quito, according to the same botanist, who is an authority
on this question.^

The Greeks and Romans did not cultivate the straw-
berry. Its cultivation was probably introduced in the
tifteenth or sixteenth century, Champier, in the six-
teenth century, sj^eaks of it as a novelty in the no)-th
of France,^ but it already existed in the south, and in
England.*

Transported into gardens in the colonies, the straw-
berry has become natui-alized in a few cool localities far
from dwellings. This is the case in Jamaica,^ in Mauritius,*^
and in Bourbon, where some plants had been placed b}'
Commerson on the table-land known as the Kaffirs'
Plain. Bory Saint-Vincent relates that in 1801 he
found districts quite red with strawberries, and that it
was impossible to cross them without staining the feet
led with the juice, mixed with volcanic dust.' It is
])robable that similar cases of naturalization may be seen
in Tasmania and New Zealand.

The genus Fragaria has been studied with more care
than many others, by Duchesne (fils), the Comte dt-
Lambertye, Jacques Gay, and especially by Madame Eliza
Vilmorin, whose faculty of observation was worthy of
the name she bore. A summary of their works, with
excellent coloured plates, is published in the Jardin

» A. Gray, Bot. Calif., i. p. 176.

» J. Gay, ia Decaisne, Jardin Fruitier du Museum, Fraisier, p. 30.
8 Le Grand d'Aussy, Hist, de la Vie Privde des Fmnfdis, i. pp. 233
and 3.

* Olivier de Serres, Theatre d'Agric., p. 511 ; Gerard, from Phillips,
Pomarium Britannicum, p. 331-.

* Purdie, in Hooker's London Journal of Botany, 1844, p. 515.
" Bojer, Hortus Mauritianns, p. 121.

^ Bory Saint-Viucent, Comptes Rendus de VAcad. des. Sc. Nat., 183G,
sem, ii. p. 109.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 205

Fndtier dii Museum by Decaisne. These authors have
overcome u'reat difficulties in distinouishinfj the varieties
and hybrids which are multiplied in gardens from the
true species, and in defining these by well-marked charac-
ters. Some straAvberries Avhose fruit is poor have been
abandoned, and the finest are the result of the crossing
of the species of Virginia and Chili, of which I am about
to speak.

Virg-inian Strawberry — Fragaria virginiana, Ehrarht.

The scarlet strawberry of French gardens. This
species, indigenous in Canada and in the eastern States
of America, and of which one variety extends west as
far as the Rocky Mountains, perhaps even to Oregon,^
was inti-oduced into English gardens in 1629.^ It was
much cultivated in France in the last century, but its
liybrids with other species are now more esteemed.

Chili Strawberry — Fragaria Chiluensis, Duchesne.

A species common in Southern Chili, at Conception,
Valdivia, and Cliiloe.^ and often cultivated in that country.
It was brought to France by Frezier in the year 1715.
Cultivated in the Museum of Natural History in France,
it spread to England and elsewhere. The large size of
the berry and its excellent fiavour have produced by
different crossings, especially with F. virginiana, the
highly prized varieties Ananas, Victoria, Trollope,
Ruhls, etc.

Bird-Cherry — Prunus avium, Linnceus; Susskirsch-
baum in German.

I use the word cherry because it is customary, and
has no inconvenience when speaking of cultiv^ated species
or varieties, but tlie study of allied wild species confirms
the opinion of Linnasus, that the cherries do not form
a separate genus from the plums.

All the varieties of the cultivated cherry belong to
two species, which are found wild : 1. Prunus avium,
Linnaeus, tall, with no suckers from the roots, leaves

* Apa Gray, Manual of Botany of the Northern Stofe.f, edit. 1868,
p. 155 ; Botany of California, i. p. 177.
« Phillips, Romar. Brit., p. 335.
3 CI. Gay, Hist. Chili, Botanica, u. p. .S05.

206 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

downy on the under side, the fruit sweet; 2, Prumis
cerasus, Linnreus, shorter, with suckers from the roots,
leaves glabrous, and fruit more or less sour or bitter.

The first of these species, from which the white
and black cherries are developed, is wild in Asia; in
the forest of Ghilan (north of Persia), in the Russian
provinces to the south of the Caucasus and in Armenia ; ^
in Europe in the south of Russia proper, and generally
from the south of Sweden to the mountainous parts of
Greece, Italy, and Spain.^ It even exists in Algeria.^

As we leave the district to the south of the Caspian
and Black Seas, the bird-cherry becomes less common,
less natural, and determined more perhaps by the birds
which seek its fruit and carry the seeds from place to
I)lace.* It cannot be doubted that it was thus natui'alized,
from cultivation, in the north of India,^ in many of the
plains of the south of Europe, in Madeira,^ and here and
there in the United States ; '' but it is probable that in
the greater part of Europe this took place in prehistoric
times, seeing that the agency of birds was employed
before the first migiations of nations, perhaps before
there were men in Europe. Its area must have extended
in this recrion as the o-laciers diminished.

The common names in ancient languages have been
the subject of a learned article by Adolphe Pictet,^ but
nothing relative to the origin of the species can be
deduced from them ; and besides, the different species and
varieties have often been confused in popular nomencla-
ture. It is far more important to know whether archie-
ology can tell us anything about the presence of the
bird-cherjy in Europe in piehistoric times.

^ Ledebour, FJ. Ross., ii. p. 6; Boissier, Fl. Orient., ii. p. 649.

* Ledebour, ibid.; Fries, Suuima Scand., p. 4(5; Nyinan, Consper. Fl
Eur,, p. 213 J Boissier, ibid.; Willkomm and Lange, Prodr. FL Hisp.,
iii. p. 215.

' Munby, Catal. Alger., edit. 2, p. 8.

* As the cherries ripen after the sensoii when birds miErrate, they
disperse the stones cliiefly in the ne>ighbourhood of the plaiu.atioiis.

* Sir .T. Hooker, Fl. of Brit. India.

* Lovf<i, Manual of Madeira, p. 235.

* Dartmgton, Fl. Cestrica, edit. 3, p. 73.

* Ad Pictet, Oriijines Indo Europ., edit. 2, vol. i. p. 2S1.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 207

Heer gives an illustration of the stones of Prunus
avium, in his paper on the lake-dwellings of Western
Switzerland.^ From what he was kind enouoh to write
to me, April 1-i, 1881, these stones were found in the
peat formed above the ancient deposits of the age of
stone. De Mortillet ^. found similar cherry-stones in the
lake-dwellings of Bourget belonging to an epoch not
very remote, more recent than the stone age. I)r. Gross
sent me some from the locality, also comparatively recent,
of Corcelette on Lake Neuchatel, and Strobel and Pigorini
discovered some in the " terramare " of Parma.^ All these
are settlements posterior to the stone age, and perhaps
belonofino- to historic time. If no more ancient stones of
this species are found in Europe, it will seem probable
that naturalization took place after the Aryan migrations.

Sour Cherry — Primus cerasus, Linnaeus ; Cerasus vul-
garis, J\Iiller ; Bauviiveischel, Sauerkh'scken, in German.

The Montmorency and griotte cherries, and several
other kinds known to horticulturists, are derived from
this species.*

Hohenacker^ saw Prtinus cerasus at Lenkoran, near
the Caspian Sea, and Koch^ in the forests of Asia
Minor, that is to say, in the north-east of that country,
as that was the region in which he travelled. Ancient
authors found it at Elisabethpol and Erivan, according
to Ledebour.' Grisebach^ indicates it on Mount Olympus
of Bithynia, and adds that it is nearly wild on the plains
of Macedonia. The true and really ancient habitation
seems to extend from the Caspian Sea to the environs
of Constantinople ; but in this very region Prunus avium
is more common. Indeed, Boissier and Tchihatcheff
do not appear to have seen P. cerasus even in the

* lleer, Pflanzen der P/ahlhauien, p. 21-, figs. 17, 18, and p. 26.

* In Perrin, Etudes Prehist sitr la Sacoie, p. 22,
8 Atte Soc. Ital. Sc. Nat., vol. vi.

* For the numerous varieties which have common names in France,
varying with the ditferent provinces, see Duhamel, Traite des Arhres, edit.
2, vol. v., in which are good coloured illustrations.

* Hohenacker, PlantcB Talysch., p. 128.

* Koch, Dendrologie, i. p. 110. ' Ledebour, Fl. Puriss., ii. p. 6.
' Grisebuch, Spicil. Fl. Bumel., p. 8G.

208 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Pontus, though they received or brought back several
specimens of P. avium}

In tlie north of India, P. cerasus exists only as a
cultivated plant.^ Tlie Chinese do not appear to have
been acquainted with our two kinds of cherry. Hence
it may be assumed that it was not very early introduced
into India, and the absence of a Sanskrit name confirms
this. We have seen that, according to Grisebach, P.
cerasus is nearly wild in Macedonia. It was said to
be wild in the Crimea, but Steven ^ only saw it cultivated ;
and Rehmann * gives only the allied species, P. chamos-
cerasus, Jacquin, as wild in the south of Russia. I very
much doubt its wild character in any locality north of
the Caucasus. Even in Greece, where Fraas said he saw
this tree wild, Heldreich onl}^ knows it as a cultivated
species.^ In Dalmatia,^ a particular variety or allied
species, P. Marasca, is found really wild; it is used
in making Maraschino wine. P. cerasus is wild in
mountainous parts of Italy' and in the centre of France,^
but farther to the west and north, and in Spain, the
species is only found cultivated, and naturalized here
and there as a bush. P. cerasus, more than the bird-
cherry, evidently presents itself in Europe, as a foreign
tree not completely naturalized.

None of the often-quoted passa^'es ^ in Theophrastus,
Pliny, and other ancient authors appear to apply to
P. ce7'asus}° The most important, that of Theophrastus,
belono-s to Primus avium, because of the height of
the tree, a character which distinguishes it from P.
cerasus. Kerasos being the name for the bird-cherry

' Boissier, Fl. Orient., ii. p. G19; Tchihatcheff, Asie Mineure, Bot., p.
198.

2 Sir J. Hooter, ¥1. of Brit. India, ii. p. 313.

* Steven, Verzei'^hniss Halbinselm, etc., p. 147.

* Rehmann, Verhandl. Nat. Ver. Bnmn, x. 1871.

• Heldreich, i^vtzpfl. Griech., p. 69; Pf.anzen d'Attiscli. Ebene.,Tp. 477.

• Viviani, Fl. Dahnat., iii. p. 258. ' Bertoloni, FL Ital., v. p. 131.
^ Lecoc and Lamotte, Catal. du Plat. Centr. de la France, p. 148.

' Theophrastcs, Hist. PI,, lib. 3, c. 13 ; Pliny, lib. 15, c. 25, and others
quoted in Lonz, Bot. der Alten Gr. and Rom., p. 710.

" Part of the desciiption of Theophrastus shows a confusion with
other trees. He says, for inritauce, that the nut is si ft.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 209

in Theophrastus, as now Jcerasaia among the modern
Greeks, I notice a linguistic proof of the antiquity of
P. cerasus. The Albanians, descendants of the Pelas-
gians, call the latter vyssine, an ancient name which
reappears in the German Wechsel, and the Italian visciolo}
As the Albanians have also the name kerasw for P.
avium, it is probable that their ancestors very clearly
distinguished the two species by different names, perhaps
before the arrival of the Hellenes in Greece.

Another indication of antiquity may be seen in Virgil
(Geor. ii. 17) — •

"Pullulat ab raflice aliis densissima silva
Ut cerasis nlmisque " —

which applies to P. cerasus, not to P. avium.

Two paintings of the cherry tree were found at
Pompeii, but it seems that it cannot be discovered to
which of the two species they should be attributed.^
Comes calls them Pimnus cerasus.

Any archaeological discovery would be more con-
vincing. The stones of the two species present a differ-
ence in the furrow or groove, which has not escaped the
observation of Heer and Sordelli. Unfortunately, only
one stone of P. cerasus has been found in the pre-
historic settlements of Italy and Switzerland, and what
is more, it is not quite certain from what stratum it
was taken. It appears that it was a non-archseological
stratum.^

From all these data, somewhat contradictory and
.sufficiently vague, I am inclined to admit that Pmnus
cerasus was known and already becoming naturalized
at the beginning of Greek civilization, and a little later
in Italy before the epoch when Lucullus brought a
cherry tree from Asia Minor. Pages might be tran-
scribed from authors, even modem ones, who attribute,
after Pliny, the introduction of the cherry into Italy to

' Ad. Pictet quotes forms of the same name in Persian, Tarkish, and
Russian, and derives from the same source the French word guigne, now
nsed for certain varieties of the cherry.

* Schoaw, Die Erde, p. 44 ; Comes, III. delle Piante, etc., in 4to, p. 56.

* Sordelli, Piante della torhiera di Lagozza, p. 40.

210 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

this rich Roman, in the year 65 r,.c. Since this error is
perpetuated by its incessant repetition in classical schools,
it must once more be said that cherry trees (at least the
bird-cherry) existed in Italy before Lucullus, and that
the famous gourmet did not need to go far to seek the
species with sour or bitter fruit. I have no doubt that
he pleased the Romans with a good variety cultivated
in the Pontus, and that cultivators hastened to propagate
it by grafting, but Lucullus' share in the matter was
confined to this.

From what is now known of Kerasunt and the
ancient names of the cherry tree, I venture to maintain,
contrary to the received opinion, that it was a variety
of the bird-cherry of which the fleshy fruit is of a sweet
flavour. I am inclined to think so because Kerasos in
Theophrastus is the name of Frunus avium, which is
far the commoner of the two in Asia Minor. The town
of Kerasunt took its name from the tree, and it is
probable that the abundance of Frunus avium in the
neighbouring woods had induced the inhabitants to seek
the trees which yielded the best fruits in order to plant
them in their gardens. Certainly, if Lucullus brought
flne white-heart cherries to Rome, his countrymen who
only knew the little wild cherry may well have said,
" It is a fruit which we have not." Pliny affirms nothing
more.

I must not conclude without suggesting a hypothesis
about the two kinds of cherry. They difler but little in
character, and, what is very rare, their two ancient
habitations, which are most clearly pioved, are similar
(from the Caspian Sea to Western Anatolia). The two
species have spread towards the West, but unequally.
That which is commonest in its original home and the
stronger of the two (P. avium) has extended further and
at an earlier epoch, and has become better naturalized
F. cerasus is, therefore, perhaps derived from the
other in prehistoric times. I come thus, by a diflerent
road, to an idea suggested by Caruel;i only, instead
of saying that it would perliaps be better to unite them
Caruel, Flora Toscana, p. 48.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 211

now in one species, I consider them actually distinct, and
content myself with supposing a descent, which for the
rest it would not be easy to prove.

Cultivated Plums.

Pliny ^ speaks of the immense quantity of plums
known in his time : ingens turba prunorwm. Horti-
culturists now number more than three hundred. Some
botanists have tried to attribute these to distinct wild
species, but they have not alwa3^s agreed, and judging from
the specific names especially they seem to have had very
different ideas. This diversity is on two heads ; first as
to the descent of a given cultivated variety, and secondly
as to the distinction of the wild forms into species or
varieties.

I do not pretend to classify the innumerable culti-
vated forms, and I think that labour useless when dealing
with the question of geographical origin, for the differ-
ences lie principally in the shape, size, colour, and taste
of the fruit, in characters, that is to say, which it has
been the interest of horticulturists to cultivate when
they occur, and even to create as far as it was in their
power to do so. It is better to insist upon the distinction
of the forms observed in a wild state, especially upon
those from which man derives no advantage, and which
have probably remained as they were before the existence
of gardens.

It is probably only for about thirty 5'ears that
botanists have given really comparative characters for
the three species or varieties which exist in nature.^
They may be summed up as follows : —

Frunus domestica, Linnaeus. Tree or tall shrub, with-
out thorns ; young branches glabrous ; flowers appearing
with the leaves, their peduncles usually downy; fruit
pendulous, ovoid and of a sweet flavour.

Prunus insititia, Linnseus. Tree or tall shrub, with-
out thoi'ns ; young shoots covered with a velvet down ;
flowers appearing with the leaves, with peduncles covered

» Hist, lib. 15, c. 13.

* Koch, Syn. Fl. Germ., edit. 2, p. 228 ; Cossou and Germain, Flore
des Environs de Paris, i. p. 165.

212 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

with a fine down, or glabrous ; fruit pendulous, round or
slightly elliptical, of a sweet flavour.

Prunus spinosa, LinniTJus. A thorny shrub, with
branches spreading out at right angles; young shoots
downy ; flowers appearing before the leaves ; pedicles
glabrous; fruit upright, round, and very sour.

This third form, so common in our hedges (sloe or
blackthorn), is very different from the other two. There-
fore, unless we interpret by hypothesis what may have
happened before all observation, it seems to me im-
possible to consider the three forms as constituting one
and the same species, unless we can show transitions
from one to the other in those organs wdiich have not
been modified by cultivation, and hitherto this has not
been done. At most the fusion of the tw^o first categories
can be admitted. The two forms with naturally sweet
fruit occur in few countries. These must have tempted
cultivators more than Prunus spinosa, whose fruit
is so sour. It is, therefore, in these that we must seek
to find the originals of cultivated plums. For greater
clearness I shall speak of them as two species.^

Commoii Plum — Prunus domestica, Linnaeus; Zuet-
chen in German.

Several botanists ^ have found this variety wild
throughout Anatolia, the region to the south of the
Caucasus and Northern Persia, in the neighbourhood of
Mount Elbruz, for example.

I know of no proof for the localities of Kashmir, the
country of the Kirghis and of China, which are men-
tioned in some floras. The species is often doubtful, and
it is probably rather Prunus insititia; in other cases
it is its true and ancient wild character w^hich is un-
certain, for the stones have evidently been dispersed from
cultivation. Its area does not appear to extend as far as
Lebanon, although the plums cultivated at Damascus
(damascenes, or damsons) have a reputation which dates

* Hudson, Fl. Anglic, 1778, p. 212, unites them nnder the name
Prunus communis.

• Ledebonr, Fl. Ross., ii. p. 5 ; Boiesior, Fl. Orient., ii. p. 652 ; K Koch
Dendrologie, i. p. 94; Boissier and Biihse, Av.fzahl Tramcaucaaien, p. 80!

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 213

from the days of Pliny. It is supposed that this was the
species referred to by Dioscorides^ under the name of
Syrian cocciiinelea, growing at Damascus. Karl Koch
relates that the merchants trading on the borders of
China told him that the species was common in the
foi'ests of the western part of the empire. It is true that
the Chinese have cultivated different kinds of plums
from time immemorial, but we do not know them well
enough to judge of them, and we cannot be sure that
they are indigenous. As none of our kinds of plum has
been found wild in Japan or in the basin of the river
A.mur, it is very probable that the species seen in China
ire different to ours. This appears also to be the result
of Bretschneider's statements.'-^

It is very doubtful if Primus domestica is in-
digenous in Europe. In the south, where it is given, it
grows chiefly in hedges, near dwellings, with all the
appearance of a tree scarcely naturalized, and maintained
here and there by the constant bringing of stones from
plantations. Authors who have seen the species in the
East do not hesitate to say that it is " subspontaneous."
Fraas ^ affirms that it is not wild in Greece, and this is
confirmed as far as Attica is concerned by Heldreich.^
Steven^ says the same for the Crimea. If this is the
case near Asia Minor, it must be the more readily
admitted for the rest of Europe.

In spite of the abundance of plums cultivated formerly
by the Romans, no kind is found represented in the
frescoes at Pompeii.^ Neither has Prunus domestica
been found among the remains of the lake-dwellings of
Italy, Switzerland, and Savoy, where, however, stones
of Pruniis insititia and spinosa have been discovered.
From these facts, and the small number of words at-
tributable to this species in Greek authors, it may be

* Dioscorides, p. 174.

* Bretschneider, On the Study, etc., p. 10.
« Fraas, Syn. Fl. Class., p. 69.

* Heldreii-h, PJlanzen Attischen Ehene.

^ Steven, Verzeichniss Halbinseln, i. p. 172.

* Comes, III. Piante Pompeiane.

214) ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

inferred that its half-wild or half-naturalized state dates
in Europe from two thousand years at most.

Prunes and damsons are ranked with this species.

Bullace — Prunus insititia, Linnyeus;^ Pjiauenhaum
and Ila.ferschlehen in German.

This kind of plum grows wild in the south of Europe.^
It has also been found in Cilicia, Armenia, to the south
of the Caucasus, and in the province of Talysch near the
Caspian Sea.^ It is especially in Turkey in Europe and
to the south of the Caucasus that it appears to be truly
w^ild. In Italy and in Spain it is perhaps less so,
although trustworthy authors who have seen the plant
PTO wince have no doubt about it. In the localities
named north of the Alps, even as far as Denmark, it is
probably naturalized from cultivation. The species is
commonly found in hedges not far from dwellings, and
apparently not truly wild.

All this ajjrees with archpeolo2:ical and historical data.
The ancient Greeks distinguished the Coccutnelea oi their
country from those of Syiia,^ whence it is inferred that
the former were Prunus insititia. This seems the more
likely that the modern Greeks call it coivmeleia.^ The
Albanians say coromhile,^ which has led some people to
suppose an ancient Pelasgian origin. For the rest, we
must not insist upon the common names of the plum
Avhich each nation may have given to one or another
species, perliaps also to some cultivated varietj^, without
any rule. The names which have been much commented
upon in learned works generally, a]^pear to me to apph'
to any plum or plum tree without having any very
defined meaning.

No stones of P. insititia have yet been found in

' Insititia = forcif^n. A curious name, siucc every plant is foreign to
all countries but its own,

* Willkomm and Lang-e, rroclr. Fl. Hisp., iii. p. 214 ; Bcrtoloni. Fl. Ifnh,
V. p. 135; Grisebach, S^icei. Fl.Rumel., p. 85; lleldreich, Nutsxifl. Griech.,
p. 68.

• Boissier, F^ Orient., ii. p. 651 ; Ledebour, Fl. Ross., ii. p. 5 ; Hohen-
acker, PL Talysch, p. 128.

♦ Dioscorides, p. 173 ; Fraas, Fl. Class., p. 69.

* Heldreich, Nutzpflanzen Griechenlands, p. 68. • Ihid.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FLUITS. 215

the terra-mare of Italy, but Heer has described and
given illustrations of some which were found in the lake-
dwellings of Robenhausen.^ The species does not seem
to be now indigenous in this part of Switzerland, but we
must not forget that, as we saw in the history of flax, the
lake-dwellers of the canton of Zurich, in the age of stone,
had communications with Italy. These ancient Swiss
were not hard to please in the matter of food, for they
also gathered the berries of the blackthorn, which are, as
we think, uneatable. It is probable that they ate them
cooked.

Apricot — Prunus amienia^ca, Linnaeus; Arraenica
vulgaris, Lamarck.

The Greeks and Romans received the apricot about
the beginning of the Christian era. Unknown in the
time of Theophrastus, Dioscorides ^ mentions it under
the name of mailon arineniacon. He says that the
Latins called it praikokion. It is, in fact, one of the
fruits mentioned briefly by Pliny,^ under the name of
praicocium, so called from the precocity of the species.*
Its Armenian origin is indicated by the Greek name,
])ut this name might mean only that the species was
cultivated in Armenia. Modern botanists have long had
good reason to believe that the species is wild in that
country. Pallas, Guldenstadt, and Hohenacker say they
found it in the neighbourhood of the Caucasus Mountains,
on the north, on the banks of the Terek, and to the south
between the Caspian and Black Seas,^ Boissier ^ admits
all these localities, but without saying anything about
the wild character of the species. He saw a specimen
gathered by Hohenacker, near ElisabethpoL On the

* Heer, Pflanzen der Pfahlhauten, p. 27, fip:. 16, c.

* Dioscorides, lib. 1, c. 165. ^ Pliny, lib. 2, cap. 12.

* The Latin name has passed into modem Greek (priholckia). The
Spanish and French names, etc. {alharicoque, abricot), seem to be derived
from arhor prcccox, or praecocium, while the old French word armegne,
and the Italian armenilli, etc., come from mailon armeniacon. See further
details about the names of the species in my Geoyraphie Botuui^ue
Raisonne'e, p. 880.

* Ledebour, Fl. Ross., ii. p. 3.

* Boissier, Fl. Orient., ii. p. 652.

21G OJllGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

other Land, Tchiliatcheff ^ who has crossed Anatolia and
Armenia several times, does not seem to have seen the
wild apricot ; and what is still more significant, Karl
Koch, who travelled through the region to the south of
the Caucasus, in order to observe facts of this nature,
expresses himself as follows : ^ " Native countiy unknown.
At least, during my long sojourn in Armenia, I nowhere
found the apricot wild, and I have rarely seen it even
cultivated."

A traveller, W. J. Hamilton,^ said he found it wild
near Orgou and Dutch Hisar in Anatolia: but this asser-
tion has not been verified by a botanist. The supposed
wild apricot of the ruins of Baalbek, described by Eusebe
de Salle * is, from what he says of the leaf and fruit,
totally different to the common apricot. Boissier, and
the different collectors who sent him plants from Syria
and Lebanon, do not appear to have seen the species.
Spach ^ asserts that it is indigenous in Persia, but he gives
no proof. Boissier and Buhse ^ do not mention it in their
list of the plants of Transcaucasia and Persia. It is use-
less to seek its origin in Africa. The apricots which
Reynier ' says he saw, " almost wild," in Upper Egypt
must have sprung from stones grown in cultivated
ground, as is seen in Algeria.^ Schweinfurth and
Ascherson,^ in their catalogue of the plants of Egypt and
Abyssinia, only mention the species as cultivated. Besides,
if it had existed formerly in the north of Africa it would
have been early known to the Hebrews and the Romans.
Now there is no Hebrew name, and Pliny says its intro-
duction at Rome took place thirty years before he wrote.

Carrying our researches eastward, we find that Anglo-

^ Tcliihatcheff, Aifie irineure, Botanique, toL L

• K. Koch, Dendrolo'jie, i. p. 87.

• Noxiv. Ann. des Voyajes, Feb., 1839, p. 176.

• E. de Salle, Voyage, i. p. 140.

• Spach, Hist, des Veijdt. Phandr., i. p. 389.

• Boissier and Buhse, Auj'ziihluncjy etc., in -Ito, 1860.
' Reynier, J^conomie des Egyptiens, p. 371.

• Munby, Catal. Fl. d'Ahjer., edit. 2, p. 49.

• Schweinfurth and Aschersou, Beitrage z. Fl. ^Ihicp., in 4to., 18G7,
p. 259.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 217

Indian botanists^ 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.
JMessrs. Schlagintweit brought specimens from the north-
west provinces of India, and irom Thibet, which "West-
mael verified,^ but he was kind enough to write to me
that he cannot afhrm that it was wild, since the collector's
label gives no information on that head.

Roxburgh,^ who did not neglect the question of origin,
says, speaking of the apricot, "native of China as well
as the Avest of Asia." I read in Dr. Bretschneider's
curious little work,^ 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 {Primus armeniaca). The character (a
Chinese sign printed on p. 10) does not exist as indicat-
ing a fruit, either in the Shu-Jcing, or in the Shi-Jcing,
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-ldng is attributed to the Emperor
Yli, who lived in 2205-2198 B.C. Decaisne,^ 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 gTows 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

'o^

' Royle, Til. of Himalaya, p. 20.5 ; Aitchison, Cafal. of Punjah and
Sinclh. p. 56 ; Sir Joseph Hooker, Fl. of Brit, hid., ii. p. 313 ; Brandu*.
Fored Flora of N. W. and Central India, 191.

* Westinael, in Bull. Soc. Bot. Beljiq., viii., p. 219.
» Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., edit. 2, v. ii. p. 501.

♦ Bretschneider, On the Study and Value, etc., pp. 10, 49.

' Decaisue, Jaidin Fruitier du Museum, vol. viii., art. Abricotier.

218 OEIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

that of the wild tree." * Decaisne adds, in the lettc-
he was good enough to write to me, " In shape and
surface the stones are exactly like those of our small
a[)ricots ; 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.^ Perhaps the cold of the winter is
too efreat. 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. How-
ever, if we wish to adopt this hypothesis, we must also
admit that the culture of the apricot spread very late
towards the West.^ For no Sanskrit or Hebrew name is
known, but only a Hindu name, zard alu, and a Persian
name, onischmisch, Avhich has passed into Arabic* 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 noi'th-west of India towards the Gnieco-
Roman world ? The Chinese knew it two or three
thousand years before the Christian era. Changkien
went as far as Bactriana, a century before our era, and
he was the first to make the West known to his fellow-
countrymen.^ It was then, perhaps, that the apricot was
introduced in W^estern Asia, and that it was cultivated
and became naturalized here and there in the north-Avest
of India, and at the foot of the Caucasus, by the scatter-
ing of the stones beyond the limits of the plantations.

Almond — Amygdalus communis, Linna3us ; I'runi
species, Baillon; Frunus Amygdalus, Hooker.

' Dr. Bretschneider confirms this in a recent work. Notes on Botanical
Questions, p. 3.

* Pruniis armeniaca of Thnnberg is P. miime of Siebold and Zncclia-
rini. The apricot is not mentioned in the Enumeratio, etc., of Franchet
and Savatier.

^ Capus {Ann. Sc. Nat., sixth series, vol. xv. p. 206) found it wild in
Turkestan .it tlie height of four thousand to seven thousand feet, which
weakens the hypotlicsis of a solely Chinese origin.

* Piddington, Index ; Koxburgh, Fl. Ind. ; Forskal, Fl. £gyp. ; Delile.
III. Egypt.

* Bretschneider, On the Study and Value, etc.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 219

The almond grows apparently wild or half wild in
the warm, dry regions of the Mediterranean basin and
of western temperate A.sia. As the nuts from cultivated
trees naturalize the species very easily, we must have
recourse to various indications to discern its ancient
Lome.

We may first discard the notion of its origin in
Eastern Asia. Japanese floras make no mention of the
almond. That which M. de Bonge saw cultivated in
tlie north of China was the Fersica Davidiana} Dr.
Bi-etschneider,^ in his classical work, tells us that he has
never seen the almond cultivated in China, and that the
compilation entitled Fent-sao, published in the tenth or
eleventh century of our era, describes it as a tree of the
country of the Mahometans, which signifies the north-
west of India, or Persia.

Anglo-Indian botanists ^ say that the almond is culti-
vated in the cool parts of India, but some add tliat it
does not thrive, and that many almonds are brought
from Pcisia.^ Ko Sanskrit name is known, nor even
any in the languages derived from Sanskrit. Evidently
tlie north-west of India is not the original hon.e of the
species.

On the other hand, there are many localities in the
region extending from Mesopotamia and Turkestan to
Algeria, where excellent botanists have found the almond
t:ee quite wild. Boissier ^ has seen specimens gathered
in rocky ground in Mesopotamia, Aderbijan, Turkestan,
Kurdistan, and in the forests of the Anti-Lebanon.
Karl Koch ^ has not found it wild to the south of the
Caucasus, nor Tcliihatcheff in Asia Minor. Cosson "^ found
natural woods of almond trees near Saida in Algeria. It

' Bret Schneider, Eai-h/ European Researches, p. 149.
^ Bretschneider, Stud]/ and Value, etc., p. 10; aud Early Enrop.
Eesear., p. 140.

» Braiidis, Forest Flora; Sir J. Hoolisr, Fl. of Brit. Tnd., iii. p. 313.

* RoxLurgh, Fl. Ltd., edit. 2, vol. ii. p. 5U0 ; Ron le, III. Himal., p. 204.

* Boissier, Fl. Orien., iii. p. 641.

* K. Koch, Dendrologie, i. p. 80; Tcliihatcheff, Asie Ilineure Bota.
nique, i. p. 108.

' ^7!?!. des S'c. Nat, 3rd serie?, vol. x!x. p. 108.

220 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

is also regarded as wild on the coasts of Sicily and of
Greece;^ but there, and still more in the localities in
which it occurs in Italy, Spain, and France, it is probable,
and ahnost certain, that it springs from the casual dis-
persal of the nuts from cultivation.

The antiquity of its existence in Western Asia is
proved by Hebrew names for the almond tree — schaJce I,
luz or lus (which recurs in the Arabic louz), and schc-
keclhn fur the nut.^ The Persians have another name,
hadam, but I do not know how old this is. Theophras-
tus and Dioscorides ^ mention the almond by an entirely
ditferent name, amugdalai, translated by the Latins into
amygdalus. It may be inferred from this that the Greeks
did not receive the species from the interior of Asia, but
found it in their own country, or at least in Asia Minor.
The almond tree is represented in several frescoes found
at Pompeii.* Pliny ^ doubts whether the species was
known in Italy in Cato's time, because it was called the
Greek nut. It is very possible that the almond was in-
troduced into Italy from the Greek islands. Almonds
have not been found in the terra-mare of the neiah-
bourhood of Parma, even in the upper layers.

The late introduction of the species into Italy, and the
absence of naturalization in Sardinia and Spain,^ incline
me to doubt whether it is reallv indigenous in the north
of Afiica and Sicily. In the latter countries it was more
probably naturalized some centuries ago. In confirma-
tion of this h}' pothesis, I note that the Berber natne of
the almond, taloazet^ is evidently connected with the
Arabic louz, that is to say with the language of the
conquerors who came after the Romans. In Western
Asia, on the contrary, and even in some parts of Greece,

' Gussone, Synopsis Florco SiculcB, i. p. 552; Heldreich, Nutzpflaiizen
Crlechenland^, p. 67.

* Hiller, Hierophyton, i. p. 215; Rosenmiiller, Handb. Bihl. Alterth.,
\y. p. 2m.

* Thei pbrastas. Hist., lib. l,c. 11, 18, etc. ; Dioscorides, lib. 1, c. 176.
« Schouw, Die Erde, etc.; Comes, Ill.Piante nei dipinti Pomp., p. 13.
» Pliny, Bl^t., lib. 16, c. 22.

* Moris, Flora Sardoa, ii. p. 5 ; Willkomm and Lange, Prodr. Fl: Higp.,
iii. p. 24.3.

* Dictionnaire Franfais B>rhere, 1814.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 221

it may be regarded as indigenous from prehistoric time,
I do not say pnmitive, for everything was preceded by
something else. I remark finally that the difference be-
tween bitter and sweet almonds was known to the Greeks
and even to the Hebrews.

Peach — Awygdalus persica, Linnpeus ; Persica vul-
garis, Miller ; Prunus persica, Bentham and Hooker.

I will quote the article in which I formerly^ attributed
a Chinese origin to the peach, a contrary opinion to that
which prevailed at the time, and which people who are
not on a par with modern science continue to reproduce.
I will afterwards give the facts discovered since 1855.
"^ " The Greeks and Romans received the peach shortly
after the beginning of the Christian era. The names
jjersica, vudmn persicuvi, indicate whence they had it.
I need not dwell upon those well-known facts.^ Several
kinds of peach are now cultivated in the north of India,^
but, what is remarkable, no Sanskrit name is known ; ^
whence we may infer that its existence and its cultivation
are of no great antiquity in these regions. Roxburgh,
who is usually careful to give the modern Indian names,
only mentions Arab and Chinese names. Piddington
gives no Indian name, and Royle only Persian names.
The peach does not succeed, or requires the greatest
care to ensure success, in the north-east of India.^ In
China, on the contrary, its cultivation dates from
the remotest antiquity. A number of superstitious
ideas and of legends about the properties of its different
varieties exist in that country.** These varieties are very

' Alph. de CandoUe, G^ogr. Bot. Bais., p. 881.

* Tlieoplirastus, Hist., iv. c. 4j Dioscorides, lib. 1, c. 164 j Pliny,
Geneva edit., bk. 15, c. 13.

» Royle, III. Him., p. 204.

* Roxburgh, i*';. Ind., 2iid. edit., ii. p. 500; Piddington, Index; Royle,

ihid.

* Sir Joseph Hoi^ker, .lovrn. of Bot., 1850, p. 54.

* Rose, the head of the French trade at Canton, collected these from
Chinese mauuscripts, nnd Noisette {Jard. Fruit., i. p. 76) has transcribed
a part of liis article. Tlie facts are of the following nature. The Chinese
believe the oval peaches, which are very red on one side, to be a symbol
of a long life. In consequence of this ancient belief, peaches are used
in all ornaments in painting and sculpture, and in congratulatory pre.

222 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

numerous;^ and in particular the singular variety -with
compressed or flattened fruit,^ which appears to be further
removed than any other from the natural state of the
peach ; lastly, a simple name, to, is given to the common
peach. ^

" From all these facts, I am inclined to believe that the
peach is of Chinese rather than of western Asiatic origin.
If it had existed in Persia or Armenia from all time, the
knowledge and cultivation of so pleasant a fruit would
have spread earlier into Asia Minor and Greece. The
expedition of Alexander probably was the means of
making it known to Theophrastus (332 B.C.), who speaks
of it as a Persian fruit. Pei-haps this vague idea of
the Greeks dates from the retreat of the ten thousand
(401 B.C.) ; but Xenophon does not mention the peach.
Nor do the Hebrew writings speak of it. The peach
has no Sanskrit name, yet the peoples who spoke this
language came into India from the north-west ; that is
to say, from the generally received home of the species.
On this hypothesis, how are we to account for the fact
that neither the Greeks of the early times of Greece, nor
the Hebrews, nor the Sanskrit-speaking pco])lcs, who all
radiated from the upper part of the Euphrates valley or

X communicated with it, did not cultivate the peach ? On
the other hand, it is very possible that the stones of a
fruit tree cultivated in China from the remotest times,
should have been carried over the mountains from the
centre of Asia into Kashmir, Bokhara, and Persia. The
Chinese had very early discovered this route. The im-
portation would have taken place between the epoch of
the Sanskrit emiirrations and the relations of the Persians
with the Greeks. The cultivation of the peach, once

sents, etc. Accorrliiipf to the work of Chin-Tionofkinof, tlie peach Vu
prevents death. If it is not e;iten in time, it at least pie.«:erves the body
i'rom decay until the end of the world. Tlie peach is always mentioned
among the fruits of immortality, with which were entertained the hopes
of Tsitjchi-Iloang, Vouty, of the llaus and other emperors who pretended
to immortality, etc.

> Lindley, T/a?u<t. TTort. ffoc, v. p. 121.

' Trana. I [art. Soc. Lorul., iv. p. 512, tab. 19,

• Koxburgh, Fl, Ind.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOU THEIR FRUITS. 223

established in Persia, would have easily spread on the
one side towards the west ; on the other, through Cabal
towards the north of India, where it is not so very ancient.

" In confirmation of the hypothesis of a Chinese origin,
it may be added that the peach was introduced into
Cochin-China from China,^ and that the Japanese give
the Chinese name Tao ^ to the peach. M. Stanislas
Julien was kind enough to read to me in French some
passages of the Japanese encyclopaedia (bk. Ixxxvi. p. 7),
in which the peach tree tao is said to be a tree of
Western countries, which should be understood to mean
the interior of China as compared to the eastern coast,
since the passage is taken from a Chinese author. The
tao occurs in the writings of 'Confucius in the fifth
century before the Christian era, and even in the Ritual
in the tenth century before Christ. Its wild nature is
not specified in the encyclopsedia of which I have just
spoken ; but Chinese authors pay little attention to this
point."

After a few details about the common names of the
peach in difierent languages, I went on to say, " The
absence of Sanskrit and Hebrew names remains the most
important fact, whence we may infer an introduction
into Western Asia from a more distant land, that is to
say, from China.

"The ])each has been found wild in different parts
of Asia ; but it is always a question whether it is indige-
nous there, or whether it sprang from the dispersion of
stones produced by cultivated trees. The question is
the more necessary since the stones germinate easily, and
several of the modifications of the peach are hereditary.^
Apparently wild peach trees have often been found in
the neighbouihood of the Caucasus. Pallas * saw several
on the banks of the Terek, where the inhabitants give

' Lonreiro, Fl. Cochin., p. 38fi.

* Kaempfer, ^mojft., p. 798; Thunberg, PZ. Jap., p. 199. K^mpfer
and Thunberg also give the name moimi, but Siebold (Fl. Jap., i. p. 29)
attributes a somewhat similar name, mume, to a plum tree, Prunus
mtime, Sieb. and Z.

» Noisette, Jard. Fr., p. 77; Trans. Soc. Hort. Lond., iv. p. 513.

* Pallas, Fl. Ros.nca, p. 13.

224 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS,

it a name which he calls Persian, schejifaia} It fruit is
velvety, sour, not very fleshy, and hardly larger than
a walnut ; the tree small. Pallas suspects" that this tree
has degenerated from cultivated peaches. He adds that
it is found in tTie Crimea, to the south of the Caucasus,
and in Persia; but Marsliall, Bicberstein, Mej^er, and
Hohenacker do not give the wild peach in the neigh-
I'ourhood of the Caucasu.s. Early travellers, Gmelin,
Guldenstadt, and Georgi, quoted by Ledebour, mentioned
it. C. Koch ^ is the only modern botanist who said he
found the peach tree in abundance in the Caucasian
provinces. Ledebour, however, prudently adds, Is it wild ?
The stones which Brugniere and Olivier brought from
Ispahan, which were sown in Paris and yielded a good
velvety peach, were not, as Bo.sc ^ asserted, taken from
a peach tree wild in Persia, but from one growing in
a garden at Ispahan.* I do not know of any proof of a
peach tree found wild in Persia, and if travellers mention
any it is always to be feared that these are only sown
trees. Dr. Royle^ says that the peach grows wild in
several places south of the Himalayas, notably near
Mussouri, but we have seen that its culture is not ancient
in these regions, and neither Roxburgh nor Don's Flora
Nepalensis mention the peach. Bunge ^ only found cul-
tivated trees in the north of China. This country has
hardly been explored, and Chinese legends seem some-
times to indicate wild peaches. Thus the Chou-y-H,
according to the author previously quoted, saj's, ' Who-
soever eats of the peaches of Mount Kouoliou shall
obtain eternal life.' For Japan, Thunberg ' says, Crescit
uhique vulgaris, prcecipiLe juxta Nagasaki. In omni
horto colitur oh elegantiam Jtorum. It seems from this
passage that the species grows both in and out of gardens,
but perhaps in the first case he only alludes to peaches
growing in the open air and without shelter.

« Shuft aloo is, according to Royle (III. Him. p. 204), the Persian
name for the riectarite.

* Ledebour, Fl. 7^o»•^■.,i. p. 3. Spe p. 228, the subsequent opinion of Koch.
8 Bosc, Diet. d'Aqric, ix. p. 481. •• Thouin, Ann. Mus., viii. p. -433.

• Royle, III. Him., p. 204. • Buiige, Enum. PL Chin., p. 23.
» Thunberg, Fl. Jap. 199.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 225

"I have said nothing hitherto of the distinction to
oe established between the different varieties or species
of the peach, since most of them are cultivated in all
countries — at least the clearly defined kinds, which may
be considered as botanical species. Thus the great dis-
tinction betw^een the downy and smooth-skinned fruits
(peaches proper and nectarines), on wdiich it is proposed
to found two species {Persica vulgaris, Mill, and P. levU,
D. C), exists in Japan ^ and in Europe, as in most of the
intermediate countries.^ Less importance is attached
to distinctions founded on the adherence or non-adherence
of the skin, on the white, yellow, or red colour of the
flesh, and on the general form of the fruit. The great
division into peaches and nectarines presents most of
these modifications in Europe, in Western Asia, and
probably in China. It is certain that in the latter
country the form of the fruit varies more than else-
where ; for there are as in Europe oval peaches, and also
the peaches of which I spoke just now, which are quite
flattened, in wdiich the top of the stone is not even covered
with flesh.^ The colour also varies greatly.^ In Europe
the most distinct varieties, nectarines and peaches,
freestones and clingstones, existed three centuries ago,
for J. Bauhin enumerates them very clearly ; ^ and before
him Dalechamp, in 1587, also gave the principal ones.*'
At that time nectarines were called Niicipersica, because
of their resemblance in shape, size, and colour to the
walnut. It is in the same sense that the Italians call
them pescanoce.

" I have sought in vain for a proof that the nectarine
existed in Italy in the time of ancient Rome. Pliny,'
who confounds in his compilation peaches, plums, the
Laurus Persea,^ and perhaps other trees, says nothing

> Thunberg, Fl. Jap., 193.

* The accounts about China which I have consTilted do not mention
the nectarine ; but as it exists in Japan, it is extremely probable that it
does also in China.

» N( isette, Jard. Fr., p. 77; Trans. Eorf. Soc, iv. p. 512, tab. 19.

* Linlley, Trans. Hort. Soc, V. p. 122. * J. Bauhin, His^, i. pp. 162,163.

• Dalechamp, Hist., i. p. 295. ' Hiny, lib. xv, cap. 12 and 13.

• Pliny, De Div. Gen. Malorum, lib. ii. cap. 14.

22G ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

which can apply to such a fruit. Sometimes people have
thought they recognized it in the inheres of which he
speaks. It was a tree imported from Syria in the time
of Augustus. There were both red and white tuheres.
Others (tuheres? or viala?) of the neighbourhood of
Verona were downy. Some graceful verses of Petronus,
quoted by Dalechamp,^ clearly prove that the tuheres
of the Romans in Nero's time were a smooth-skinned
fruit; but this might be the jujube (Zhi/phus),
D'lospyros, or some Cratcegus, just as well as the smooth-
skinned peach. Each author in the time of the Renais-
sance had his opinion on this point, or criticized that
of the others.^ Perhaps there were two or three species
of tdheres, as Pliny says, and one of them which was
grafted on plum trees was the nectarine (?) ^ but 1 doubt
whether this question can ever be cleared up.^

" Even admitting that the A^ucijiersicawns only intro-
duced into Europe in the Middle Ages, we cannot help
remarking that in European gardens for centuries, and
in Japan from time unknown, there was an intermix-
ture of all the principal kinds of peach. It seems that
its different qualities were produced everywhere from
a primitive species, which Avas probably the downy
peach. If the two kinds had existed from the beginning,
either they would have been in different countries, and
their cultivation would have been established separately,
or they would have been in the same country, and in
this case it is probable that one kind would have been
anciently introduced into this country and the other
into that."

I laid stress, in 18.55, on other considerations in support
of the theory that the nectarine is derived from the
common peach ; but Darwdn has given such a large
number of cases in which a branch of nectarine has

• Diilechamp, Hist., i. p. 358.

' Dalechamp, ibid.; Matthiuli, p. 122; Ccosalpinus, p. 107; J. Bauhin,
p. \C3, etc.

^ I'li'iy, lib. xvii. cap. 10.

* I li;;VJ not been able to discover an Italian name for a glabrons or
other fruit derived from lube: or tuheres, which is singular, as the
auciont names of fra'ts arc usually preserved cnder some form or other.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 227

unexpectedly appeared upon a peacli tree, that it is
useless to insist longer upon this point, and I will only
add that the nectarine has every appearance of an arti-
ficial tree. Not only is it not found wild, but it never
becomes naturalized, and each tree lives for a shorter
time than the common peach. It is, in fact, a weakened
form.

" The facility," I said, " with which our peach trees are
mult plied from seed in America, and have produced
fl ,shy fruits, sometimes very fine ones, without the resource
of grafting, inclines me to think that the species is in a
natural state, little changed by a long cultivation or by
hybrid fertilization. In Virginia and the neighbouring
states there are peaches grown on trees raised from seed
and not grafted, and their abundance is so great that
brandy is made from them.^ On some trees the fruit is
magnificent.^ At Juan Fernandez, says Bertero,* the
peach tree is so abundant that it is impossible to form
an idea of the quantity of fruit which is gathered ; it is
usually very good, although the trees have reverted to a
wild condition. From the.se instances it would not be
surprising if the wild peaches with indifferent fruit found
in Western Asia were simply naturalized trees in a climate
not wholly favourable, and that the species was of Chinese
origin, where its cultivation seems most ancient."

Dr. Bretschneider,* who at Pekin has access to all the
resources of Chinese literature, merely says, after reading
the above passages, " Tao is the peach tree. De CandoUe
thinks that China is the native country of the peach.
He may be right"

The antiquity of the existence of the species and its
wild nature in Western Asia have become more doubtful
since 1855. Anglo-Indian botanists speak of the peach
solely as a cultivated tree,^ or as cultivated and becoming
naturalized and apparently wild in the north-west of
India.^ Boissier' mentions specimens gathered in Ghilan

» Braddlck, Trans. Ilort. Soc. Lond., ii. p. 205. ' Ibid., pi. 13.

' Bertero, Annales Sc. Nat., xxi. p. 350.

* Bretscbneider, On the Study and Value, etc., p. 10.

^ Sir J. Hooker, Flora of Brit. Ind., ii. p. 318.

« Brandis, Fo^-est Flora, etc., p. 191. ' Boissier, Fl. 0> icnf., ii. p. 6 10,

11

228 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

and to the south of the CaiieasiiR, Lut lie says nothinfj as
to their wild nature; and Karl Koch/ after tia\ellin^'
through this district, says, speaking of the peach,
" Country unknown, perhaps Persia. Eois>ier saw trees
growing in the gorges on Mount Hyinettus, near Athens."

The peach spreads easily in the countries in which it
is cultivated, so that it is hard to say whether a given
tree is of natural origin and anterior to cultivati(jn, or
whether it is naturalized. But it certainly was first culti-
vated in China ; it was spoken of there two thousand
years hefore its introduction into the Greco-Roman world,
a thousand years perhaps before its introduction into the
lands of the Sanskrit-speaking race.

The group of peaches (genus or subgenus) is composed
of five forms, which Decaisne^ regards as species, but
which other botanists are inclined to call varieties. The
one is the common peach ; the second the nectarine, Mhich
we know to be derived ; the third is the flattened peach
(P. platycarim, Decaisne) cultivated in China ; and tlie
two last are indigenous in China (P. simonii, Decaisne,
and P. Davidii, Caiiiere). It is, therefore, essentially a
Chinese group.

It is difficult, from all these facts, not to admit the
Chinese origin of the common peach, as I had formerly
inferred from more scanty data. Its arrival in Italy at
the beginning of the Christian era is now confirmed by
the absence of peach stones in the terra-mare or lake-
dwellings of Parma and Lombardy, and by the represen-
tations of the peach tree in the paintings on the walls of
the richer houses in Pompeii.^

I have yet to deal with an opinion formerly expressed
by Knight, and supported by several horticulturists, that
the peach is a modification of the almond. Darwin *
collected facts in support of this idea, not omitting to
mention one which seems opposed to it. They may be
concisely put as follows : — (1) Cro.ssed fertilization, which

* K. Koch, Dfindrolngte, i. p. 83.

* Decaisne, Jard. Fr. du Mua., Pichers, p. 42.

* Comes, Hhis. Piante nei Dipinti Pompcio-ni, p. 14.

* Darwin, Variation of Plants aijd Animals, dc. i. p. 3.38.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 229

presented Knight with somewhat doubtful results ; (2)
intermediate forms, as to the fleshiness of the fruit and
the size of the nut or stone, obtained by sowing peach
stones, or by chance in plantations, forms of which the
almond-peach is an example which has long been known.
Decaisne ^ pointed out differences between the almond
and peach in the size and length of the leaves indepen-
dently of the fruit. He calls Knight's theory a " strange
hypothesis."

Geographical botany opposes his hypotliesis, for the
almond tree has its origin in Western Asia ; it was not
indigenous in the centre of the Asiatic continent, and its
introduction into China as a cultivated species was not
anterior to the Christian era. The Chinese, however, had
already possessed for thousands of years ditierent varieties
of the common peach besides the two wild forms I have
just mentioned. The almond and the peach, starting
from two such widely separated regions, can hardly be
considered as the same species. The one was established
in China, the other in Syria and in Anatolia. The peach,
after being transported from China into Central Asia,
and a little before the Christian era into Western Asia,
cannot, therefore, have produced the almond, since the
latter existed already in Syria. And if the almond of
Western Asia had produced the peach, how could the
latter have existed in China at a very remote period
-while it was not known to the Greeks and Latins ?

Pear — Pyrus comniunis, Linnaeus.

The pear grows wild over the whole of temperate
Europe and Western Asia, particularly in Anatolia, to the
south of the Caucasus and in the north of Persia,^ per-
haps even in Kashmir,^ but this is very doubtful. Some
authors hold that its area extends as far as China. This
0]3inion is due to the fact that they regard Pyrus
sinensis, Lindley, as belonging to the same species. An
examination of the leaves alone, of which the teeth arc

* Decaisne, uhi supra, p. 2.

* Ledebour, Fl. Ross., ii. p. 91; B.jissier, Fl. Orient., ii. p. 653. He
has verified several specimens.

» Sir J. Hooker, FL Brit. Ind., ii. p. 371.

230 OrJGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

covered with a fine silky down, convinced me of the
specific difference of the two t.-ees.^

Our wild pear does not differ much from some of
the cultivated varieties. Its fruit is sour, spijtted, and
narrowing towards the stalk, or nearly spherical on the
same tree.^ With many other cultivated species, it is
hard to distincjuish the individuals of wild oricjin from
those which the chance transport of seeds has produced
at a distance from dwellings. In the present case it is
not difiicult. Pear trees are often found in woods, and
they attain to a considerable height, with all the con-
ditions of fertility of an indigenous plant.^ Let us
examine, however, whether in the wide area they occupy
a less ancient existence may be suspected in some coun-
tries than in others.

No Sanskrit name for the pear is known, whence it
may be concluded that its cultivation is of no long stand-
ing in the north-west of India, and that the indication,
which is moreover very vague, of wild trees in Kashmir
is of no importance. Neither are there any Hebrew or
Aramaic names,* but this is explained by the fact that
th 3 pear does not fiourish in the hot countries in which
these tongues Avere spoken.

Homer, Theophrastus, and Dioscorides mention the
[)ear tree under the names ochnal, (rpios, or achras. The
Latins called it j^l/^'^'^s or pirus,^ and cultivated a great

' p. sinpnais described by Lindley is badly drawn with regard to
the indentation of the leaves in the plate in the Botanical Re<jister, and
very well in that of Decaisne's Jardin Fruitier die Museum. It is the
same species as P. ustiuriensis, Maximowicz, of Eastern Asia.

* Well drawn in Duhamel, Traite des Arbres, edit. 2, vi. pi. 59 ; and in
Decaisne, Jard. Frui. du Mus., pi. 1, figs. B and C. P. halansce, pi. 6 of
the same work, appears to be identical, as Boissier observes.

• This is the case in the forests of Lorraine, for instance, according
to the observ.ations of Godrou, De VOrvjine Probable des Poiriers Cultiregj
8vo pamphlet, 1873, p. 6.

* RoseniiiUll r, Bibl. Alterth. ; Jj'ow, Aramaeische PJlanzennamen, 1881.

• The spoiling Pyrus, adopted by Linnaaus, occurs in Pliny, Histona,
edit. 1631, p. 301. Some botanists, purists in spelling, write pints, so
ttiat in referring to a modern work it is uecessaj-y to look in the index
for both forms, or run the risk of believing that the pears are not in the
work. In any case the ancient name was a common name; but the true
botanical name is that of Linnaeus, funnier of the received nomen-
clature, and Linnasus wrote Pynis.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOE THEIR FEUITS. 231

number of varieties, at least in Plinj^'s time. The mnral
paintings at Pompeii frequently represent the tree with
its fruit.^

The lake-dwellers of Switzerland and Italy gathered
wild apples in great quantities, and among their stores
pears are sometimes, but rarely, found. Heer has given
an illustration of one which cannot be mistaken, found
at Wangen or Robenhausen. It is a fruit narrowing
towards the stalk, 28 mm. (about an inch and a half)
long by 19 mm. (an inch) wide, cut longitudinally^ so as
to show the small quantity of pulp as compared to the
cartilaginous central part.^ None have been found in
the lake-dwellings of Bourget in Savoy. In those of
Lombardy, Professor Raggazzoni ^ found a pear cut length-
ways, 25 mm. b}^ 16. This w^as at Bardello, Lago di Varese.
The wild pears figured in Duhamel, Traitedes Arhres,e(\\t. 2,
are 30 to 33 by 30 to 32 mm.; and those of Laristan, figured
in the Jardin Fruitier du Musium under the name P.
halansre, which seem to me to be of the same species, and
undoubtedly wild, are 26 to 27 mm. by 24 to 25. In
modern wild pears the fleshy part is a little thicker, but
the ancient lake- dwellers dried their fruits after cutting
them lengthwaj^s, which must have caused them to shrink
a little. No knowledge of metals or of hemp is shown
in the settlements where these were found; but, con-
sidering their distance from the more civilized centres of
antiquity, especially in the case of Switzerland, it is
possible that these remains are not more ancient than
the Trojan war, or than the foundation of Rome.

I have mentioned three Greek and one Roman name,
but there are many others; for instance, pauta in
Armenian and Georgian ; vatzkor in Hungarian ; in Slav
languages gruscha (Russian), hrusska (Bohemian), kruska
(Illyrian). Names similar to the Latin jjyriis recur in
the Keltic languages ; peir in Erse, per in Kymric and
Armorican.* 1 leave philologists to conjecture the Aryan

' Comes, HI. Piante nei Dipinii Pompeiani, p. 59.

* Heer, Pfahlbauten, pp. 24, 26, fig. 7.

* Sordelli, Notizie Stat. Lacustre di Lagozza.

* Nemnich, Polyjlott. Lex. Naturgesch. ; Ad. Pictet, Origines Indo-
Europ., i. p. 277; and my manuscript dictionary of common names.

232 OIUGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

origin of some -Df these names, and of the German Livn ;
I merely note their number and div^ersity as an indica-
tion of tlie very ancient existence of the species from the
Caspian Sea to the Atlantic. The Aryans certainly did
not carry pears nor pear pips with them in their wander-
ings westward; but if they found in Europe a fruit they
knew, they would have given it the name or names they
were accustomed to use, while other earlier names may
have survived in some countries. As an example of the
latter case, I may mention two Basque names, udarea and
madaria} which have no analogy with any known
European or Asiatic name. The Basques being probably
the descendants of the conquered Iberians who were
driven back to the Pyrenees by the Kelts, the antiquity
of their language is very great, and it is clear that their
names for the species in question were not derived from
Keltic or Latin.

The modern area of the pear extending from the
north of Persia to the western coast of temperate Europe,
principally in mountainous regions, may therefore be con-
sidered as prehistoric, and anterior to all cultivation. It
must be added, however, that in the north of Europe and
in the British Isles an extensive cultivation must have
extended and multiplied naturalizations in comparatively
modern times which can scarcely be now distinguished.

I cannot accept Godron's hypothesis that the
numerous cultivated varieties come from an unknown
Asiatic species.^ It seems that they may be ranked, as
Decaisne saj^s, either with P. amiinnnis or P. nivalis of
which I am about to speak, taking into account the
effect of accidental crossing, of cultivation, and of long-
continued selection. Besides, Western Asia has been
explored so thoroughly that it is probable it contains
no other species than those already described.

Snow Pear — Fyrus nivalis, Jacquin.

This variety of pear is cultivated in Austria, in the
north of Italy, and in several departments of the east and

' From a list of plant-names sent by JL d'Abadie to Professor Clos,
of Toulouse.

* Godron, iihi supra, p. 23.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 233

centre of France. It was named Pyrus nivalis by
Jacquin^ from the German name Schneebirn, given to it
because the Austrian peasants eat the fruit when the
snow is on the ground. It is called in France Poirier
saur/er, because the under side of the leaves is covered
with a white down which makes them like the sage (Fr.
sauge). Decaisne^ considered all the varieties of P.
nivalis to be derived from P. kotschyana, Boissier,^
which grows wild in Asia Minor. The latter in this
case should take the name of nivalis, which is the older.

The snowy pears cultivated in France to make the
drink called perry have become wild in the woods here
and there.* They constitute the greater number of the
so-called " cider pears," which are distinguished by the
sour taste of the fruit independent of the character of the
leaf. The descriptions of the Greeks and Romans are too
imperfect for us to be certain if they possessed this
sjiecies. It may be presumed that they did, however,
since they made cider.^

Sandy Pear, Chinese Pear — Pyrus sinensis, Lindley.^

I have already mentioned this species, which is nearly
allied to the common pear. It is wild in Mongolia and
Mantchuria,^ and cultivated in China and J apan. Its fruit,
large rather than good, is used for preserving. It has also
been recently introduced into European gardens for
experiments in crossing it with our species. This will
very likely take place naturally.

Apple — Pyrus Mains, Linnteus.

The apple tree grows wild throughout Europe

' Jacquin, Flora Ausfriaca, ii. pp. 4, 107.

* Decaisne, Jardin Fruitier du Museum, Poiriers, pi. 21.

* Decaisne, ihid., p. 18, and Introduction, p. 30. Several varieties
of this species, of which a few bear a large fruit, are figm-ed in the same
work.

* Boreau, Fl. du Centre de la France, edit. 3, vol. ii. p. 236.

* Palladius, De re Rustica, lib. 3, c. 25. For this purpose " pira
Hiilvestria vel asperi generis" were used.

* The Chinese quince had been called by Thonin Pyrus sinensis.
Lindley has unfortunately given the same name to a true pyrus.

' Decaisne {Jardin Fruitier du Museum, Poiriers, pi. 5) saw speci-
mens from both countries. Frauchet and Savatier give it as only
cultivated in Japan.

234! OKI ;ix OF cultivated plants.

(excepting in the extreme north), in Anatolia, the south
of the Caucasus, and the Persian province of Ghilan.^
Near Trebizond, the botanist Bourgeau saw quite a f^mall
forest of theui.'^ In the mountains of the noith-west
of India it is " apparently wild," as Sir Joseph Hooker
writes in his Flora of British India. No author men-
tions it as growing in Siberia, in Mongolia, or in Japan. ^

There are two varieties wild in Germany, the one
with glabrous leaves and ovaries, the other with leaves
downy on the under side, and Koch adds that this down
varies considerably.* In France accurate authors also
ffive two wild varieties, but with characters which do
not tally exactly with those of the German flora. It
would be easy to account for this difference if the wild
trees in certain districts spring from cultivated varieties
whose seeds have been accidentally dispersed. The
question is, therefore, to discover to what degree the
species is probably ancient and indigenous in different
countries, and, if it is not more ancient in one country
than another, how it was gradually extended by the
accidental sowing of fonns changed by the crossing of
varieties and by cultivation.

The country in which the apple appears to be most
indigenous is the region lying between Trebizond and
Ghilan. The variety which there grows wild has leaves
downy on the under side, short peduncles, and sweet
fruit,'' like Malus comrtiunis of France, described by
Boreau. This indicates that its prehistoric area extended
from the Caspian Sea nearly to Europe.

Piddinotun o;i\-es in his Index a Sanskrit name for
the apple, but Adolphe Pictef informs us that this

* Nymfin, Conspectus Florce E^ropece, p. 240 ; Ledebour, F7ora Uossici,
ii. p. 96; Boissier, Flora Oritntalis, ii. p. 65G ; Dejaisne, Nouv. Arch.
Mus.. X. p. 153.

* Boissier, ibid.

' Maximowicz, Pci/n. TJsiiur.; l^ejrel, OpiL FZor/, etc., on the plants of
tVie Ussuri collected by iJaik; Schmidt, Reisen Am tr. Franchet and
Savatier do not mention it in tlieir Enum. Jap. Bretschneider quotes
a Chinese name which, he siys, applies also to other species.

* Koch, Sijn. Fl. Germ., i. p. 2HL

* Boreau, Fl. du Centre de la France, edit. 3, vol. ii. p. 236.

* Boissier, ubi supra. ' Or%<j. Indo-Eur., i. p. 276,

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 235

name f^eha is Hindustani, and comes from the Persian
seb, sef. The absence of an earlier name in India argues
that the now common cultivation of the apple in Kashmir
and Thibet, and especially that in the north-west and
central provinces of India, is not very ancient. The tree
was probably known only to the western Aryans.

This people had in all probability a name of which
the root was ah, af, av, oh, as this root recurs in several
European names of Aryan origin. Pictet gives aball,
ubJiall, in Erse ; afal in Kymric ; aval in Armorican ;
aphal in old High German ; appel in old English ; apli in
Scandinavian ; obolys in Lithuanian ; iahliiko in ancient
Slav ; iahloko in Russian. It would appear from this that
the western Aryans, finding the apple wild or aheady
naturalized in the north of Europe, kept the name under
which they had known it. The Greeks had mailea or
niiaila, the Latins malus, malum, words whose origin,
according to Pictet, is very uncertain. The Albanians,
descendants of the Pelasgians, have mole'} Theophrastus ^
mentions wild and cultivated maila. Lastly, the Basques
(ancient Iberians) have an entirely different name, sagura,
which implies an existence in Europe prior to the Aryan
invasions.

The inhabitants of the terra-m,are of Parma, and of
the palafittes of the lakes of Lombardy, Savoy, and Swit-
zerland, made great use of apples. They always cut
them lengthwa}- s, and preserved them dried as a provision
for the winter. The specimens are often carbonized by
fire, but the internal structure of the fruit is only the
more clearly to be distinguished. Heer,^ who has shown
great penetration in observing these details, distinguishes
two varieties of the apple known to the inhabitants of
t'le lake-dwellings before they possassed metals. The
smaller kind are 15 to 24 mm. in their longitudinal
diameter, and about 3 mm. more across (in their dried
and carbonized state) ; the larger, 29 to 32 mm. length-
ways by 36 wide (dried, but not carbonized). The latter

' Heldreich, Ntitzpflanzen Griechenlan.r's, L p. 64.

* Theophrastus, De Causis, lib. R, cnp. 24.

* Heer, Pfahlhamten, p. 24, figs. 1-7.

23G ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

corresponds to an apple of German-Swiss ore! ar.ls, now
called campaner. The English wild apple, figured in
English Botany, pi. 179, is 17 mm. long by 22 wide. It
is possible that the little apples of the lake-dwellings
were wild ; hoAvever, their abundance in the stores makes
it doubtful. Dr. Gross sent me two apples from the more
recent palafittes of Lake Neuchatel; the one is 17 the
other 22 mm. in longitudinal diameter. At Lagozza, in
Lombardy, Sordelli^ mentions two apples, the one 17
mm, by 19, the other 19 mm. by 27. In a prehistoric
deposit of Lago Varese, at Bardello, Ragazzoni found an
apple in the stores a little larger than the others.

From all these facts, I consider the apple to have
existed in Europe, both wild and cultivated, from pre-
historic times. The lack of communication with Asia
before the Aryan invasion makes it probable that the
tree was indigenous in Europe as in Anatolia, the south
of the Caucasus, and Northern Russia, and tliat its culti-
vation began early everywhere.

Quince — Cydonia vulgaris, Persoon.

The quince grows wild in the woods in the north of
Persia, near the Caspian Sea, in the region to the south
of the Caucasus, and in Anatolia.^ A few botanists have
also found it apparently wild in the Crimea, and in the
north of Greece;^ but naturalization may be suspected
even in the east of Europe, and the further we advance
towards Italy, especially towards the south-west of
Europe and Algeria, the more it becomes probable that
the species was naturalized at an early period round
villages, in hedges, etc.

No Sanskrit name is known for the quince, whence
it may be inferred that its area dil not extend towards
the centre of Asia. Neither is there any Hebrew name,
though the species is wild, upon Mount Taurus.* The
Persian name is haiva/i,^ but I do not know whether

■ Sordelli, Sulle Piante della Stazime di Lagozza, p. 35.

• Boissier, Fl. Orient., ii. p. 656; Ledebonr, Fl. Ross., ii. p. 55.

• Stoven, Verzeichniss Taurien, p. 150 j Sibthorp, Prodr. FL Grcecm,
i. p. 344.

* Boisisicr, ihid.

* Ncniiiich, Polyglott Lexicon.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 237

it is as old as Zend. The same name, aiva, exists in
Russian for the cultivated quince, while the name of
the wild plant is armud, from the Armenian arviuda}
The Greeks grafted upon a common variety, strution, a
superior kind, which came from Cydon, in Crete, whence
KvEii)viov, translated by the Latin malum cotoneutn, by
Cfjdonia, and all the European names, such as codogno in
Italian, coudougner, and later coing in French, quitte in
German, etc. There are Polish, pigiva, Slav, tunja^ and
Albanian (Pelasgian ?), ftua,^ names which differ entirely
from the others. This variety of names points to an
ancient knowledge of the species to the west of its
original country, and the Albanian name may even
indicate an existence prior to the Hellenes.

Its anti([uity in Greece may also be gathered from
the superstition, mentioned by Pliny and Plutarch, that
the fruit of the quince was a preservation from evil
influences, and from its entrance into the marriage I'ites
prescribed by Solon. Some authors go so far as to main-
tain that the apple disputed by Hera, Aphrodite, and
Athene was a quince. Those who are interested in
such questions will And details in Comes's paper on the
plants represented in the frescoes at Pompeii.* The
quince tree is figured twice in these, which is not sur-
prising, as the tree was known in Cato's time.^

It seems to me probable that it was naturalized in
the east of Europe before the epoch of the Trojan war.
The quince is a fruit which has been little modified by
cultivation ; it is as harsh and acid when fresh as in the
time of the ancient Greeks.

Pomegranate — Punica granatrnm, Linnpeus.

The pomegranate grows wild in stony ground in
Persia, Kurdistan, Afghanistan, and Beluchistan.^
Burnes saw groves of it in Mazanderan, to the south of
the Caspian Sea.'' It appears equally wild to the south

' Nemnich, Tohj. Lex. * Ib^d. ' Helclreich, 'Nutz. Griech., p. 64

♦ In 4to, Napoli, 1879. * Be re Rustica, lib. 7, cap. 2.

• Boissier, Fl. Orient., ii. p. 737; Sir J. Hooker, Fl. of Brit. Ind., ii,
p. 581.

' Quoted from Eoyle, lUus. Himah, p. 208.

238 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

of the Caucasus.^ Westwards, that is to say, in Asia
Minor, in Greece, and in the Mediterranean basin gene-
rally, in the north of Africa and in Madeira, tlie species
appears rather to have become naturalized from cultiva-
tion, and by the dispersal of the seeds by birds. Many
floras of the south of Eui'ope speak of it as a " subspon-
taneous" or naturalized species. Desfontaines, in his
Atlantic Flora, gives it as wild in Algeria, but subsequent
authors think ^ rather it is naturalized.^ I doubt its beinof
wild in Beluchistan, where the traveller Stocks found it,
for Anglo-Indian botanists do not allow it to be indi-
genous east of the Indus, and I note the absence of the
species in the collections from Lebanon and Syria which
JBoissier is always careful to quote.

In China the pomegranate exists only as a cultivated
plant. It was introduced from Samarkhand by Chang-
Kieu, a century and a half before the Christian era.*

The naturalization in the Mediterranean basin is so
general that it may be termed an extension of the original
area. It probably dates from a very remote period, for
the cultivation of the species dates from a very early
epoch in Western Asia.

Let us see whether historical and philological data
can give us any information on this head.

I note the existence of a Sanskrit name, darimba,
whence several modern Indian names are derived.^
Hence we may conclude that the species had long been
known in the regions traversed by the Aryans in their
route towards India. The pomegranate is mentioned
several times in the Old Testament, under the name of
rimonon,^ whence the Arabic runi'man or ruman. It
was one of the fruit trees of the promised land, and the
Hebrews had learnt to appreciate it in Egyptian gardens.
Many localities in Palestine took their name from this

' Ledebonr, Fl. Boss., ii. p. 104.

* Munby, Fl. Alger., p. 4y j Spicilegium Flora Maroccance, p. 458.

* Boissier, ibid.

* Bretschneider, On Study and Value, etc., p. 16.
' Piddington, Index.

* Rosenmiiller, Bill. Katurge., i. p. 273 ; namilton, La Bot. de la Bible,
Kice, 1871, p. 48,

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 239

shrub, but the Sci'iptures only mention it as a cultivated
species. The flower and the fruit figured in the religious
rites of the Phoenicians, and the goddess Aphrodite had
heiself planted it in the isle of Cyprus,^ which implies
that it was not indigenous there. The Greeks were
acquainted with the species in the time of Homer. It is
twice mentioned in the Odyssey as a tree in the gardens
of Phseacia and Phrygia. They called it roia or roa,
which philologists believe to be derived from the Syrian
ard Hebrew name,^ and also sidai,^ which seems to be
Felasgic, fer the modern Albanian name is sige.'^ There
is nothing to show that the species was wild in Greece,
where Fraas and Heldreich affirm that it is now only
naturalized.^

The pomegranate enters into the myths and religious
ceremonies of the ancient Romans.^ Cato speaks of its
properties as a vermifuge. According to Plin}^,'' the best
pomegranates came from Carthage, hence the name
Malum punicum ; but it should not be supposed, as it
has been assumed, that the species came originally from
Northern Africa. Very probably the Phoenicians had
introduced it at Carthage long before the Romans had
anything to do with this town, and it was doubtless
cultivated as in Egypt.

If the pomegranate had formerly been wild in
Northern Africa and the south of Europe, the Latins
would have had more original names for it than granatum
(from granum ?) and Malum 'punicum. We should have
perhaps found local names derived from ancient Western
tongues ; whereas the Semitic name rimmon has prevailed
in Greek and in Arabic, and even occurs, through Arab
influence, among the Berbers.^ It must be admitted that
the African origin is one of the errors caused by the
erroneous popular nomenclature of the Romans.

Leaves and flowers of a pomegranate, described by

' Helm, Cultur und Hansthiere cms Asien, edit. 3, p. 106.

* Hehn, ihid. ^ Lenz, Bot. der Alien Gne. und Rom., p. 681.

* Heldreich, Die Nutzpflanzen Griechenlands, p. 64.
» Fraas, Fl. Class., p. 79 j Heldreich, ibid.

* Hehn, ihid. ' PHny, lib. 13, c. 19.

* Dictionnaire Franfais-Berhire, published by the French Government.

240 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Saporta' as a variety of the raoclern Punica granatum,
have been discovered in the pliocene strata of the environs*
of Meximicux. Tlie species, therefore, existed under this
form, before our epoch, along with seveial species, some
extinct, others still existing in the south of Europe, and
others in the Canaries, but the continuity of existence
down to our own day is not thereby proved.

To conclude, botanical, historical, and philological
data agree in showing that the modern species is a native
of Persia and some adjacent countries. Its cultivation
began in prehistoric time, and its early extension, first
towards the west and afterwards into China, has caused
its naturalization in cases which may give rise to errors
as to its true origin, for they are frequent, ancient, and
endurinof. I arrived at these conclusions in 1869,^ which
has not prevented the repetition of the erroneous African
oriofin in several works.

Rose Apple — Eugenia Jambos, Linnseus; Jamhosa
vulgaris, de Candolle.

This small tree belongs to the family of M^^rtacere. It is
cultivated in tropical regions of the old and. new worlds,
as much perhaps for the beauty of its foliage as for its
fruit, of which the rose-scented pulp is too scanty. There
is an excellent illustration and a good description of it in
the Botanical Magazine, pi. 8356. The seed is poisonous.^

As the cultivation of this species is of ancient date
in Asia, there was no doubt of its Asiatic origin ;
but the locality in which it grew wild was formerly
unknown. Loureiro's assertion that it grew in Cochin-
China and some parts of India required confirmation,
which has been afl[brded by some modern writers.^ The
jambos is wild in Sumatra, and elsewhere in the islands
of the Malay Archipelago. Kurz did not meet with it in
the forests of British Burmah, but when Rheede saw
this tree in gardens in Malabar he notic 'd that it was.
called Malacca-schainbu, which shows that it came origi-

» De Saporta, Bull. S(^c. Geol. de France, April 5, 1861, pp. 767-769.
Geogr. Bot. Eais., p. 191.

• Dcsccmrtilz, Flore MMicale ties AnHlhs, v. pi. .SI 5.

* Miquel, Sum'dra, p. 118; Flora Indl(V-EatavaB, i. p. 425 Bl>ime-
Museum Lugd.-Bat., i. p. 93.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 241

nally from the Malay Peninsula. Lastly, Brandis saya
it is wild in Sikkim, to the north of Bengal. Its natural
area probably extends from the islands of the Malay
Archipelago to Cochin-China, and even to the north-east
of India, where, however, it is probably naturalized from
cultivation and by the agency of birds. Naturalization
has also taken place elsewhere — at Hong-kong, for in-
stance, in the Seychelles, Mauritius, and Rodriguez, and
in several of the West India Islands.^

Malay Apple — Eugenia nialaccensis, Linn?eus; Jam-
hosa vialaccensis, de Candolle.

A species allied to Eugenia jamhos, but differing
from it in the arrangement of its flowers, and in its
trait, of an obovoid instead of ovoid form ; that is to say,
the smaller end is attached to the stalk. The fruit is
more fleshy and is also rose-scented, but it is much^
or little ^ esteemed according to the country and varieties.
These are numerous, differing in the red or pink colour of
the flowers, and in the size, shape, and colour of the fruit.

The numerous varieties show an ancient cultivation
in the Malay Archipelago, where the species is indigenous.
In confirmation, it must be noted that Forster found it
established in the Pacific Islands, from Otahiti to the
Sandwich Isles, at the time of Cook's voyages.* The
Malay apple grows wild in the forests of the Malay
Archipelago, and in the peninsula of Malacca.^

Tussac says that it was brought to Jamaica from
Otahiti in 1793. It has spread and become naturalized
in sevei'al of the West India Islands, also in Mauritius
and the Seychelles.^

Guava — Psidium guayava, Baddi.

Ancient authors, Linnaeus, and some later botanists,

' Hooker, Fl.Brit. Ind., ii. p. 474; Baker, i"?. of 2Iaurit., etc., p. 115;
Grisebach, Fl. of Brit. W. Ind. Isles, p. 235.
^ Rumphins, Amhoin, i. p. 121, t. 37.
' Tussac, IJore des Antilles, iii. p. 89, pi. 25.

* Forster, Plantis Esculentis,'p. 36.

* Blume, Museum Lugd.-Bat., i. p. 91 ; Miquel, Fl. India: -Batav., i.
\.\ 411 ; Hooker, Flora of Britiah Ivdia, ii. p. 472.

« Grisebach, Fl. Brit. W. Indies, p. 235; Baker, Fl. of Mauntius,
p. 115.

212 OllIGlN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

admitted two species of this fruit tree of the family
of Myrtficcre, the one with elliptical or spherical fruit,
with red flesh, Psidhifu iiomlftrum ; the other with a
pyriform fruit and white or pink flesh, more agreeable
to the taste. Such diversity is also observed in pears,
apples, or peaches ; so it was decided to consider all the
Psidii as forming a single species. Raddi saw a proof
that there was no essential difference, for he observed
pyriform and I'ound fruits growing on the same tree in
Brazil.-^ The majority of botanists, especially those who
have observed the guava in the colonies, follow the
opinion of Raddi,^ to which I was inclined, even in 1855,
from reasons drawn from the geographical distribution,^

Lowe,^ in his Flora of Madeira, maintains with some
hesitation the distinction into two species, and asserts
that each can be raised from seed. They are, therefore,
races like those of our domestic animals, and of many
cultivated plants. Each of these races comprehends
several varieties.^

The study of the origin of the guava presents in the
highest degree the difficulty which exists in the case of
many fruit trees of this nature : their fleshy and some-
what aromatic fruits attract omnivorous animals which
cast their seeds in ])laces far from cultivation. Those of
the guava germinate rapidly, and fructify in the third
or fourth year. Its area has thus spread, and is still
spreading by naturalization, principally in those tropical
countries which are neither very hot nor very damp.

In order to simplify the search after the origin of the
species, I may begin by eliminating the old world, for it
is sufficiently evident that the guava came from America.

* Raddi, Di Alcune Specie di Pero Indiana, in 4to, Boloprna, 1821, p. 1.
' Martius, Syst. Nat. Mcdicm Bras., p. 32 ; Bliime, Museum Lugd.-

Bat., i. p. 71 ; Hasskarl, iu iVora, 18-14, p. 589 j Sir J. Hooker, Fl. of Brit.
Ind., ii. p 468.

» Gdogr. Bot. Pais., p. 893.

* Lowe, Flora of Madeira, p. 266.

* See Blume, t'bid. ; Dcscourtilz, Flo7-e M^dicale des Antilles, ii. p. 20,
in which there is a good illustration of the pyriform guava. Tussac,
Flore des Antilles, gives a good plate of the round form. These two
latter works furnish interesting details on the use of the gnava, on the
vegetation of tl;e species, etc.

PLANTS CULTIV^^TED TOR THEIR FEXJITS. 243

Out of sixty species of the genus Psidium, all those
which have heen carefully studied are American. It is
true that botanists from the sixteenth century have found
plants of Psidium guayava (varieties pomiferuTn and
injriferum) more or less wild in the Malay Archipelago
and the south of Asia/ but everything tends to show
that these were the result of recent naturalization. In
each locality a foreign origin was admitted; the only
doubt was whether this origin was Asiatic or American.
Other considerations justify this idea. The common
names in Malay are derived from the American word
(juiava. Ancient Chinese authors do not mention the
guava, though Loureiro said a century and a half ago
that they were growing wild in Cochin-China. Forster
does not mention them among the cultivated plants of
tlie Pacific Isles at the time of Cook's voyage, which
is significant when we consider how easy this plant is
to cultivate and its ready dispersion. In Mauritius and
the Seychelles there is no doubt of their recent intro-
duction and naturalization.^

It is more difficult to discover from what part of
America the guava originally came. In the present
(^entuiy it is undoubtedly wild in the West Indies, in
Mexico, in Central America, Venezuela, Peru, Guiana,
and Brazil.^ But whether this is only since Europeans
extended its cultivation, or whether it was previously
diffused by the agency of the natives and of birds, seems
to be no more certain than when I .spoke on the subject
in 18.55.* Now, however, with a little more experience
in questions of this nature, and since the specific unity
of the two varieties of guava is recognized, I shall
endeavour to .show what seems most probable.

J. Acosta,^ one of the earliest authors on the natural
history of the new world, expresses himself as follows,
about the spherical variety of the guava : " There are

' Rumphins, Amhnin, i. p. 141 ; Rheede, Hortus llalahariensis, iii. t. 34.
^ Bojer, Hortus Mauritianus ; Baker, Flora of Mauritius, p. 112.
' All the floras, and Berg in Flora Brasiliensis, vol. xiv. p. 196.

* Geogr. Bot. Rais., p. 894.

* Acosta, Hist. Nat. et Morale des Indes Orient, et Occid., French
trans., 1598, p. 175.

214! OlilGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

mountains in San Domingo and tlic other islands
entirely covered with gnavas, and the natives say that
there were no such trees in the islands before the
arrival of the Spaniards, who brought them, I know not
whence." The mainland seems, therefore, to have been
the original home of the species. Aco.sta says that it
grows in South America, adding tliat the Peruvian
guavas have a white flesh superior to that of the red
fruit. This aro-vies an ancient cultivation on the main-
land. Hernandez^ saw both varieties wild m Mexico in
the warm regions of the plains and mountains near
Quauhnaci. He gives a description and a fair draw-
ing of P. 'pomiferum. Piso and Marcgraf ^ also found
the two guavas wild in the plains of Brazil; but they
remark that it spreads readily. Marcgraf says that
they were believed to be natives of Peru or of North
America, by which he may mean the West Indies or
Mexico. Evidently the species was Avild in a great part
of the continent at the time of the discovery of America.
If the area was at one time more restricted, it must have
been at a far more remote epoch.

Different common names were given by the different
native races. In Mexico it was xalxocotl ; in Brazil the
tree was called araca-iba, the fruit araca guacu ; lastly,
the name guajavos, or guajava, is quoted by Acosta and
Hernandez for the miavas of Peru and San Domingo
without any precise indication of origin. This diversity
of names confirms the hypothesis of a very ancient and
extended area.

From what ancient travellers say of an origin foreign
to San Domingo and Brazil (an assertion, however, which
we may be permitted to doubt), I suspect that the most
ancient habitation extended from Mexico to Columbia
and Peru, possibly including Brazil before the discovery
of America, and the West Indies after that event In its
eailiest state, the species bore spherical, highly coloured
fruit, harsh to the taste. The other form is perhaps the
result of cultivation.

• TTornandez, Norcp ]Ti.«pawtV Thesfa^trtis, p. 85.
« I'iso; Hist. Brasil, p. 7-1; Marcgraf, ibid., p. 105.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 245

Gourd,^ or Calabash — Lagenaria vulgaris, Seringe ;
Cucurbita lagenaria, Linnseus.

The fruit of this CurcubUacea lias taken different
forms in cultivation, but from a general observation of
the other parts of the plant, botanists have ranked them
in one species which comprises several varieties,^ The
most remarkable are the pilgrim^s gourd, in the form of
a bottle, the long-necked gourd, the trumpet gourd, and
the calabash, generally large and without a neck. Other
less common varieties have a flattened, very small fruit,
like the snuff-box gourd. The species may always be
recognized by its white flower, and by the hardness of
the outer rind of the fruit, which allows of its use as a
vessel for liquids, or a reservoir of air suitable as a buoy
for novices in swimming. The jflesh is sometimes sweet
and eatable, sometimes bitter and even purgative.

Linnseus^ pronounced the species to be American.
De Candolle* thought it was probably of Indian origin,
and this opinion has since been confirmed.

Lagenaria vulgaris has been found wild on the
coast of Malabar and in the humid forests of Deyra Doon.^
Roxburgh ^ considered it to be wild in India, although
subsequent floras give it only as a cultivated species.
Lastly, Rumphius ' mentions wild plants of it on the sea-
shore in one of the Moluccas. Authors generally note
that the pulp is bitter in these wild plants, but this is
sometimes the case in cultivated forms. The Sanskrit
language already distinguished the common gonrd,idavou,
and another, bitter, kutou-toumbi, to which Pictet also
attributes the name tiktaka or tiktika.^ Seemann ^ saw

' The word gourd is also used in English for Cucurbita maxima.
This is one of the examples of the confusiou in common names and the
greater accuracy of scientific terms.

* Naudin, Annales des Sc. Nat., 4th series, vol. xii. p. 91 ; Cogiiiaux,
in our Monog. Phan€rog., iii. p. 417.

' Linnaeus, Species Plantarum, p. 1434, under Cucurbita.

* A. P. de CaudoUe, Flora Fran<;aise (1805), vol. iii. p. 692,

• Rheede, Malabar, iii. pis. 1, 5 ; Royle, III. Himal., p. 218.

• Eoxburgh, Fl. Ivd., edit. 1832, vol. iii. p. 719.
^ Rumphius, Amboin, vol. v. p. 397, t. 144.

• Piddington, Index, at the word Cucurbita lagenaria; Ad. Pictet,
Origines Indo-Europ., edit. 3, vol. i. p. 386.

* Seemann, FUiva Vitiensis, p. 106.

216 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

the species cultivated and naturalized in the Fiji Isles.
Thozet gathered it on the coast of Queensland,^ but it
had perhaps spread from neighbouring cultivation. The
localities in continental India seem more certain and
more numerous than those of the islands to the south of
Asia.

The species has also been found wild in Abyssinia, in
the valley of Hieha by Dillon, and in the bush and stony
ground of another district by Sehimper.^

From these two regions of the old world it has been
introduced into the gardens of all tropical countries and
of those temperate ones where there is a sufficiently high
temperature in summer. It has occasionally become
naturalized from cultivation, as is seen in America.^

The earliest Chinese work which mentioned the gourd
is that of Tchong-tchi-chou, of the first century before
Christ, quoted in a work of the fifth or sixth century
according to Bretschneider.* He is speaking here of
cultivated plants. The modem varieties of the gardens
at Pekin are the trumpet gourd, which is eatable, and
the bottle gourd.

Greek authors do not mention the plant, but Romans
speak of it from the beginning of the empire. It is
clearly alluded to in the often-quoted lines ^ of the tenth
book of Columella, After describing the difterent forms
of the fruit, he says —

" Dabit ilia capncem,
Nariciae picis, ant Actsei ruellis Hvmetti,
Aut habilem lymphis hamulam, Bacchove lagenam,
Turn pueros eadem fluviis iniiare docebit."

Pliny ^speaks of a Cucurhitacea, of which vessels and

' Bentham, Flora Atisfraliensis, iii. p. 316.

^ Described first under the name Lagenaria idoJafrica. A. Richard,
Tentamen Fi. Abyss., i. p. 293, and later, Naiidiu and Cogniaax, recognized
its identity with L. vuhjaris.

* Torrey and Gray, Fl. of N. Amer., i. p. 543 ; Grisebach, Flora of
Brit. W. Lid. Is., p. 288.

* Bretschneider, letter of the 23rd of .Augast, 1881.

* Tragus, Stirp., p. 285; Ruellius, De Natura Stirpium, p. 498; Nau-
din. ihid.

■' riiny. Hist. Plant., 1. 19, c. 5.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 247

flasks for wine -vrere made, which can only apply to this
species.

It does not appear that the Arabs were early ac-
quainted with it, for Ibn Ala warn and Ibn Baithar say
nothinor of it.-^ Commentators of Hebrew works attri-
bute no name to this species with certainty, and yet the
climate of Palestine is such as to popularize the use of
gourds had they been known. From this it seems to me
doubtful that the ancient Egyptians possessed this plant,
in spite of a single figure of leaves observed on a tomb
which has been sometimes identified with it.^ Alexander
Braun, Ascherson, and Magnus, in their learned paper on
the Egyptian remains of plants in the Berlin Museum,^
indicate several Cucurbitacese without mentioning this
one. The earliest modern travellers, such as Rauwolf,^
in lo7-i, saw it in the gardens of Syria, and the so-called
pilgrim's gourd, figured in 1539 by Brunfels, was probably
known in the Holy Land from the Middle Ages.

All the botanists of the sixteenth century give illus-
trations of this species, which was more generally culti-
vated in Europe at that time than it is now The common
name in these older writings is Cameraria, and three
kinds of fruit are distinguished. From the white colour
of the flower, which is always mentioned, there can be no
doubt of the species, I also note an illustration, certainly
a very indifierent one, in which the flower is wanting,
but with an exact representation of the fruit of the
pilgrim's gourd, which has the great interest of having
appeared before the discovery of America. It is pi. 216
of Herharins Fatavice Impressvis, in 4to, 1485 — a rare
w^rk.

In spite of the use of similar names by some authors,
I do not believe that the gourd existed in America be-
ture the arrival of the Europeans. The Taqiiera of Piso ^

* Ibn Alawatn, in E. Meyer, Geschichte der Botanilc, iii. p. 60 ; Ibn
Baitbar, Sondtheimer's translation.

* Unger, Pjlanzen des Alien ISgyptens, p. 59 ; Pickering, Chronol.
Arrang., p. 137.

» In 8vo, 1877, p. 17. * Rauwolf, FZ. Orient., p. 125.

* Piso, IndioB Utriusque., etc., edit. 1658, p. 264.

24S ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

and Cucurhita lagenceforma of Marcgi'af^ are per-
haps Lagenaria vulgaris as monographs say,^ and the
specimens from Brazil which they mention should be
certain, but that does not prove that the species was in
the country before the voyage of Amerigo Vespucci in
]504. From that time until the voyages of these two
botanists in 1037 and 1G38, a much longer time elapsed
than is needed to account for the introduction and dif-
fusion of an annual species of a curious form, easy of
cultivation, and of which the seeds long retain the faculty
of germination. It may have become naturalized from
cultivation, as has taken place elsewhere. It is still
more likely that Cucurhita siceratia, Molina, attributed
sometimes to the species under consideration, sometimes
to Cucurhita maxima^ may have been introduced into
Chili between 1538, the date of the discovery of that
country, and 1787, the date of the Italian edition of
Molina. Acosta^ also speaks of calabashes which the
Peruvians used as cups and vases, but the Spanish
edition of his book appeared in 1591, more than a
hundred years after the Conquest. Among the tiist
naturalists to mention the species after the discovery cf
America (1492) is Oviedo,^ who had visited the main-
land, and, after dwelling at Vera Paz, came back to
Europe in 1515, but returned to Nicaragua in loo).**
According to Ramusio's compilation'^ he spoke of zueche,
freely cultivated in the West India Islands and Nicaragua
at the time of the discovery of America, and used as
bottles. The authors of the floras of Jamaica in the
seventeenth century say that the species was cultivated
in that island P. Brown,^ however, mentions a large
cultivated gourd; and a smaller one with a bitter and
purgative pulp, which was found wild.

' Marc2;rar, Hist. Nat. Bratfilice, 1 6 18, p. 44.

* Naudin, ihid. ; Cogniaux, Flora Brasil., fasc. 78, p. 7 ; and de Caiidollc,
Monoqr. Plianer., in. p. 418.

» CI. Gay, Flora Chilena, ii. p. 4^3.

* Jos. Acosta, French trans., p. 167.

• Pickering, Chronol. Arran^.j p. 861. " Pickering, ihid.
^ Paniusk), vol. iii. p. 112.

• P Brown, Jamaica, edit. ii. p. 35 1.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 249

Lastly, Elliott ^ writes as follows, in 1824, in a work
on the Southern States of America: "X. vulgaris is
rarely found in the woods, and is certainly not indigenous.
It seems to have been brought by the early inhabitants
of our country from a warmer climate. The species has
now become wild near dwellings, especially in islands."
The expression, " inhabitants of our country," seems to
refer rather to the colonists than to the natives. Between
the discovery of Virginia by Cabot in 1497, or the travels
of Raleigh in 1584, and the floras of modern botanists,
more than two centuries elapsed, and the natives would
have had time to extend the cultivation of the species if
they had received it from Europeans. But the fact of
its cultivation by Indians at the time of the earliest deal-
ings with them is doubtful. Torrey and Gray^ mentioned
it as certain in their flora published in 1830-40, and
later the second of these able botanists,^ in an article on
tlie Ciicurhitacece knoAvn to the natives, does not mention
the calabash, or Lagenaria. I remark the same omission
in another special article on the same subject, published
more recently.^

[In the learned articles by Messrs. Asa Gray and
Trumbull on the present volume {American Journal of
Science, 1883, p. 370), they give reasons for supposing
the species known and indigenous in America previous
to the arrival of the Europeans. Pearly travellers are
quoted more in detail than I had done. From their
testimony it appears that the inhabitants of Peru, Brazil,
and of Paria possessed gourds, in Spanish calahazas, but I
<lo not see that this proves that this was the species called
by botanists Cucwrbiia lagmaria. The only character in-
dependent of the exceedingly variable form of the fruit
is the white colour of the flowers, and this character is
not mentioned. — Author's Note, 1884.]

Gonrd— Cue II I ■bit a maxima, Duchesne.

In enumerating the speties of the genus (Jucurhita, I

' Elliott, SV.etch of the Botany of South Carolina and Georgia, ii. p. 663,

* Torrey and Gray, Flora of N. America, i. p. 544.

* Asa Gray, in the American Journal of Science, 1857, vol. xxiv p. 442.

* TrnmLu'll, in Bw/?. Torrey Bot. Club, vol. vi. p. 69.

250 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

should explain that their distinction, formerly exceedingly
difficult, has been established by M. Naudin^ in a very
scientific manner, by means of an assiduous cultivation of
varieties and of experiments upon their crossed fertiliza-
tion. Those groups of forms which cannot fertilize each
other, or of which the product is not fertile and stable,
are regarded b}^ him as species, and the forms which can
be crossed and yield a fertile and varied product, as races,
breeds, or varieties. Later experin:ients ^ showed him
that the establishment of species on this basis is not
without exceptions, but in the genus Cucurbita physio-
logical facts agree with exterior differences. M. Naudin
has established the true distinctive characters of C.
maxmia and C. Pepo. The leaves of the first have rounded
lobes, the peduncles are smooth and the lobes of the
corolla are curved outwards; the second has leaves with
pointed lobes, the peduncles marked with ridges and
furrows, the corolla narrowed towards the base and with
lobes nearly always upright.

The principal varieties of Ciicurhita maxima are
the great yellow gourd, which sometimes attains to an
enormous size,^ the Spanish gourd, the turban gourd, etc.

Since common names and those in ancient authors do
not agree with botanical definitions, we must mistrust
the assertions formerly put forth on the origin and early
cultivation of such and such a gourd at a gi^^en epoch in
a given country. For this reason, w^hen I colq^sidered the
subject in 1855, the home of these plants scented to me
eitlier unknown or very doubtful. At the present day
it is more easy to investigate the question.

According to Sir Joseph Hooker,^ Cucurbita Tnaxima
was found by Barter on the banks of the Niger in
Guinea, ap])arently indigenous, and by Welwitsch in
Angola without any asseition of its wild character. In
works on Abyssinia, Egypt, or other African countries
in which the species is commonly cultivated, I find no

> Nnudin, Ajin. Sc. Nat., 4th series, voL vi. p. 5; vol. xii. p. 84.

* Ihid., 4th series, voL xviii. p. 160; voL xix. p. 180.

* As iniich as 200 lbs., according to the Bon Jardiiiicr, 1850, p. 180.

* Ilouker, Fl. of Trap. Afr., ii. p. 555.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 251

indication that it is f(Aind wild. The Al^yssinians used
the word dubba, wliich is applied in Arabic to gourds
in general.

The plant was long supposed to be of Indian origin,
because of such names as Indian gourd, given by sixteenth-
century botanists, and in particular the PejJO maxwius
indicas, figured by Lobel,^ which answers to the modern
species ; but this is a very insufficient proof, since popu-
lar indications of origin are very often erroneous. The
fact is that though pumpkins are cultivated in Southern
Asia, as in other parts of the tropics, the plant has not
been found wild.^ No similar species is indicated by
ancient Chinese authors, and the modern names of gourds
and pumpkins now grown in China are of foreign and
southern origin.^ It is impossible to know to what
species the Sanskrit name kurkarou belonged, although
Roxburgh attiibutes it to Cucurhita Pejpo ; and there is
no less uncertainty with respect to the gourds, pump-
kins, and melons cultivated bv the Greeks and Romans.
It is not certain if the species was known to the ancient
Egyptians, but perhaps it was cultivated in that country
and in the Grajco-Roman world. The Pepones, of which
Charlemagne commanded the cultivation in his farms,*
were perhaps some kind of pumpkin or marrow, but no
figure or description of these plants which may be clearly
recognized exists earlier than the sixteenth century.

This tends to sliow its American origin. Its existence
in Africa in a wild state is certainly an argument to the
contrary, for the species of the family of Cucurbitacece are
very local ; but there are arguments in favour of America,
and I must examine them with the more care since I have
been reproached in the United States for not having
given them sufficient weight.

In the first place, out of the ten known species of
the genus Cucurbita, six are certainly wild in America

• Lobel, Icones t. 6-41, The illustration is reproduced in Dalechamp's
Risf., i. p. 626.

* Clarke, Hooker's Fl. Brit. Ind., ii. p. 622.

• Bretschneider, letter of Aug. 23, 1^81.

* The list is given by E. Meyer, Gfschichte du Botavilc, iii. p. 401 .
The Cucuibita of which he speak.s must have been the gourd, Lagenaria.

12

252 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

(Mexico and California) ; hut these are perennial species'
while the cultivated pumpkins are annuals.

The plant called jurumu by the Brazilians, figured
by Piso and Marcgraf ^ is attributed by modern writers
to Cucurbita nriaxhiia. The draAvincj and the short
account by the two authors agree [)retty well with this
theory, but it seems to have been a cultivated plant. It
may have been brought from Europe or from Africa by
Europeans, between the discovery of Brazil in 1504, and
the travels of the above-named authors in 1G37 and 1G38.
No one has found the species wild in North or South
America. I cannot find in works on Brazil. Guiana, or
the West Indies any sign of an ancient cultivation or of
\vild growth, either from names, or from traditions or
more or less distinct belief In the United States those
men of science who best know the lan2;uafjes and customs
of the natives, Dr. Harris for instance, and more recently
Trumbull,^ maintain that the Ciocurbitacece called squash
by the Anglo-Americans, and taucock, or cashaiu, cushaw,
by early travelleis in Virginia, are pumpkins. Trumbull
says that squash is an Indian word. I have no reason to
doubt the assertion, but neither the ablest linguists, nor
the travellers of the seventeenth century, who saw the
natives provided with fruits which they called gourds
and pumpkins, have been able to prove that they wei e
such and such species recognized as distinct by modern
botanists. All that we learn from this is that the natives
a century after tlie discovery of Virginia, and twenty to
forty 3^ears after its colonization by Sir Walter Raleigh,
made use of some fruits of the Cucurbit acea;. The com-
mon names are still so confused in the United States,
that Dr, Asa Gray, in 18C8, gives pumpkin and squash
as answering to difierent species of Cucurbita^ while
Darlington'* attributes the naxwe p>um2)kin to the common
Cacurbita Pepo, and that of squash to the varieties of the

» Piso, Brazil, edit. 1658, p. 264; Marcpraf, edit. 16 IS, p. 44.

• Harris, American Journal, 1857, vol. xxiv. p. 411; Trumbull, Bull,
of Torrey Bot. Cluh, 1876, vol. vi. p. 69.

» Asa Gray, B tany of the Northern States, edit. 18G8, p 186.

* Darlington, Flnra Cestrira, 185.3, p. 91.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 253

latter wLich correspond to the forms of Melopepo of early
botanists. They attribute no distinct common name to
Cucurbit a inajdriia.

Finally, without placing implicit faith in the indi-
genous character of the plant on the banks of the Niger,
based upon the assertion of a single traveller, I still
believe that the species is a native of the old world, and
introduced into America by Europeans.

[The testimony of early travellers touching the ex-
istence of Cucurh'ita maxima in America before the
arrival of Europeans has been collected and supplemented
by Messrs. Asa Gray and Trumbull (American Journal
of Science, 1883, p. 372). They confirm the fact already
known, that the natives cultivated species of Cucuvhita
under American names, of which some remain in the
modern idiom of the United States. None of these early
travellers has noted the botanical characters by which
Naudin established the distinction between C. maxima
and G. Pepo, and consequently it is still doubtful to
which species they referred. For various reasons I had
already admitted that C. Pepo was of American origin,
but I retain my doubts about G. maxima. After a more
attentive perusal of Tragus and Matthiolo than I had
bestowed upon them, Asa Gray and Trumbull notice that
they call Indian whatever came from America. But if
these two botanists did not confound the East and West
Indies, several others, and the public in general, did make
ths confusion, which occasioned errors touching the
origin of species which botanists were liable to repeat.
A further indication in favour of the American origin of
G. maxima is communicated by M. Wittmack, who in-
forms me that seeds, certified by M. Naudin to belong to
this species, have been found in the tombs of Ancon.
This would be conclusive if the date of the latest burials
at Ancon were certain. See on this head the article on
Fhaseolus vulgaris. — Author's Note, 1884.]

Pumpkin — Gucurhita Pepo and G. Melopepo, lArm^ews.
Modern authors include under the head of Gucurhita
Pepo most of the varieties which Linnaeus designated by
this name, and also those which he called G. Melopepo.

254 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

These varieties are very different as to the shape of the
fruit, Avhich sliows a very ancient cultivation. There is
the Patagonian pumpkin^ with enormous cjdindrical fruit ;
the sugared yumpkin, called Brazilian; the vegetable
marrow, with smaller long-shaped fruit ; the Barberine,
with knobby fruit ; the Electors hat, with a curiously
shaped conical fruit, etc. No value should be attached
to the local names in this designation of varieties, for we
have often seen that they express as many errors as
varieties. The botanical names attributed to the species
by Naudin and Cogniaux are numerous, on account of the
bad habit which existed not long ago of describing as
species purely garden varieties, without taking into
account the wonderful effects of cultivation and selection
upon the organ for the sake of which the plant is
cultivated.

Most of these varieties exist in tbe gardens of the
warm and temperate regions of both hemispheres. The
origin of the species is considered to be doubtful. 1
hesitated m 1855 ^ between Southern Asia and the
Mediterranean basin. Naudin and Cogniaux^ admit
Southern Asia as probable, and the botanists of the
United States on their side have given reasons for their
belief in an American origin. The question requires
careful investigation.

I shall first seek for those forms now attributed to
the species which have been found growing ain" where in
a wild state.

The variety Cucurhita ovifera, Linnaeus, was
formerly gathered by Lerche, near Astrakhan, but no
modern botanist has confirmed this fact, and it is
probable it was a cultivated plant. Moreover, Linnaeus
does not assert it was wild, I have consulted all the
Asiatic and African floras without finding the slii^htest
mention of a wild variety. From Arabia, or even from
the coast of Guinea to Japan, the species, or the varieties
attributed to it, are always said to be cultivated. In

• Giogr. Bot. Raisnnnde, p. 902.

* Naudin, Ann. 8c. Nat., 3rd .«eries, voL vi. p. 9 ; Cogniaux, in de
Candolle, Monogr. Phaner., iii. p. 51'i.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 255

In(]ia, Ptoxburgh remarked this, and certainly Clarke, in
his recent liora of British India, has good reasons for
indicating no locality for it outside cultivation.

It is otherwise in America. A variety, C. texana}
very near to the variety ovata, according to Asa Gray,
and which is now unhesi.'atingly attributed to C. Pepo,
was found by Lindheimer " on the edges of thickets, in
damp woods, on the banks of the upper Guadaloupe,
apparently an indigenous plant." Asa Gray adds, how-
ever, that it is perhaps the result of naturalization.
However, as several species of the genus Cucurhita grow
wild in Mexico and in the south-west of the United
States, we are naturally led to consider the collector's
opinion sound. It does not appear that other botanists
found this plant in Mexico, or in the United States. It
is not mentioned in Hemsley's Biologia CentraH-
Americana, nor in Asa Gray's recent tlora of Cali-
fornia.

Some synonyms or specimens from South America,
attributed to C. Fepo, appear to me very doubtful. It
is impossible to say what Molina ^ meant by the
names G. Siceratia and G. mamraeata, which appear,
moreover, to have been cultivated plants. Two species
briefly described in the account of the journey of Spix
and Martins (ii. p. 536), and also attributed to G.
Pepo^ are mentioned among cultivated plants on the
banks of the Pdo Francisco. Lastly, the specimen of
Spruce, 2710, from the river Uaupes, a tributary of
the Rio Negro, which Cogniaux'* does not mention
having seen, and which he first attributed to the
G. Pepo, and afterwards to the C. inoscliata, was per-
haps cultivated or naturalized from cultivation, or by
transport, in spite of the paucity of inhabitants in this
countr}^

Botanical indications are, therefore, in favour of a
Mexican or Texan origin. It remains to be seen if

* Asia Gray, PlantcB Lindheimeriance, part ii. p. 193,
' Molina, Hist. Nat. du Chili, p. 377.

* Cogniaux, in Monogr. Phaver. and Flora Brasil. fasc. 78, p. 21.

* Cogniaux, II, Bras, and Mono'^r. Phaner., iii., p. 517.

256 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

historical records are in agreement with or contrary to
this idea.

It is impossible to discover whether a given Sanskrit,
Greek, or Latin name for the pumpkin belongs to one
species rather than to another. The form of the fruit is
often the same, and the distinctive characters are never
mentioned by authors.

There is no figure of the pumpkin in the Herharins
Patavice Impressus of 1485, before the discovery of
America, but sixteenth-century authors have published
plates which may be attributed to it. There are three
forms of Pepones figured on page 406 of Dodoens,
edition 1557. A fourth, Pejjo rotundm major, added
in the edition of 1G16, appears to me to be C. maxima.
In the drawing of Pepo ohlongus of Lobel, Icones, 641,
the character of the peduncle is clearly defined. The
names given to these plants imply a foreign origin ; but
the authors could make no assertions on this head, all
the more that the name of " the Indies " applied both to
Southern Asia and America.

Thus historical data do not gainsay the opinion of an
American origin, but neither do they adduce anything
in support of it.

If the belief that it grows wild in America is con-
firmed, it may be confidently asserted that the pumpkins
cultivated by the Romans and in the Middle Ages were
Cucurhita maxima, and those of the natives of North
America, seen by difterent travellers in the seventeenth
century, were Cucurhita Pepo.

Musk, or Melon Pumpkin — Cucurhita moschata,
Ducliesne.

The Bon Jardinier quotes as the principal varieties
of this species pumpkin muscade de Provence, pleine
de Kajjles, and de-Bavharie. It is needless to say that
these names show nothing as to origin. The species is
easily recognized by its fine soft down, the pentagonal
peduncle which supports the fruit broadening at the
summit ; the fruit is more or less covered with a glaucous
ettiorescence, and the flesh is somewhat musk-scented.
The lobes of the calyx are often terminated by a leafy

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 257

border.^ Cultivated in all tropical countries, it is less
successful than other pumpkins in temperate regions.

Cogniaux ^ suspects that it comes from the south of
Asia, but he gives no proof of this. I have searched
through the floras of the old and new worlds, and I
have nowhere been able to discover the mention of the
species in a truly wild state. The indications which
approach most nearly to it are : (1) In Asia, in the island
Df Bangka, a specimen verified by Cogniaux, and which
Miquel ^"^ says is not cultivated ; (2) in Africa, in Angola,
specimens which Welwitsch says are quite wild, but
" probably due to an introduction ; " (3) in America, five
specimens from Brazil, Guiana, or Nicaragua,mentioned by
Cogniaux, without knowing whether they were cultivated,
naturalized, or indigenous. These indications are very
slight Kumphius, Blume, Clarke {Flora of British
India) in Asia, Schweinfurth (Oliver's Flora of Trop.
Africa) in Africa, only know it as a cultivated plant. Its
cultivation is recent in China,^ and American floras rarely
mention the species.

No Sanskrit name is known, and the Indian, Malay,
and Chinese names are neither very numerous nor very
original, although the cultivation of the plant seems
to be more diflused in Southern Asia than in other
parts of the tropics. It was already grown in the
seventeenth century according to the Hortus Mala-
baricus, in which there is a good plate (vol. viii. pi. 2).
It does not appear that this species was known in the
sixteenth century, for Dalechamp's illustration (Hist, i. p.
616) which Seringe attributed to it has not its true cha-
racters, and I can find no other figure which resembles it.

Fig-leaved Pumpkin — Cucurbita Jlcifolia, Bouche ;
Cacurbita melaaospermoy, Braun.

About thirty years ago this pumpkin with black or
brown seeds was introduced into frardens. It diflers

to"

> See the excellent plate in Wight's Icones, t. 507, under the
fTroneous name of Cucurbita maxima.

* Cogniaux, in Monogr. Phaner., iii. p. 547.

' Miquel, Svmafra, under the name Gymnopetalum, p. 332.

* Cogrianx, in Monogr. Phaner.

258 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

from otlier cultivated species in being perennial. It is
sometimes called the Siamese melon. The Bon Jardinier
says that it comes from China. Dr. Bretschneider does
not mention it in his letter of 1881, in which he enu-
merates the pumpkins grown by the Chinese.

Hitherto no botanist has found it wild, I very much
doubt its Asiatic origin as all the known perennial species
of Cacurbita are from Mexico or California.

Melon — Cucumis Melo, Linnaeus.

The aspect of the question as to the origin of the
melon has completely changed since the experiments of
Naudin. The paper which he published in 1859, in the
Annales des Sciences Naturellts, 4th series, vol. ii., on
the genus Cucumis, is as remarkable as that on the genus
Cucu7'bita. He gives an account of the observations and
experiments of several years on the variability of forms
and the crossed fecundation of a multitude of species,
breeds, or varieties coming from all parts of the world. I
have already spoken (p. 250) of the physiological principle
on which he believes it possible to distinguish those groups
of forms which he terms species, although certain excep-
tions have occurred which render the criterion of fertili-
zation less absolute. In spite of these exceptional cases,
it is evident that if nearly allied forms can be easily
crossed and produce fertile individuals, as we see, for
example, in the human species, they must be considered
as constituting a single species.

In this sense Cucumis Melo, according to the ex-
periments and observations made by Naudin upon about
two thousand living plants, constitutes a species which
comprehends an extraordinary number of varieties and
even of breeds; that is to say, forms which are pre-
served by heredity. These varieties or races can be ferti-
lized by each other, and yield varied and variable products.
They are classed by the author into ten groups, which he
calls canteloups, vielons brodes, sucrins, melons d'hiver,
serpents, forme de concombre, Chifo, Diidaim, rouges de
Perse, and sauvages, each containing varieties or neaidy
allied races. These have been named in twenty-five or
thirty different ways by botanists, who, without noticing

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 259

transitions of form, the faculty of crossing or of change
under cultivation, have distinguished as species all the
varieties which occur in a given time or place.

Hence it results that several forms found wild, and
which have been described as species, must be the types
and sources of the cultivated forms ; and Naudin makes
the very just observation that these wild formsj which
differ more or less the one from the other, may have pro-
duced different cultivated varieties. This is the more
probable that they sometimes inhabit countries remote
from each other as Southern Asia and tropical Africa,
so that differences in climate and isolation may have
created and consoKdated varieties.

The following are the forms which Naudin enume-
rates as wild : 1. Those of India, which are named by
Wildenow Cucumis puhescens, and by Roxburgh G. tur-
birtatus or C. maderas-patanus. The whole of British
India and Beluchistan is their natural area. Its natural
wildness is evident even to non-botanical travellers.^
The fruit varies from the size of a plum to that of a
lemon. It is either striped or barred, or all one colour,
scented or odourless. The flesh is sweet, insipid, or
slightly acid, differences which it has in common with
the cultivated Cantelopes. According to Roxburgh the
Indians gather and have a taste for the fruits of C. tur-
hinatus and of C. 7)iaderas-patanus, though they do not
cultivate it.

Referring to the most recent flora of British India,
in which Clarke has described the Cucurbitacece (ii. p.
619), it seems that this author does not agree with M.
Naudin about the Indian wild forms, although both have
examined the numerous specimens in the herbarium at
Kew. The difference of opinion, more apparent than real,
arises from the fact that the English author attributes
to a nearly and certainly wild allied species, C. trigonus,
Roxburo-h, the varieties which Naudin classes under
C. Melo. Cogniaux,^ who afterwards saw the same speci-

• Gardener's Chronicle, articles signed " I. H. H.," 1857, p. 153 ; 1858,
p. 130.

' Cogniaux, Konojr. Phan'r., iii. p. 485.

260 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

mens, attriVjutes only G. turhinatus to trigonus. The
specific diHcrence between G. Melo and G. trigonus is
unfortunately oLscure, from the characters given by
these three authors The principal difierence is tliat
G. Melo is an annual, the Gth3r perennial, but this dura-
tion does not appear to be very constant. Mr. Clarke
says himself that G. Melo is perhaps derived by cultiva-
tion from G. trigonus ; that is to say, according to him,
from the forms which Naudin attributes to G. Melo.

The experiments made during three consecutive years
by Naudin^ upon the products of Gw,umis trigonus,
fertilized by G. Melo, seem in favour of the opinion which
admits a specific diversity ; for if fertilization took place
the products were of different forms, and often reverted
to one or other of the original parents.

2. The African forms. Naudin had no specimens in
sufiiciently good condition, or of which the wnld state
was sufiiciently certain to assert positively the habitation
of the species in Africa. He admits it with hesitation.
He includes in the species cultivated forms, or other wild
ones, of which he had not seen the fruit. Sir Joseph
Hooker ^ subsequently obtained specimens which prove
more. I am not speaking of those from the Nile Valley,^
which are probably cultivated, but of plants gathered by
Barter in Guinea in the sands on the banks of the Nig-er.
Thonning ^ had previously found, in sandy soil in Guinea,
a Cucumis to which he had given the name arenanus ;
and Cogniaux,^ after having seen a specimen brought
home by this traveller, had classed it with G. Melo, as
Sir J. Hooker thought. The negroes eat the fruit of the
plant found by Barter. The smell is that of a fresh green
melon. In Thonning's plant the fi'uit is ovoid, the size
of a plum. Thus in Africa as in India the species bears
small fruit in a wild state, as we might expect. The
Dudaini among cultivated varieties is allied to it.

' Nandin, Ann. 8c. Nat., 4th series, vol. xviii. p. 171,

* Hooker, in Oliver, Fl. of Trop. Afr., ii. p. 5-46.

* Schweinfurth and Ascherson, Aufzahbtng, p. 267.

* Schumacher and Thonnincj, Guineiske Planten., p. 425.
' Cogniaux, in de Candolle, Monogr. Fhandr., p. 483.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 261

The majority of the species of the genus Cucurais are
found in Africa; a small minority in Asia or in America.
Other species of Cucurhitaceoi are divided between
Asia and America, although as a rule, in this family,
the areas of species are continuous and restricted. Cu-
cumis Melo was once perhaps, like Citrullus Colocynthis
of the same family, wild from the west coast of Africa
as far as India without any break.

I formerly hesitated to admit that the melon was
indigenous in the north of the Caucasus, as it is asserted
by ancient authors — an assertion which has not been
confirmed by subsequent botanists. Hohenacker, who
was said to have found the species near Elisabethpolis,
makes no mention of it in his paper upon the province of
Talysch. M. Boissier does not include Cucumis Melo
in his Oriental flora. He merely says that it is easily
naturalized on rubbish-heaps and waste ground. The
same thing has been observed elsewhere, for instance in
the sands of Ussuri, in Eastern Asia. This would be a
reason for mistrusting the locality of the sands of the
Niger, if the small size of the fruit in this case did not
recall the wild forms of India.

The culture of the melon, or of different varieties of
the melon, may have begun separately in India and
Africa.

Its introduction into China appears to date only from
the eighth century of our era, judging from the epoch of
the first work which mentions it.^ As the relations of
the Chinese with Bactriana, and the north-west of India
by the embassy of Chang-kien, date from the second
century, it is possible that the culture of the species was
not then widely diffused in Asia. The small size of the
wild fruit offered little inducement. No Sanskrit name
is known, but there is a Tamul name, probably less
ancient, rtiolam^ which is like the Latin Melo.

It is not proved that the ancient Egyptians cultivated
the melon. The fruit figured by Lepsius^ is not recog-
nizable. If the cultivation liad been customary and

• Bretpchr.eider, letter of Aupf. 2f?, 1881. » Piddington, Tndex.

" See tlie copy in Unger's Pfanzen des AUen M'jtjptenx, fig. 25.

202 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

ancient in that country, the Greeks and Romans would
have early known it. Now, it is doubtful whether the
Sikua of Hippocrates and Theophrastus, or the Pepon of
Dioscorides, or the Melopepo of Pliny, was the melon.
The passages referring to it are brief and insignificant ;
Galen ^ is less obscure, when he says that the inside of
the Melopepones is eaten, but not of the Pepones. There
has been much discussion about those names,^ but we
want facts more than words. The best proof which I
have been able to discover of the existence of the melon
among the Romans is a very accurate representation of
a fruit in the beautiful mosaic of fruits in the Vatican.
Moreover, Dr. Comes certifies that the half of a melon
is represented in a painting at Herculaneum.^ The
species was probably introduced into the Grseco-Roman
Avorld at the time of the Empire, in the beginning of the
Christian era. It was probably of indifferent quality, to
judge from the silence or the faint praise of writers in
a country where gourmets were not wanting. Since
the Renaissance, an improved cultivation and relations
with the East have introduced better varieties into our
gardens. We know, however, that they often degenerate
either from cold or bad conditions of soil, or by crossing
with inferior varieties of the species.

Water -Melon — Citrullus vulgaris, Schrader; Cucur-
hita Citrullus, Linnteus.

The origin of the water-melon was long mistaken
or unknown. According to Linn?eus, it was a native
of Southern Italy.* This assertion was taken from
]\Iatthiole, without observing that this author says it was
a cultivated species. Serings,^ in 182^, supposed it
came from India and Africa, but he gives no proof.
I believed it came from Southern Asia, because of its

' Galen, Be AUmenfix, 1. 2, c. 5.

* See all the Veigilian floras, and Naudin, Ann. Sc. Xat. ,4th. series,
7ol. xii. p. 111.

■ Comes, III. Piarde nei Dipinti Pompeiani, in 4to, p. 20, in tbe Museo
Nation., vol. iii. pi. 4.

* Habitat in Apulia, Calabria, Sicilia (Linnaeus, Species, edit. 1763,
p. 1435).

* Seringe, in Prodromv.$, iii. p. 301,

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 203

very general cultivation in this region. It was not
known in a wild state. At length it was found indi-
genous in tropical Africa, on both sides of the equator,
which settles the question.^ Livingstone^ saw districts
literally covered with it, and the savages and several
kinds of wild animals eagerly devoured the wild fruit.
They are sometimes, but not always, bitter, and this
(annot be detected from the appeai'ance of the fruit. The
negroes strike it with an axe, and taste the juice to see
whether it is good or bad. This diversity in the wild
plant, growing in the same climate and in the same soil,
is calculated to show the small value of such a character
in cultivated Cucurhitacece. For the rest, the frequent
bitterness of the water-melon is not at all extraordinary,
as the most nearly allied species is Citrullus Colocynthis.
Naudin obtained fertile hybrids from cross'ng the
bitter water-melon, wild at the Cape, with a cultivated
species wliich confirms the specific unity suggested by
the outward appearance.

The species has not been found wild in Asia.

The ancient Egyptians cultivated the water-melon,
which is represented in the'r paintings.^ This is one
reason for believing that the Israelites knew the species,
and called it ahbatitchim, as is said; but besides the
Arabic name, hattich,batfeca, evidenth^ derived from the
Hebrew, is the modern name for the water-melon. The
French nanne, pasteque, comes through the Arabic from the
Hebrew. A proof of the antiquity of the plant in the
north of Africa is found in the Berber name, tadeladt,^
wdiich differs too widely from the Arabic name not to have
existed before the Conquest. The Spanish names zan-
dria, cindria, and the Sardinian sindria,^ which I cannot
connect with any others, show also an ancient culture
in the eastern part of the Mediterranean basin. Its

' Nandia. Ann. sc. Nat., 4th series, voL xii. p. 101 ; Sir J. Hooker, in
Oliver, Fljra of Trap. Afr., ii. p. 549.

* French trans., p. 56.

' Uager has copied the figures from Lepsins' work in his memoir,
Die Pjiirzen des Alien jEgyptens, figs. 30, 31, 32.

* Dutionnaire Franqais-Berher, at the word pasteque.
' M(.ris, Flora Surdoa.

264 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

cultivation early spread into Asia, for there is a Sanskrit
name, chaijcq^ula^ but the Chinese only received the
plant in the tenth century of the Christian era. They
call it si-kiia, that is melon of the West.^

As the water-melon is an annual, it ripens out of the
tropics wherever the summer is sufficiently hot. The
modern Greeks cultivate it largely, and call it carpovbsia
or carpousea,^ but this name does not occur in ancient
authors, nor even in the Greek of the decadence and of
the Middle Ages.* It is the same as the karpus of the
Turks of Constantinople,^ which we find again in the
Russian arhus,^ and in Bengali and Hindustani as tarhuj
twrhoiiz? Another Constantinople name, mentioned by
Forskal, cliinionico, recurs in Albanian chhnico^ The
absence of an ancient Greek name which can with
certainty be attributed to this species, seems to show
that it was introduced into the Grseco-Roman world
about the beginning of the Christian era. The poem
Copa, attributed to Virgil and Pliny, perhaps mentions
it (lib. 19, cap. 5), as Naudin thinks, but it is doubtful.

Europeans have introduced the water-melon into
America, where it is now cultivated from Chili to the
United States. The jace of the Brazilians, of which
Piso and Marcgraf have a drawing, is evidently in-
troduced, for the first-named author says it is cultivated
and partly naturalized.^

Cucumber — Cacumis sativus, Linnaeus.

In spite of the very evident ditference between the
melon and cucumber, which both belong to the genus
Cucumis, cultivators suppose that the species may be
crossed, and that the quality of the melon is thus some-

• Piddington, Index.

* Bretschneider, Study and Value, etc., p. 17.

* Heldreich, Fjianz. d. Attisch. Ebene., p. 501 ; Nutzxijl. GriecluenL,
p. 50.

* Langkavel, Bot. der Spat. Oriechen.

* Forskal, Flora Mjypto-Arabica., part i. p. 34.

• Nemnich, Polyg. Lexic, i. p. 1309.

' Piddington, Index ; Pickering, Chronol. Arrang., p. 72.

• Heldreich, Nutzpfi., etc., p. 50.

• " Sativa pTnnta et tractu temporia quasi nativa facta" (Piso,
edit. 1658, p. 233).

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOE THEIR FRUITS. 265

times spoilt. Naudin ^ ascertained by experiments that
this fertilization is not possible, and has also shown that
the distinction of the two species is well founded.

The original country of Cucumis sativus was un-
known to Linn?eu8 and Lamarck. In 1805, Wildenow^
asserted it was indigenous in Tartary and India, but
without furnishing any proof Later botanists have not
confirmed the assertion. When I went into the question
in 1855, the species had not been anywhere found wild.
For various reasons deduced from its ancient culture in
Asia and in Europe, and especially from the existence of
a Sanskrit name, sovJcasa^ I said, " Its original habitat is
probably the north-west of India, for instance Cabul, or
some adjacent country. Everything seems to show that
it will one day be discovered in these regions which are
as yet but little known."

This conjecture has been realized if we admit, with
the best-informed modern authors, that Cucumis Hard-
wicJcii, Royle, possesses the characteristics of Cucumis
sativus. A coloured illustration of this cucumber found
at the foot of the Himalayas may be seen in Royle's
Illustrations of Himalayan Plants, p. 220, pi. 47. The
stems, leaves, and flowers are exactly those of C. sativus.
The fruit, smooth and elliptical, has a bitter taste ; but
there are similar forms of the cultivated cucumber, and
we know that in other species of the same family, the
water-melon, for instance, the pulp is sweet or bitter.
Sir Joseph Hooker, after describing the remarkable
variety which he calls the Sikkim cucumber,^ adds
that the variety Hardttickii, wild from Kumaon to
Sikkim, and of which he has gathered specimens, does
not difl'er more from the cultivated plant than certain
varieties of the latter differ from others ; and Cogniaux,
after seeing the plants in the herbarium at Kew, adopts
this opinion.^

The cucumber, cultivated in India for at least three

^ Naudin, in Ann. Sc. Nat., 4th series, vol. xi. p. 31.

' Wildenow, Species, iv. p. 615. ' Piddiugton, Index,

* Bot. Mag., pi. 6206.

' Cogniaux, in de Candolle, Monogr. Phan4r., iii. p. 499.

2GG ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS

thousand 3^ears, was only introduced into China in the
second century before Christ, when the ambassador
Chang-kien returned from Bactriana.^ The species
spread more rapidly towards the West. The ancient
Greeks cultivated the cucumber under the name ofsikuos,^
which remains as sikua in the modern language. The
modern Greeks have also the name aggouria, from an
ancient Aryan root which is sometimes applied to the
water-melon, and which recurs for the cucumber in
the Bohemian agurJca, the German Gurke, etc. The
Albanians (Pelasgians ?) have quite a different name,
kratsavets.^ which we recognize in the Slav Krastavak.
The Latins called the cucumber cucumis. These different
names show the antiquity of the species in Europe.
There is even an Esthonian name, uggurits, ukkurits,
itints.^ It does not seem to be Finnish, but to belong to
the same Aryan root as aggouria. If the cucumber came
into Europe before the Aryans, there would perhaps be
some name peculiar to the Basque language, or seeds
would have been found in the lake-dwellings of Switzer-
land and Savoy ; but this is not the case. The peoples
in the neighbourhood of the Caucasus have names quite
different to the Greek ; in Tartar kiar, in Kalmuck chaja,
in Armenian karan} The name ckiar exists also in
Arabic for a variety of the cucumber.^ This is, therefore,
a Turanian name anterior to the Sanskrit, whereby its
culture in Western Asia would be more than three
thousand years old.

It is often said that the cucumber is the kischschuim,
one of the fruits of Egypt regretted by the Israelites in
the desert' However, I do not find any Arabic name
among the three given by Forskal which can be con-
nected with this, and hitherto no trace has been found
of the presence of the cucumber in ancient Egypt.

1 Bretschneider, letters of Aug. 23 and 26, 1881.

* Tlieophrastus, Hist., lib. 7, cap. 4; Lenz, Bot. der Alien, p. 492.

* Heldreich, Niitzpjl. Griechen., p. 50.

* Nemnich, Polygl. Lex., i. p. 1306.

6 Nemnich, ibid. « Forskfil, Fl. ^gypf., p. 7fi.

' Rosenmiiller, Biblische Alterth., i. p. 97 ; Hamilton, Bot. de la Bille,
p. 34.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 2()7

West Indian Gherkin — Cucumis Anguria, Linnseiis.

This small species of cucumber is designated in the
Bon Jardinier under the name of the cucumber Arada.
The fruit, of the size of an egg, is very prickly. It is
eaten cooked or pickled. As the plant is very produc-
tive, it is largely cultivated in the American colonies.
Descourtilz and Sir Joseph Hooker have published good
coloured illustrations of it, and M. Cogniaux a plate with
a detailed analysis of the flower.^

Several botanists affirm that it is wild in the West
Indies. P. Browne,^ in the last century, spoke of the
plant as the "little wild cucumber" (in Jamaica).
Descourtilz said, " The cucumber grows wild everywhere,
and principally in the dry savannahs and near rivers,
whose banks atford a rich vegetation." The inhabitants
call it the "maroon cucumber." Grisebach^ saw speci-
mens in several other West India Isles, and appears
to admit their wild character. M. E. Andre found the
species growing in the sand of the sea-shore at Porto-
Cabello, and Burchell in a similar locality in Brazil, and
Piedel near Rio di Janeiro.* In the case of a number of
other specimens gathered in the east of America from
Brazil to Florida, it is unknown whether they were wild
or cultivated. A wild Brazilian plant, badly drawn by
Piso,^ is mentioned as belonging to the species, but I am
very doubtful of this.

Botanists from Tournefort down to our own day have
considered the Anguria to be of American origin, a native
of Jamaica in particular-. M. Naudin^ was the first to
point out that all the other species of Cucumis are of the
old world, and principally African. He wondered whether
this one had not been introduced into America by the
negroes, like many other plants which have become

' Descourtilz, Fl. Med. dcs Anfilles, v. pi. 329; Hooker, Bot. Mag.,
t. 5817; Cogniaux, in Fl. Brasil, fasc. 78, p). 2.
^ Browne, Jamaica, edit. 2, p. 353.
3 Grisebach, Fl. of Bnt. M\ India Is., p, 288.

* Cogniaux, uhi supra.

» Guanerva-oha, in Piso, Brasil, eriit. 1658, p. 264; Marcgraf,
edit. 1648, p. 4t, wifhoit illustrat on, calls it Cucumis sylvestris HratiilicB

* Isaudiu, Ann. Sc. Nat., 4th series, vol. ii. p. 12.

2G8 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

naturalized. However, unable to find any similar
African plant, he adopted the general opinion. Sir
Joseph Hooker, on the contrary, is inclined to believe
that C. Anguria is a cultivated and modified form of
some African species nearly allied to C. pro^jhetarum and
C. Figarei, although these are perennial. In favour of
this hypothesis, I may add: (1) The name ma^von cu-
cumber, given in the French West India Islands, indicates
a plant which has become wild, for this is the meaning
of the word maioon as applied to the negroes ; (2) its
extended area in America from Bia'/iil to the West Indies,
always along the coast where the slave trade was most
brisk, seems to be a proof of foreign ori^dn. If the
species grew in America previous to its discovery, it
would, with such an extensive habitat, have been also
found upon the west coast of America, and inland, which
is not the case.

The question can only be solved by a more complete
knowledge of the African species of Cucimiis, and by
experiments upon fertilization, if any have the patience
and ability necessaiy to do for the genus Cucuinis what
Naudin has done for the genus Cucurbita.

Lastly, I would point out the absurdity of a common
name for the Ano-uria in the United States — Jerusalem
Cucumber} After this, is it possible to take popular
names as a guide in our search for origins ?

White Gourd-melon, or Benincasa — Benincasa hispida,
Thunberg ; Benincasa cerifera, Savi.

This species, which is the only one of the genus
Benincasa, is so like the pumpkins that early botanists
took it for one,^ in spite of the waxy efflorescence on the
surface of the fruit. It is very generally cultivated in
tropical countries. It was, perhaps, a mistake to aban-
don its cultivation in Europe after having tried it, for
Naudin and the Bon Jardinier both recommend it.

It is the cumhalam of Rheede, the camolenga of
Rumphius, who had seen it cultivated in Malabar and
the Sunda Islands, and give illustiations of it.

' Darlinsrton, Agric. Bof., p. 58.

* Cucurbita Pepo of Luureiro and Eoxburgh.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 2G9

From several works, even recent ones,^ it might be
supposed that it had never been found in a wild state,
but if we notice the different names under which it
has been described we shall find that this is not the
case. Thus Gacurhita hispida, Thunberg, and Lagenaria
dasystemon, Miquel, from authentic specimens seen
by Cogniaux,^ are synon^^ms of the species, and these
plants are wild in Japan.^ Cucurhita littoralis, Hass-
karl,^ found among shrubs on the sea-shore in Java,
and Gymnopetaluni septemloburti, Miquel, also in Java,
are the Benincasa according to Cogniaux. As are
also Cucurhita vacua, Mueller," and Cucurhita iDi^Aena,
Forster, of which he has seen authentic specimens found
at Rockingham, in Australia, and in the Society Islands.
Nadeaud ^ does not mention the latter. Temporary
naturalization may be suspected in the Pacific Isles and
in Queensland, but the localities of Java and Japan seem
quite certain. I am the more inclined to believe in the
latter, that the cultivation of the Benincasa in China dates
from the remotest antiquity.''

Towel Gourd — Momordica cylindrica, Linnseus ; Luffa
cylindrica, Roemei".

Naudin ^ says, " Luffa cylindrica, which in some of
our colonies has retained the Indian name petole, is
probably a native of Southern Asia, and perhaps also
of Africa, Australia, and Polynesia. It is cultivated by
the peoples of most hot countries, and it appears to be
naturalized in many places where it doubtless did not
exist originally." Cogniaux^ is more positive. "An
indigenous species," he says, " in aU the tropical regions

' Clarke, in Fl. of Brit. Ind., n. p. 616.

* Cogniaux, in de Candolle, Monorjr. Phan^r.,\u. p. 513,

* Thunberg, FL Jap., p. 322', Franchet and Ssivatier, Enum. PL Jap.,
i. p. 173

* Hasskarl, CataL Horti, Bogor. Alter., p. 190 ; Miquel, Flora Indo-
Batav.

5 Mueller, Fragm., vi. p. 186 ; Forster, Prodr. (no description) ;
Seeniann, Jour. ofBot.,\\. p. 50.

* Nadeaud, Plan. Usu. des Taitiens, Enum. des PL Tndig. a Taiti.
' Bretschneider, letter of Aug. 26, 1881.

* Naudin, Ann. Sc. Nat., 4th series, vol. xii. p, 121.

* Cogniaux, Monogr. Phane'r., iii. p. 458.

270 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

of the old world; often cultivated and l.alf wild in
America between the tropics." In con&ultlrg tlie works
quoted in these two monographs, and htrbaria, its
character as a wild plant will be found sometimes
conclusively certified.

With regard to Asia/ Rheede saw it in sandy places,
in woods and other localities in Malabar; Roxl urgh says
it is wild in Hindu-5tan ; Kurz, in the forests of Burmah ;
Thwaites, in Ceylon. I have specimens from Ceylon and
Khasia. There is no Sanskrit name known, and Dr.
Bretschneider, in his work On the S vdy and Value of
Chinese Botanical WorJcs, and in his letters mentions no
lufta either wild or cultivated in China. I suppose,
therefore, that its cultivation is not ancient even in
India.

The species is wild in Australia, on the banks of
rivers in Queensland,^ and hence it is probable it will
be found wild in the Asiatic Archipelago, where Rum-
phius, Miquel, etc., only mention it as a cultivated plant.

Herbaria contain a great number of specimens from
tropical Africa, from Mozambique to the coast of Guinea,
and even as far as Angola, but collectors do not appear
to have indicated whether they were cultivated or wild
plants. In the Delessert herbarium, Heudelot indicates it
as growing in fertile ground in the environs of Galam. Sir
Joseph Hooker^ quotes this without affirming anything.
Schweinfurth and Ascheron,* who ara always careful in
this matter, say the species is only a cultivated one in
the Nile Valley. This is curious, because the plant
was seen in the seventeenth century in Egyptian gar-
dens under the Arabian name of luf,^ whence the genus
was called Luffa, and the species Luffa a^gyptica. The
ancient Egyptian monuments show no trace of it. The

' Eheede, Rort. 3Ialah., viii. p. 15, t. 8 ; Eoxburgli. Fl. Ind., iii. p. 714,
as L. clavafa ; Kurz, Contrib., ii. p. 100; Thwaites. Envm.

' Mueller, Fragmenta, iii. p. 107 ; Bontbam, 1'. Austr., iii. p. 317,
under names which Naudin aud Ccgni lux rega d as synonyms of
L. cylindrica.

» Hooker, in Oliver, Fl. of Trap. Afr , ii. p. 530.

* Schweinfurth and Ascheron, Aufzdhl'ivg, p. 238,

« Forskal, Fl. ^jypt., p. 75.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 271

absence of a Hebrew name is another reason for believing
that its cultivation was introduced into Egypt in the
Middle Ages. It is now grown in the Delta, not only
for the fruit but also for the export of the seed, from
Avhich a preparation is made for softening the skin.

The species is cultivated in Brazil, Guiana, Mexico,
etc., but I find no indication that it is indigenous in
America. It appears to have been here and there
naturalized, in iS^icaragua for instance, from a specimen
of Levy's.

In brief, the Asiatic origin is certain, the African very
doubtful, that of America imaginary, or rather the efftct
of naturalization.

Angular Luffa — Lvffa acutangida, Roxburgh.

The origin of this species, cultivated like the pre-
ceding one in all tro])ical countries, is not very clear,
according to Naudin and Cogniaux.^ The first gives
Senegal, the second Asia, and, doubtfully, Africa. It is
hardly necessary to say that Linn?eus ^ w^as mistaken in
indicating Tartary and China. Clarke, in Sir Joseph
Hooker's flora, saj^s without hesitation that it is in-
dio-enous in British India. Rheede ^ formerly saw the
plant in sandy soil in Malabar. Its natural area seems
to be limited, for Thwaites in Ceylon, Kurz in British
Burmah, and Loureiro in China and Cochin-China,* onl}^
o-ive the species as cultivated, or growing on rubbish-
liea])S near gardens. Rumphius ^ calls it a Bengal plant.
No luffa has been long cultivated in China, according
to a letter of Dr. Bretschneider. No Sanskrit name is
known. All these are indications of a comparatively
recent culture in Asia.

A variety with bitter fruit is common in British
India ^ in a wild state, since there is no inducement to

> Naud^n, Ann. Sc. Kat.,4th series, vol. xii. p. 122 ; Cogniaux, in de
Candolle, Mono'jr. Phane'r., iii. p. 459.

* LinuEeus, Species, p. 1436, as Cucumis acidangulus.
» Eheede, Hort. Malah., viii. p. 13, t. 7.

4 Thwaites, Enum. Ceylan, p. 12G ; Kurz, Contrih., ii. p. 101 ;
Lonreiro, Fl. Cochiv., p. 727.

* Rumphius, Amhoin, v. p. 408, t. 149.
e Clarke, in Fl. Brit Ind., ii. p. G14.

272 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

cultivate it. It exists also in the Suncla Islands. It
is Luff a amara, Roxburgh, and L. sylvestris, Miquel.
L. subangvlata, Miquel, is another variety which grows
in Java, which M. Cogniaux also unites with the others
from authentic specimens which he saw.

M. Naudin does not say what traveller gives the
plant as wild in Senegambia ; but he says the negroes
call it pojoengaye, and as this is the name of the
Mauritius planters,^ it is probable that the plant is
cultivated in Senegal, and perhaps naturalized near
dwellings. Sir Joseph Hooker, in the Flora of Tropical
Africa, gives the species, but without proof that it
is wild in Africa, and Cogniaux is still more brief
Schweinfurth and Ascheron ^ do not mention it either
as wild or cultivated in Egypt, Nubia, and Abyssinia.
There is no trace of its ancient cultivation in EgjqDt.

The species has often been sent from the West Indies,
New Granada, Brazil, and other parts of America, but
there is no indication that it has been long in these places,
nor even that it occurs at a distance from gardens in a
really wild state.

The conditions or probabilities of origin, and of date
of culture, are, it will be seen, identical for the two
cultivated species of lufta. In support of the hypothesis
that the latter is not of African origin, I may say that
the four other species of the genus are Asiatic or
American , and as a sign that the cultivation of the luffa
is not very ancient, I will add that the form of the fruit
varies much less than in the other cultivated cucar-
bitacea.

Snake Gonrd—TricJiosanthes anguina, Linnseus.

An annual creeping Cacurhitacea, remarkable for its
fringed corolla. It is called j)etole in Mauritius, from a
Java name. The fruit, which is something like a long
Heshy pod of some leguminous plants, is eaten cooked
like a cucumber in tropical Asia.

As the botanists of the seventeenth century received
the plant from China, they imagined that the plant Avas

* Bojpr, TInrt. Maimt.

* Schweinfurth and Ascherson, Aufzdhlwng, p. 2fi8.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 273

indigenous there, but it was probably cultivated. Dr,
Bretsclineider ^ tells us that the Chinese name, inxanlcua,
means " cucumber of the southern barbarians." Its home
must be India, or the Indian Archipelago, No author,
however, asserts that it has been found in a distinctly
wild state. Thus Clarke, in Hooker's Flora of British
India, ii. p. 610, says only, " India, cultivated." Naudin,^
before him, said, " Inhabits the East Indies, where it is
much cultivated for its fruits. It is rarely found wild."
Ilumphius ^ is not more positive for Amboyna. Loureiro
and Kurz in Cochin-China and Burmah, Blume and
Miquel in the islands to the south of Asia, have only seen
the plant cultivated. The thirty-nine other species of
the genus are all of the old world, found between China
or Japan, the west of India and Australia. They belong
especially to India and the Malay Archipelago. I
consider the Indian origin as the most probable one.

The species has been introduced into Mauritius, where
it sows itself round cultivated places. Elsewhere it is
little diffused. No Sanskrit name is known,

Chayote, or Choco — Sechiuui edule, Swartz.

This plant, of the order Cucurbitacece, is cultivated
in tropical America for its fruits, shaped like a pear, and
tasting like a cucumber. They contain only one seed, so
that the flesh is abundant.

The species alone constitutes the genus Sechium
There are specimens in every herbarium, but generally
collectors do not indicate whether they are naturalized,
or really wild, and apparently indigenous in the country.
Without speaking of works in which this plant is said to
come from the East Indies, which is entirely a mistake,
several of the best give Jamaica ^ as the original home.
However, P. Browne,^ in the middle of the last century,
said positively that it was cultivated there, and Sloane
does not mention it. Jacquin ^ says that it " inhabits

* Bretschneider, Study and Value, etc., p. 17.

* Nandin, Ann. Sc. Nat., 4th series, vol. xviii. p. 190.
' Rumphius, Amboin, v. pi. 148.

* Grisebach, Flora of Brit. W. India IsL, p. 286.

* Browne, Jamaica, p. 355.

* Jacqu'n, Stirp. Amer. Hist., p. 259,

274 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Cuba, and is cultiv^ated there," and Richard copies this
phrase in the flora of R. de La Sagra Avithout adding
any proof. Naudin says,^ "a Mexican plant," but he
does not give his reasons for asserting this. Cogniaux,^
in his recent monograph, mentions a great number of
specimens gathered from Brazil to the West Indies with- I
out saying if he had seen any one of these given as wild. 1
Seemann^saw the plant cultivated at Panama, and he '
adds a remark, important if correct, namely, that the
name ckayote, common in the isthmus, is the corruption
of an Aztec word, chayotl. This is an indication of an
ancient existence in Mexico, but I do not find the word
in Hernandez, the classic author on the Mexican plants
anterior to the Spanish conquest. The chayote was not
cultivated in Cayenne ten years ago.* Nothing indicates
an ancient cultivation in Brazil. The species is not
mentioned by early writers, such as Piso and Marcgraf,
and the name chuchu, given as Brazilian,^ seems to me to
come from chocho, the Jamaica name, which is perhaps
a corruption of the Mexican word.

The plant is probably a native of the south of Mexico
and of Central America, and was transported into the
West India Islands and to Brazil in the eisrhteenth
century. The species was afterwards introduced into
Mauritius and Algei-ia, where it is very successful.**

Indian Fig, or Prickly Pear — Ojnintia Jicus inclica,
Miller.

This fleshy plant of the Cactus family, which produces
the fruit known in the south of Europe as the Indian fig,
has no connection with the fig tree, nor has the fruit
with the fig. Its origin is not Indian but American.
Everything is erroneous and absurd in this common
name. However, since Linnaeus took his botanical name
from it. Cactus Jicus indlca, afterwards connected with
the genus Opuntia, it was necessary to retain the specific

' Nan Tin, Ann. Sc. Nat, 4th series, vol. xviii. p. 205,

' In Monogr. Phaner., iii. p. 902.

' S eminn, Bot. of Herald, p. 128.

* Sairot, Journal de la Soc. d'Hortic. de France, 1872.

' Ccgaiaus, FL B, asil, fasc. 78. » Sagot, Hid.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 275

name to avoid chaniYes which are a source of confusion,
and to recall the popular denomination. The prickly
forms, and those more or less free from spines, have been
considered by some authors as distinct species, but an
attentive examination leads us to regard them as one.-^

The species existed both wild and cultivated in
Mexico before the arrival of the Spaniards. Hernandez ^
describes nine varieties of it, which shows the antiquity ot
its cultivation. The cochineal insect appears to feed on one
of these, almost without thorns, more than on the others,
and it has been transported with the plant to the Canary
Isles and elsewhere. It is not known how far its habitat
extended in America before man transported j)ieces of
the jilant, shaped like a racket, and the fruits, which are
two easy ways of propagating it. Perhaps the wild
plants in Jamaica, and the other West India Islands
mentioned by Sloane,^ in 1725, were the result of its
introduction by the Spaniards. Certainly the species
has become naturalized in this direction as far as the
climate permits ; for instance, as far as Southern Florida.^

It was one of the first plants which the Spaniards in-
troduced to the old world, both in Europe and Asia. Its
singular appearance was the more striking that no other
species belonging to the family had before been seen.^
All sixteenth-century botanists mention it, and the plant
became naturalized in the south of Europe and in Africa
as its cultivation was introduced. It was in Spain that
the prickly pear was first known under the American
name tuna, and it was probably the Moors who took it
into Barbary when they were expelled from the peninsula.
They called it fig of the Christians.^ The custom of
using the plant for fences, and the nourishing propertv
of the fruits, which contain a large proportion of sugar,
have determined its extension round the Mediterranean,
and in general in all countries near the tropics.

» Webb and Bertlielot, Phytog. Canar., sect. 1, p. 208.

* Hi;ruanc)ez, Theo. Novce Hisp., p. 78. ' Sloai e, Jamaica, ii. p. ISO.

* Chapman, Flora of Southern States, p. 144.

* The cactos of the Greeks was quite a different plant.

* Steinheil, in Boisaier, Voyage Bot. en Espagjie, i. p. 25.

13

276 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

The cultivation of the cochineal, wliich was unlavour-
able to the production of the fruit,^ is dying out since the
manufacture of colouring matters by chemical processes.

Gooseberry — Rihes grossularia and 11. Vacrispa,
Linmicus.

The fruit of the cultivated varieties is generally
smooth, or provided with a few stiff hairs, while that of
the wild varieties has soft and shorter hairs ; but inter-
mediate forms exist, and it has been shown by experi-
ment that by sowing the seeds of the cultivated fruit,
plants with either smooth or hairy fruit are obtained.^
There is, therefore, but one species, which has produced
unde;: cultivation one principal variety and several sub-
varieties as to the size, colour, or taste of the fruit.

The gooseberry grows wild throughout temperate
Europe, from Southern Sweden to the mountainous
regions of Central Spain, of Ital}^, and of Greece.^ It is
also mentioned in Northern Africa, but the last published
catalogue of Algerian plants* indicates it only in the
mountains of Aures, and Ball has found a variety in
the Atlas of Marocco.^ It grows in the Caucasus,^ and
under more or less dillbrent forms in the western
Himalayas.'

The Greeks and Romans do not mention the species,
which is rare in the South, and which is hardly worth
planting where grapes will ripen. It is especially in
Germany, Holland, and England that it has been culti-
vated from the sixteenth century,^ principally as a
seasoning, whence the English name, and the French
groseUle d 'maquereaux (mackerel curi'ant). A wine
is also made from it.

The frequency of its cultivation in the British Isles
and in other places wheie it is found wild, which are

' Webb and Berthelot, Phytog. Canar., vol. iii sect. 1, p. 208

* Rob.son, quoted in English Botany, pi. 2057

' Nymau, Conspectus Ft. Em-opeoR, p. 2GG ; Boissier, FJ. Or., ii. p. 815.

* Munby, Catal., edit. 2, p. 15.

* Ball, Spicilegium Fl. Maroc, p. 449.
Ledebour, Fl. Ross., ii. p. 19 4; Boisaier. uhi supra.

•

' Clarke, in Hooker's Fl. Brit. Ind., ii. p. -tlO,

(

Piiillips, Account of Fruits, p. 17-i.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 277

often near gardens, has suggested to some English
botanists the idea of an accidental naturalization. This
is likely enough in Ireland ; ^ but as it is an essentially
European species, I do not see why it should not have
existed in England, where the wild plant is more common,
since the establishment of most of the species of the
British flora ; that is to say, since the end of the glacial
period, before the separation of the island from the
continent. Phillips quotes an old English nsivae,f€aherry
or feahes, which supports the theory of an ancient exist-
ence, and two Wdsh names/ of which I cannot, however,
certify the originality.

Eed Currant — Ribes riibrum, Linneeus.

The common red currant is wild throuo-hout Northern
and Temperate Europe, and in Siberia^ as far as Kamts-
chatka, and in America, from Canada and Vermont to
the mouth of the river Mackenzie.*

Like the preceding species, it was unknown to the
Greeks and Romans, and its cultivation was only intro-
d iced in the Middle Ages. The cultivated plant hardly
differs from the wild one. That the nlant was foreign
to the south of Europa is shown by the name of groseillier
d'outremer (currant from beyond the sea), given in France^
in the sixteentli century. In Geneva the currant is still
commonly called raisin de mare, and in the canton of
Soleure vieertviibli. I do not know why the species was
supposed, three centuries ago, to have come from be-
yond seas Perhaps this should be understood to mean
that it was brought by the Danes and the Northmen,
and that these peoples from beyond the northern seas
introduced its cultivation. I doubt it, howevei", for the
Ribes rubrum is wild in almost the whole of Great
Britain** and in Normandy;^ the English, who were in
constant communication with the Danes, did not cultivate
it as late as 1557, from a list of the fruits of that epoch

' Moore and More, Conti-ih. to the Cyhele Hijherniza, p. 113.
■■^ Davies, Welsh Botanology, p. 21.
^ Ledebour, Fl. Ross., ii. p. 199.

* Turrey and Gray, Fl. N. Amer., i. p. 150. * Doiloneus, p. 748.

• Watson, Cyhele Brit.

' Brebisson, Flore de Normandie, p. 99.

278 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

drawn up by Th. Tu.sser, and published by Pliillips ; '
and even i\ the time of Gerard, in 1597,^ its cultivation
was rare, and the plant had no particular narae.^ Lastly,
there are French and Breton names which indicate a
cultivation anterior to the Normans in the west of
France.

The old names in France are given in the dictionary
by Menage. According to him, red currants are called at
Rouen gardes, at Caen grades, in Lower Normandy g^xi-
dilles, and in Anjou castiUes. Menage derives all these
names from rubius, ruhicus, etc., by a series of imaginary
transformations, from the word nt6er, red. Legonidec*
tells us that red currants are also called Kastilez (1. liquid)
in Brittanv, and he derives this name from Castille, as it
a fruit scarcely known in Spain and abundant in the
north could come from Spain. These words, found
both in Brittany and beyond its limits, appear to me
to be of Celtic origin ; and I may mention, in suppoit
of this theory, that in Legonidec's dictionary gardis
means rough, harsh, pungent, sour, etc., which gives a
hint as to the etymology. The generic name Bihes has
caused other errors. It was thought the plant might be
one which was so called by the Arabs; but the word
comes rather from a name for the currant very common
in tiie north, onbs in Danish,^ risp and resp in Swedish.^
The Slav names are quite different and in considerable
number.

Black Currant — Cassis ; Ribes nigrum, Linn.ieus.

The black currant grows wild in the north of Europe,
from Scot'and and Lapland as far as the north of France
and Italy ; in Bo:-nia,'' Annenia,^ throughout Siberia, in
the basin of the river Amur, and in the western Hima-

' Phillips, Account of Fruits, p. 136.

* Gerard, Hn-hal, p. 11 13.

* That of currant is a later introdtiction, given from the resemblance
to the grapes of Corintli (Phillips, ibid.).

■* Legonidec, Diction. Celto-Breton.

* Moritzi, Diet. Inedit des Noms Vulgaires.

* Liiinceus, Flora Suecica, n. 197.

' Watson, Ccmpend. Gybele, i. p. 177 ; Fries, Siimma Veg. Scand., p.
39; Nvman, Conspect. Fl. Europ., p. 2G6.

* Boissier, Fl. Or., ii. p 815.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 270

layas ; ^ it often becomes naturalized, as for instance, in
the centre of France.^

This shrub was unknown in Greece and Italy, for it
is proper to cokler countries. From the variety of the
names in all the languages, even in those anterior to the
Aryans, of the north of Europe, it is clear that this fruit
was very early sought after, and its cultivation was pro-
bably begun before the Middle Ages. J. Bauhin^ says it
was planted in gardens in France and Italy, but most
sixteenth-century authors do not mention it. In the
Histoire cle la Vie Privee des Frangais, by Le Grand
d'Aussy, published in 1872, vol. i. p. 232, the following
curious passage occurs : " The black currant has been
cultivated hardly forty years, and it owes its reputa-
tion to a pamphlet entitled Culture du Cassis, in which
the author attributed to this shrub all the virtues it is
possible to imagine." Further on (vol. iii. p. 80), the
author mentions the frequent use, since the publication of
the pamphlet in question, of a liqueur made from the
black currant. Bosc, who is always accurate in his articles
in the Dictionnaire d' Agriculture, mentions this fashion
under the head Currant, but he is careful to add, " It
has been very long in cultivation for its fruit, which has
a peculiar odour agreeable to some, disagreeable to others,
and which is held to be stomachic and diuretic." It is
also used in the manufacture of the liqueurs known as
ratafia de Cassis.*

Olive — Olea Europea, Linn?eus.

The wild olive, called in botanical books the variety

> Ledebonr, Fl. Ross., p. 200 ; Maximowicz, Primitiw Fl. Amur., p.
119 ; Clarke, in Hooter, Fl. Brit. Ind., ii. p. 411.

* Borean, Flore du Centre de la France, edit. 3, p. 262.
3 Baiihin, Hist. Plant., ii. p. 99.

* This name Cassis is curious. Littre says ttat it seems to have been
introduced late into the language, and that he does not kn )w its origin.
I have not met with it in botanical works earlier than the middle of the
seventeenth century. My manuscript collection of common names, among
more than forty names for this species in different languages or dialects
has not one which resembles it. Buchoz, in his Dictionnaire desPlantes,
1770, i. p. 289, calls the plant the Cassis or Cassetier des Poitevins.^ The
old French name was Poivrier or groseillier noir. Larousse's dictionary
says that good liqueurs were made at Cassis in Provence. Can this be
the origin of the name ?

280 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS,

sylvestris or oleaster, is distinguished from the cultivated
olive tree by a smaller fruit, of which the flesh is not so
abundant. The best fruits are obtained by selecting the
seeds, buds, or grafts from good varieties.

The oleaster now exists over a wide area east and
west of Syria, from the Punjab and Beluchistan ^ as far
as Portugal and even Madeira, the Canaries and even
Marocco,^ and from the Atlas northwards as far as the south
of France, the ancient Macedonia, the Crimea, and the
Caucasus.^ If we compare the accounts of travellers and
of the authors of floras, it will be seen that towards the
limits of this area there is often a doubt as to the wild
and indigenous (that is to say ancient in the countr}^)
nature of the species. Sometimes it offers itself as a
shrub which fruits little or not at all ; and sometimes, as
in the Crimea, the plants are rare as though they had
escaped, as an exception, the destructive effects of winters
too severe to allow of a definite establishment. As
regards Algeria and the south of France, these doubts
have been the subject of a discussion among competent
men in the Botanical Society.* They repose upon the
uncontestable fact that birds often transport the seed of
the olive into uncultivated and sterile places, where the
wild form, the oleaster, is produced and naturalized.

The question is not clearly stated when we ask if
such and such olive trees of a given locality are reall}^
wild. In a woody species which lives so long and shoots
again from the same stock when cut off by accident, it is
impossible to know the origin of the individuals observed.
They may have been sown by man or birds at a very
early epoch, for olive trees of more than a thousand years
old are known. The effect of such sowing is a naturaliza-
tion, which is equivalent to an extension of area. The
point in question is, therefore, to discover what was the

' Aitchison, Catalogup, p. 8G.

* Lo^ve, 3Ian. Fl. of Iladeira, ii. p. 20 ; Webb and Berthelot, Eist.
Nat. des Canaries, Geog. Bot., p. 48; Ball, Spicil. Fl. Maroc, p. 5G5.

' Cossou, Bull. Soc. Bot. France, iv. p. 107, and vii. p. 31 ; Grisebach,
Spicil. Fl. Rumelicce, ii. p. 71 ; Steven, Verzeich. der Taurisch. Halbins.,
p. 248 ; Ledebonr, Fl. Ross., p. 38.

♦ Bulletin, iv. p. 107.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 281

home of the species in very early prehistoric times, and
how this area lias grown larger by different modes of
transport.

It is not by the study of living olive trees that this
question can be answered. "We must seek in what coun-
tries the cultivation began, and how it was propagated.
The more ancient it is in any region, the more probable
it is that the species has existed wild there from the time
of those geological events which took place before the
coming of prehistoric man.

The earliest Hebrew books mention the olive sait, or
zeit,''- both wild and cultivated. It was one of the trees
promised in the land of Canaan. It is first mentioned in
Genesis, where it is said that the dove sent out by Noah
should bring back a branch of olive. If we take into
account this tradition, which is accompanied by miracu-
lous details, it may be added that the discoveries of
modern erudition show that the Mount Ararat of the
Bible must be to the east of the mountain in Armenia
which now bears that name, and which was anciently
called Masis. From a study of the text of the Book of
Genesis, Fran9ois Lenormand ^ places the mountain in
question in the Hindu Kush, and even near the sources
of the Indus. This theory supposes it near to the land of
the Aryans, yet the olive has no Sanskrit name, not even
in that Sanskrit from which the Indian languages ^ are
derived. If the olive had then, as now, existed in the
Punjab, the eastern Aryans in their migrations towards
the south would probably have given it a name, and if it
had existed in the Mazanderan, to the south of the Cas-
pian Sea, as at the present day, the western Aryans
would perhaps have known it. To these negative indi-
cations, it can only be objected that the wild olive attracts
no considerable attention, and that the idea of extracting
oil from it perhaps arose late in this part of Asia.

» Rosentn filler, Handhuch der Bihl. Alterth., vol. iv. p. 258 ; Hamilton,
Bot. de la Bible, p. 80, where the paFsages are indicated.

* Fr. Lenormand, Manuel de I'Hist. Auc. de I'Orient., 1869, vol. i.

p. 31.

» Fick, Worterhuch, Piddington, Index, only mentions one Hindu
name, jwZpai.

282 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Herodotus * tells us that Babylonia grew no olive trees,
and that its inhabitants made use of oil of sesame. It
is certain that a country so subject to inundation was
not at all favourable to the olive. The cold excludes the
higher plateaux and the mountains of the north of
Persia.

I do not know if there is a name in Zend, but the
Semitic word sait must date from a remote antiquity, for
it is found in modern Persian, seihtn,'^ and in Arabic,
zeitun, sjetun.^ It even exists in Turkish and among
the Tartars of the Crimea, seitun,^ which may signify
that it is of Turanian origin^ or from the remote epoch
when the Turanian and Semitic peoples intermixed.

The ancient Egyptians cultivated the olive tree, which
they called tat.^ Several botanists have ascertained the
presence of branches or leaves of the olive in the .sarco-
phagi.^ Nothing is more certain, though Hehn' has
recently asserted the contrary, without giving any proof
in support of his opinion. It would be interesting to
know to what dynasty belong the most ancient mummy-
cases in which olive branches have been found. The
Egyptian name, quite ditierent to the Semitic, shows an
existence more ancient than the earliest dynasties. I
shall mention presently another fact in su])port of this
great antiquity.

Theophrastus says ^ that the olive was much grown,
and the harvest of oil considerable in Cyrenaica, but
he does not say that the species Avas wild there, and the
quantity of oil mentioned seems to point to a cultivated
variety. The low-lying, very hot country between Egypt
and the Atlas is little favourable to a naturalization
of the olive outside the plantations. Kralik, a very
accurate botanist, did not anywdiere see on his journey

» Herodotus, Hist., bk. i. c. 193. * Boissier. FI. Orient., iv. p. 36.

' Ebn Baithar, Germ, trans., p. 569; Forskal, Plant. Egypt., p. -19.

♦ Boissier, ihid. ; Steven, ibid.

* linger, Die Pflanz. der Alten. JRgypt, p. 45.

• De Candolle, Physiol. Veget., p. 696; Pleyte, quoted by Braun and
Ascbersoii, Sifzher. Naturfor. Ges., May 15, 1877.

' H<'hu, Kulturpflcntzen, edit. 3, p. 88, line 9.

* Theoj hrattus, Hitit. Plant., lib. iv. c. 3.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOE TEEIR FRUITS. 283

to Tunis and into Egypt the olive growing wild,* although
it is cultivated in the oases. In Egypt it is only culti-
vated, according to Schweinfurth and Ascherson,^ in their
resume of the Flora of the Nile Valley.

Its prehistoric area probably extended from Syria
towards Greece, for the wild olive is very common along the
southern coast of Asia Minor, where it forms reoular
woods.^ It is doubtless here and in the archipelago that
the Greeks early knew the tree. If they had not known
it on their own territory, had received it from the
Semites, they would not have given it a special name,
elaia, whence the Latin olea. The Iliad and the Odyssey
mention the hardness of the olive wood and the practice
of anointing the body with olive oil. The latter was in
constant use for food and lighting. Mythology attributed
to Minerva the planting of the olive in Attica, which
probably signifies the introduction of cultivated varieties
and suitable processes for extracting the oil. Aristreus
introduced or perfected the manner of pressing the fruit.

The same mythical personage carried, it was said, the
olive tree from the north of Greece into Sicily and Sar-
dinia. It seems that this may have been early done by
the Phoenicians, but in support of the idea that the
species, or a perfected variety of it, was introduced by
the Greeks, I may mention that the Semitic name seit
has left no trace in the islands of the Mediterranean.
We find the Gra?co-Latin name here as in Italy,* while
upon the neighbouring coast of Africa, and in Spain,
the names are Egyptian or Arabic, as I shall explain
directly.

The Romans knew the olive later than the Greeks.
According to Pliny,^ it was only at the time of Tarquin
the Ancient, 627 B.C., but the species probably existed
already in Great Greece, as in Greece and Sicily. Besides,
Pliny was speaking of the cultivated olive.

A remarkable fact, and one which has not been noted

> Kralik, Bull. Soc. Bot. Fr., iv. p. 103.

^ Beitra-ge zur Fl. J^thiopiens, p. 281.

8 Balansa, BvU. Soc. Bot. de Fr., iv. p. 107.

« Moris, Fl. Sard., iii. p. 9 ; Bertoloai, Fl. Ital., i. p, 4,3.

• Pliny, Hist., lib. xv. cap. 1.

284 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

or discussed by philologists, is that the Berber name for
the olive, both tree and fruit, has the root taz or tas,
similar to the tat of the ancient Egyptians. The Kabyles
of the district of Algiers, according to the French-
Berber dictionary, published by the French Govenaraent,
calls the wild olive tazebboujt, tesettha, ou zebbouj, and
the grafted olive tazevimourt, tasettha, ou' zemmour. The
Touaregs, another Berber nation, call it tamahinet} These
are strong indications of the antiquity of the olive in
Africa. The Arabs having conquered this countiy and
driven back the Berbers into the mountains and the
desert, having likewise subjected Spain excepting the
Basque country, the names derived from the Semitic zeit
have prevailed even in Spanish. The Arabs of Algiers say
zenboiidje for the wild, zitoun for the cultivated olive,^ zit
for olive oil. The Andalusians call the wild olive aze-
bucJie, and the cultivated aceyiimo^ In other provinces
we find the name of Latin origin, olivio, side by side with
the Arabic words.* The oil is in Spanish aceyte, which
is almost the Hebrew name ; but the holy oils are called
oleos Santos, because they belong to Rome. The Basques
use the Lc.tin name for the olive ti'ee.

Early voyagers to the Canaries, Bontier for instance,
in 1403, mention the olive tree in these islands, where
modern botanists regard it as indigenous.^ It may have
been introduced by the Phoenicians, if it did not pre-
viously exist there. We do not know if the Guanchos
had names for the olive and its oil. Webb and Berthelot
do not give any in their learned chapter on the language
of the aborigines,^ so the question is open to conjecture.
It seems to me that the oil would have played an impor-
tant part among the Guanchos if they had possessed the
olive, and that some traces of it would have remained in
the actual speech of the people. From this point of view

. * Duveyricr, Les Touaregs chi Nord (ISGi), p. 179.

* Munbv, Flore de I'Algerie, p. 2 ; Debeaux, Catal. Boghar, p. 63.

* BciEsier, Vcjage Bot. en Espagne, edit. 1, vol. ii. p. 407.

* Willkoirm and Lange, Prod. Fl. Hispan., ii. p. 672.

* Welb and Berthelot, Hist. Nat. des Cmmries, Geog. Bot., pp. 47, 4S.

* Webb and Berthelot, ibid., Eihnographie, p ISS.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 285

the naturalization in the Canaries is perhaps not more
ancient than the Phoenician vovaoes.

No leaf of the olive has hitherto been found in the
tufa of the south of France, of Tuscany, and Sicily, where
the laurel, the myrtle, and other shrubs now existino-
have been discovered. This is an indication, until the
contrary is proved, of a subsequent naturalization.

The olive thrives in dry climates like that of Syria
and Assyria. It succeeds at the Cape, in parts of America,
in Australia, and doubtless it will become wild in these
places when it has been more generally planted. Its
slow growth, the necessity of grafting or of choosing the
shoots of good varieties, and especially the concurrence
of other oil-producing species, have hitherto impeded its
extension ; but a tree which produces in an ungrateful
soil should not be indefinitely neglected. Even in the
old world, where it has existed for so many thousands
of years, its productiveness might be doubled by taking
the trouble to graft on wild trees, as the French have
done in Algeria.

Star Apple — Chrysoj)hylliiiin Ca'inito, Linnseus.-

The star apple belongs to the family of the Sapotaceoe,
It yields a fruit valued in tropical America, though
Europeans do not care much for it. I do not find that
anj^ pains have been taken to introduce it into the colonies
of Asia or Africa. Tussac gives a good illustration of it
in his Flore des Antilles, vol. ii; ph 9.

Seemann ^ saw the star apple wild in several places
in the Isthmus of Panama. De Tussac, a San Domingo
colonist, considered it wild in the forests of the West
India Islands, and Grisebach ^ says it is both wild and
cultivated in Jamaica, San Domincro, Antig-ua, and Tri-
nidad. Sloane considered it had escaped from cultivation
in Jamaica, and Jacquin says vaguely, "Inhabits Mar-
tinique and San Domingo." ^

Caimito, or Abi—Lucuma Ca'inito, Alph. de Candolle.

This Peruvian Caimito must not be confounded with

* Seemann, Bot. of the Herald., p. 1G6.

s Grisebach, Flora of Brit. W. Ind. M., p. 398.

' Sloane, Jamaica, ii. p. 170; Jacquin, Amer., p. 53,

286 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

tlie Chrysopkyllum Ca'inito of the West Indies. Both
belong to the family Sapotacese, but the flowers and
seeds are different. There is a fio-ure of this one in Ruiz
and Pavon, Flora Peruviana, vol. iii. pi. 240. It has
been transported from Peru, where it is cultivated, to Ega
on the Amazon River, and to Para, where it is commonly
called ahi or abiu} Ruiz and Pavon say it is wild in
the warm regions of Peru, and at the foot of the Andes.

Marmalade Plum, or Mammae Sapota — Lucuma 'ma'ni-
mosa, Gtertner.

This fruit tree, of the order Sapotacefe and a native
of tropical America, has been the subject of several
mistakes in works on botany ^ There exists no satis-
factory and complete illustration of it as yet, because
colonists and travellers think it is too well known to
send selected specimens of it, such as may be described
in herbaria. This neolect is common enouo-h in the
case of cultivated plants. The mammee is cultivated in
the West Indies and in some warm regions of America.
Sagot tells us it is grown in Venezuela, but not in
Cayenne.^ I do not find that it has been transported
into Africa and Asia, the Philippines* excepted. This
is probably due to the insipid taste of the fruit. Hum-
boldt and Bonpland found it wild in the forests on the
banks of the Orinoco.^ All authors mention it in the
West Indies, but as cultivated or without asserting that
it is wild. In Brazil it is only a garden species.

Sapodilla — Sapota achras, Miller.

The sapodilla is the most esteemed of the order
Sapotace83, and one of the best of tropical fruits. " An
over-ripe sapodilla," says Descourtilz, in his Flore des
Antilles, "is melting, and has the sweet perfumes of
honey, jasmin, and lily of the valley." There is a very
good illusti'ation in the Botanical Magazine, pis. 3111
and 3112, and in Tussac, Flore des Antilles, i. pi. 5. It

* Flora Branl-, vol. vii. p. 88.

' See the synonyms in the Flora Brasiliensis, vol. vii. p. 66.

* Sagot, Journ. Soc. d'Hortic. de France, 1872, p. 347.

* Blanco, Fl. de Filipinas, under the name Achras lucumn.
' Nova Genera, iii. p. 240.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 287

has been introduced into gardens in Mauritius, the Malay
Arclip&lago, and India, from the time of Rheede and
Rumphius, but no one disputes its American origin.
Several botanists have seen it wild in the forests of the
Isthmus of Panama, of Campeachy/ of Venezuela,^ and
perhaps of Trindad.^ In Jamaica, in the time of Sloane,
it existed only in gardens^ It is very doubtful that
it is wild in the other West India Islands, although
perhaps the seeds, scattered here and there, may have
naturalized it to a certain degree. Tussac says that the
young plants are not easy to rear in the plantations.

Aubergine — Solanum melongena, Linnaeus ; Solanum
esculent um, Dunal.

The aubergine has a Sanskrit name, vaiifa, and several
names, whichPiddington in his Index considers as both
Sanskrit and Bengali, such as hong, haHaJwn, mahoti,
hAvgoli. Wallich, in his edition of Roxburgh's Indian
Flora, gives vartta, varttakou, varttaka hunguna, whence
the Hindustani hungan. Hence it cannot be doubted
that the species has been known in India from a very
remote epoch. Rumphius had seen it in gardens in the
Sunda Islands, and Loureiro in those of Cochin-China.
Thunberg does not mention it in Japan, though several
varieties are now cultivated in that country. The Greeks
and Romans did not know the species, and no botanist
mentions it in Europe before the beginning of the seven-
teenth century,^ but its cultivation must have spread
towards Africa before the Middle Ages. The Arab phy-
sician, Ebn Baithar,^ who wrote in the thirteenth century,
speaks of it, and he quotes Rhasis, who lived in the
ninth centurj^ Rauwolf had seen the plant in the
gardens of Aleppo at the end of the sixteenth century.
It was called melanzana and bedengiam. This Arabic

* Dampier and Lnssan, in Sloane's Jamaica, ii. p. 172; Seemann,

Botany of the Herald., p. 163.

" Jacquio, Amer., [>. 59; Humboldt and Bonpland, Nova Genera, iii.
p. 239.

" Grisebach, Flora, of Brit. W. Ind., p. 309. * Sloane, ubi supra.

' Dunal, Hist, des Solanum, p. 209.

• Ebn Bfii bar, Geim. trans., i. p. 116.

' Rauw^lf, Flora Orient., ed. Groningue, p. 26,

288 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

name, wli'di Forskal writes hadinjan, is the sp^me as
the Hindustani hadavjan, which Piddington' gives. A
sign of antiquity in Nortliern Africa is the existence of
a name, tahendjalfs, among the Berbers or Kabyles of the
province of Algiei-s,^ which difiers considerably from
the Arab word. Modern travellers have found the
aubergine cultivated in the whole of the Nile Valley and
on the coast of Guinea.^ It has been transported into
America.

The cultivated form of SolanuTn melongena has not
hitherto been found wild, but most botanists are agreed
in regarding Solanum insanum, Roxburgh, and 8.
incanum, Linnaeus, as belonging to the same species.
Other synonyms are sometimes added, the result of a
study made by Nees von Esenbeck from numerous speci-
mens.^ S. insanum appears to have been lately found
wild in the Madras presidency and at Tong-dong in
Burmah. The publication of the article on the Sola-
nacese in the Flora of British India will probably give
more precise information on this head.

Red Pepper — Ca'psiciiin. In the best botanical works
the genus Capsicum is encumbered with a number of
cultivated forms, which have never been found wild, and
which differ especially in their duration (which is often
variable), or in the form of the fruit, a character which
is of little value in plants cultivated for that special
organ. I shall speak of the two species most often culti-
vated, but I cannot refrain from stating my opinion that
no capsicum is indigenous to the old world. I believe
them to be all of Ameiican origin, though I cannot
absolutely prove it. These are my reasons.

Fruits so conspicuous, so easily grown in gardens,
and so agreeable to the palate of the inhabitants of hot
countries, would have been very quickly diffused through-
out the old world, if they had existed in the south of
Asia, as it has sometimes been supposed. They would
have had names in several ancient languages. Yet

' Diet. Fr.-Berhere, published by the French Government.

* Thonuing, under the name S. edule ; Hooker, Niger Flora, p. 473.

* Trans, of Linn. Soc, xvii. p. 48, Baker, Fl. of Maurit., p. 215.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 289

neither Romans, Greeks, nor even Hebrews were ac-
quainted witli them. They are not mentioned in ancient
Chinese books> The islanders of the Pacific did not
cultivate them at the time of Cook's voyages,^ in spite
of their proximity to the Sunda Isles, where Rumphius
mentions their very general use. The Arabian physician,
Ebn Baithar, who collected in the thirteenth century all
that Eastern nations knew about medicinal plants,
says nothing about it. Roxburgh knew no Sanskrit
name for the capsicums. Later, Piddington mentions a
name for C.f>utescens, hran-maricha,^ which, he says is
Sanskrit; but this name, which may be compared to
that of black pepper (muricha, murichung), is probably
not really ancient, for it has left no trace in the Indian
languages which are derived from Sanskrit.* The wild
nature and ancient existence of the capsicum is always
uncertain, owing to its very general cultivation ; but
it seems to me to be more often doubtful in Asia than in
South America. The Indian specimens described by the
most trustworthy authors nearly all come from the her-
baria of the East India Company, in which we never
know whether a plant appeared really wild, if it was
found far from dwellings, in forests, etc. For the
localities in the Malay Archipelago authors often give
rubbish-heaps, hedges, etc. We pass to a more particular
examination of the two cultivated species.

Annual Capsicum — Capsicum annuum, Linnaeus.

This species has a number of different names in
European languages,^ which all indicate a foreign origin
and the resemblance of the taste to that of pepper. In
French it is often called ijoivre de Gu'tnee (Guinea
pepper), but also poivre du Brezil, d'Inde (Indian, Brazi-
lian pepper), etc., denominations to which no importance
can be attributed. Its cultivation was introduced into
Europe in the sixteenth century. It was one of the
peppers that Piso and Marcgraf*^ saw grown in Brazil

' Bretsclineider, On the Study and Value, etc., p. 17.

* Forster, De Plantis Escid. Insul.. etc. ' I'lddinj^ton, Index.

* Piddino:ton, at the word Capfiicuni.

* Nemnich, Lexicon, gives twelve French and eight German names.

* Piso, p. 107 ; Marcgraf, p. 39.

5 GO ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

under tlie name quija or qvAya. They say nothing as to
its origin. The species appears to have been eai"ly culti-
vated in the West Indies, where it has several Carib names.^

Botanists who have most thoroughly studied the
genus Capsicum^ do not appear to have found in herbaria
a single specimen which can be considered wild. I have
not been more fortunate. The original home is probably
Brazil.

G. grossum, Willdenow, seems to be a variety of the
same species. It is cultivated in India under the name
kafree murich, and ha free chilly, but Roxburgh did not
consider it to be of Indian origin.^

Shrubby Capsicum — Capsiciiin frutescens, Willdenow.

This species, taller and with a more woody stock than
C. annuum, is generally cultivated in the warm regions
of both hemispheres. The great part of our so-called
Cayenne pepper is made from it, but this name is given
also to the product of other peppers. Roxburgh, the
author who is most attentive to the origin of Indian
plants, does not consider it to be wild in India. Bin me
says it is naturalized in the Malay Archipelago in hedges.*
In America, on the contrary, Avhere its culture is ancient,
it has been several times found wild in forests, apparently
indigenous. De Martins brought it from the banks of
the Amazon, Poeppig from the province of Maynas in
Peru, and Blanchet from the province of Bahia^ So that
its area extends from Bahia to Eastern Peru, which ex-
plains its diffusion over South America generally.

Tomato — LycopersicvAn esculentum, Lliller.

The tomato, or love apple, belongs to a genus of the
Solanese, of which all the species are American.^ It
has DO name in the ancient languages of Asia, nor even
in modem Indian languages.'' It was not cultivated in
Japan in the time of Thunberg, that is to say a century

• Desconrtilz, FJore Medicale des Antilles, vi. pi. 423.

' Fingerhuth, Monographia Gen. Capsici, p. 12 ; Sendtner, in Flora
Brasil.. vol. x. p. 147.

» Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., edit. Wall, ii. p. 260; edit. 1832, ii. p. 574.

• Blume, Bijdr., ii. p. 704. * Sendtner, in Fl. Bras., x. p. 143.

• Alph. de Candolle, Prodr., xiii. part 1, p. 26.

' Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., edit. 1832, vol. i. p. 565 ; Piddington, Index.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUIT.S. 191

aofo, and the silence of ancieiit writers on Cbini on tli s
head shows that it is of recent introduction the e. Rnm-
phius ^ had seen it in gardens in the Maliy Archipelago
The Malays called it tonvitte, but this is an American
name, for C. Bauhin calls the species turaatle America-
nomm. Nothing leads us to suppose it was known in
Europe before the discovery of America.

The first names given to it by botanists in the six-
teenth century indicate that they received the plant from
Peru.^ It was cultivated on the continent of America
before it was grown in the West India Islands, for Sloane
does not mention it in Jamaica, and Hughes^ says it
was brouc^ht to Barbados from Portugal hardlv more
than a century ago. Humboldt considered that the cul-
tivation of the tomato was of ancient date in Mexico.*
I notice, however, that the earliest work on the plants of
this country (Hernandez, Historia) makes no mention
of it. Neither do the early writers on Brazil, Piso and
Marcgraf, speak of it, although the species is now culti-
vated throughout tropical America. Thus by the process
of exhaustion we return to the idea of a Peruvian oricjin,
at least for its cultivation.

De Martius^ found the plant wild in the neigh-
bourhood of Rio de Janeiro and Para, but it had per-
haps escaped from gardens. I do not know of any
botanist who has found it reall}' wild in the state in
which it is familiar to us, with the fruit more or less
large, lumpy, and with swelled sides ; but this is not the
case with the variety with small spherical fruit, called
L. cerasiforme in some botanical works, and considered
in others ("and rightly so, I think ^) as belonging to the
same species. This variety is wild on the sea-shore of

* Enmplims, Amhoin, v. p. 416.

* Mala Peruviana, Ponii del Peru, in Eauhin's Hist., iii. p. C£l,
' Hughes, Barbados, p. 148.

* Humboldt, Espagne, edit. 2, vol. ii. p. 472.

* Fl. Brasil., vol. x. p. 126.

* The proportions of the calyx and the corolla are the same as those
of the cultivated tomato, but they are different in the allied species S.
Humholdtii, of which the fruit is also eaten, accoiding to Humboldt, who
found it wild in Venezuela.

292 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Peru/ at Tavapoto, in Eastern Peru,^ and on the frontiers
of Mexico and of the United Spates towards California.^
It is sometimes naturalized in clearings near gardens.* It
is probably in this manner thab its area has extended
north and south from Peru.

Avocado, or Alligator Pear — Persea gratissima,
Gsertner.

The avocado pear is one of the most highly prized
of tropical fruits. It belongs to the order Laurinese.
It is like a pear containing one large stone, as is well
shown in Tussac's illustrations, Flore des Antilles, iii. pi.
8, and in the Botanical Magazine, pi. 4580. The com-
mon names are absurd. The origin of that of alligator
is unknown ; avocado is a corruption of the Mexican
ahuaca, or aguacate. The botanical name Persea has
nothing to do with the j^ersea of the Greeks, M'hich was
a Cordia. Clusius,^ writing in IGOl, says that the avo-
cado pear is an American fruit tree introduced into a
garden in Spain ; but as it is widely spread in the colo-
nies of the old world, and has here and there become
almost wild,*" it is possible to make mistakes as to its
origin. This tree did not exist in the gardens of British
India at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It
had been introduced into the Sunda Isles'' in the middle
of the eighteenth century, and in 1750 into Mauritius and
Bourbon.^

In America its actual area in a wild state is of un-
common extent. The species has been found in forests,
on the banks of rivers, and on the sea-shore from Mexico
and the West Indies as far as the Amazon.^ It has not

' Ruiz and Pavon, Flor. Pervv., ii. p. 37.
' Spruce, n. 4143, in Boissier's herbarium.
' Asa (iray, Bot. of Cali/or., i. p. 538.

* Baker, Fl. of Maurit., p. 216. * Clusius, JTiytorxa, p. 2.

* For instance in Madeira, according to rJrisebach, Fl. of Brit. W. Ind.,
p. 280; in Mauritius, tlie Seychelles and Rodriguez, according to Baker,
Flora of Mauritius, p. 290.

' It is not in Rumphius. ' Aublet, Guyane, i. p. 3G4.

' Meissner, in de Candolle, Prodromus, vol. xv. part 1, p. 52 ; and Flora
Brasil., vol. v. p. 158. I'or Mexico, Hernandez, p. 81); for Venezuela
and Para, Nees, Laurine'^, p. 120; for Eastern Peru, Poeppig, Exsicc,
seen by Meissner.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 293

alwaj'S occupied this vast region. P. Browne says dis-
tinctly that the a\ ocado pear was introduced from the
Continent into Jamaica, and Jacquin held the same opinion
as regards the West India Islands generally.^ Piso and
Marcgraf do not mention it for Brazil, and Martins gives
no Brazilian name.

At the time of the discovery of America, the species
was certainl}'- wild and cultivated in Mexico, according
to Hernandez. Acosta ^ says it was cultivated in Peru
under the name of j)alto, which was that of a people of
the eastern part of Peru, among whom it was abundant.^
I find no proof that it was wild upon the Peruvian
littoral.

Papaw — Carica Papaya, Linnseus ; Papaya vulgaris,
de Candolle.

The papaw is a large herbaceous plant rather than a
tree. It has a sort of juicy trunk terminated by a tuft
of leaves, and the fruit, which is like a melon, hangs down
under the leaves."* It is now grown in all tropical coun-
tries, even as far as thirty to thirty-two degrees of
latitude. It is easily naturalized outside plantations.
This is one reason why it has been said, and people still
say that it is a native of Asia or of Africa, whereas Robert
Brown and. I proved in 184)8 and 1855 its American
origin.^ I repeat the arguments against its supposed
origin in the- eastern hemisphere.

The species has no Sanskrit name. In modern Indian
languages it bears names derived from the American
word papaya, itself a corruption of the Carib abahai.^
Rumphius'' says that the inhabitants of the Malay Archi-
pelago considered it as an exotic plant introduced by the
Portuguese, and gave it names expressing its likeness to

* P. Browne, Jamaica, p. 214 ; Jacqnin, Ohf;., i. p. 38.

* Acosta, Hist. Nat. des Indes., edit. 1508, p. 176.

* Laet, Hist. Nouv. Monde, i. pp. 32.5, 341.

* See the fine plates in Tussac's Flore des Antilles, iii. p. 45, pis. 10
nnd 11. TJie papaw belongs to the small family of the Papaijace<£, fnsed
by some botanists into the Passiflorce, and by others into the Bixace^.

* R. Brown, Bot. of Congo, p. 52: A. de" Candolle, Geogr. Bot. Rais.,
p. 917.

* Sagot, Joui-n. de la Soc. Centr d'Hortic. de France, 1872.

* Rumphius, Amhoin, i. p. 117.

294 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

other species or its foreign extraction. Sloane/ in the
beginning of the eighteenth century, quotes several of his
contemporaries, who mention that it was taken from the
West Indies into Asia and Africa. Forster had not seen
it in tlie plantations of the Pacific Isles at the time of
Cook's voyages. Loureiro,^ in the middle of the eigh-
teenth centur}^, had seen it in cultivation in China,
Cochin- China, and Zanzibar. So useful and so striking
a plant would have been spread throughout the old
Avorld for thousands of years if it had existed there.
Everything leads to the belief that it Avas introduced
on the coasts of Africa and Asia after the discovery of
America.

All the species of the family are American. This one
seems to have been cultivated from Brazil to the West
Indies, and in Mexico before the arrival of the Europeans,
since the earliest writers on the productions of the new
world mention it.^

Marcgraf had often seen the male plant (always com-
moner than the female) in the forests of Brazil, while the
female plants were in gardens. Clusius, who was the
first to give an illustration of the plant, says* that his
drawing was made in 1G07, in the bay of Todos Santos
(province of Bahia). I know of no modern author who
lias confirmed the habitation in Brazil. Martins does
not mention the species in his dictionary of the names of
fruits in the language of the Tupis.^ It is not given as
wild in Guiana and Columbia. P. Browne ^ asserts, on
the other hand, that it is wild in Jamaica, and before his
time Ximenes and Hernandez said the same for St.
Domingo and Mexico. Oviedo'' seems to have seen the
papaw in Central America, and he gives the common

' Sloane, Jamaica, p. 165. ' Loureiro, Fl. Coch., p. 772.

• Maicgraf, Brasil., p. 103, and Piso, p. 159, for Brazil ; Xiuienes in
Marcgraf and Hernandez, Thetsaurus, p. yit, for Mexico; and tlie last for
St. Domingo and Mexico.

• Clusius, CwrcE Posferiores, pp. 79, 80.

• Martins, Beitr. z. Ethnogr., ii. p. 418.

• P. Browne, Jamaica, edit. 2, p. 360. The first edition is of 1756.

• The passage of Oviedo is transl.ited into English by CoiTca de
Mello and Spruce, in their paper on the Proceedings of the Linneean
Society, I. p. 1.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 295

name olocoton for Nicaragua. Yet Coirea de Mello and
Spruce, in their important article on the Papayacece, after
having botanized extensively in the Amazon region, in
Peru and elsewhere, consider the papaw as a native of
the West Indies, and do not think it is anywhere wild
upon the Continent. I have seen ^ specimens from the
mouth of the river Manatee in Florida, from Puebla in
Mexico, and from Columbia, but the labels had no remark
as to their wild character. The indications, it will be
noticed, are numerous for the shores of the Gulf of Mexico
and for the West Indies. The habitation in Brazil which
lies apart is very doubtful.

Fig — F'tcus carica, Linn<eus.

The history of the fig presents a close analogy with
that of the olive in point of origin and geographical
limits. Its area as a wild species may have been extended
by the dispersal of the seeds as cultivation spread. This
seems probable, as the seeds pass intact through the
dio-estive or2[ans of men and animals. However, countries
may be cited where the fig has been cultivated for a
century at least, and where no such naturalization has
taken place. I am not speaking of Europe noith of the
Alps, where the tree demands particular care and the
fruit ripens with difficulty, even the first crop, but of
India for instance, the Southern States of America,
Mauritius, and Chili, where, to judge from the silence of
compilers of floras, the instances of cpiasi-wildness are
rare. In our own day the fig tree grows wild, or nearly
wild, over a vast region of which Syria is about the
centre ; that is to say, from the east of Persia, or even
from Afohanistan, across the whole of the Mediterranean
region as far as the Canaries.^ From north to south this
zone varies in width from the 25th to the 40th or 42nd
pai:allel, according to local circumstances. As a rule, the
fig stops like the olive at the fo!)t of the Caucasus and
the mountains of Europe which jimit the Mediterranean

1 De Caiidolle, Prodr., xv. pait 1, p. 414.

* Boissier, FL. Orient., iv. p. 1154; Brandis, Forest Flora of India,
p. 4lS; Webb and Berthelot, Hist. Kat. des Canarits, Botanique, iii
p. 257.

296 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

basin, but it grows nearly wild on the south-west coast
of France, where the winter is very mild.^

We turn to historical and philological records to see
whether the area was more limited in antiquity. The
ancient Egyptians called the fig teh,^ and the earliest
Hebrew books speak of the fig, whether wild or culti-
vated, under the name teenah,^ which leaves its trace in
the Arabic fin.* The Persian name is quite different,
unjir; but I do not know if it dates from the Zend.
Piddington's Index has a Sanskrit name, udumvara,
which Roxburgh, who is very careful in such matters,
does not give, and which has left no trace in modern
Indian languages, to judge from four names quoted by
authors. The antiquity of its existence east of Persia
appears to me doubtful, until the Sanskrit name is
verified. The Chinese received the fio; tree from Persia,
but only m the eighth century of our era.^ Herodotus*^
says the Persians did not lack figs, and Reynier, who has
made careful researches into the customs of this ancient
people, does not mention the fig tree. This only proves
that the species was not utilized and cultivated, but it
perhaps existed in a wild state.

The Greeks called the wild fig erineos, and the Latins
caprificus. Homer mentions a fig tree in the Iliad which
grew near Troy.'^ Helm asserts*^ that the cultivated fig
cannot have been developed from the wild fig, but all

* Connt Solms Laubach, in a learned discussion (Rerhinft, Domestica-
tion, etc., des Feigenhaums, in 4to, 1882), has himself observed facts of this
nature aheady indicated by various authors. He did not find the seed
provided with embryos (p. 64), which he attributes to the absence of the
insect (Blastophaga), which generally lives in the wild fig, and facilitates
the fertilization of one flower by another in the interior of the fruit.- It
is asserted, however, that fertilization occasionally takes place without
the intervention of the insect.

* Chabas, Melanges EgyptoL, 3rd series (1873), vol. ii. p. 92.

■ Kosenmuller, Bihl. Alterth., i. p. 285 ; Keynier, £con. PuU. des
Arahes et des Juifs, p. 470.

* Forskal, Fl. /Egypto-Aral., p. 125. Lagarde {Revue Critique d'His-
toire, Feb. 27, 1882) says that this Semitic name is very ancient.

* Bretschneider, in Solms, i(bt supra, p. 51. ^ Herodotus, i. 71.

* Lenz, Botanik der Griechen, p. 421, qui.tes four lines of Homer,
See also Hehn, Culturpflanzen, edit. 3, p. 84.

* Hehn, Ctilturpjlavzen, edit. 3, p. 513.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 297

botanists hold a contrary opinion;^ and, without speaking
of floral details on which they rely, I may say that
Gussone obtained from the same seeds plants of the form
caprijicus, and other varieties.^ The remark made by
several scholars as to the absence of all mention of the cul-
tivated fig.sit/i'rti in the Iliad, does not therefore prove the
absence of the fig tree in Greece at the time of the Trojan
war. Homer mentions the sweet fig in the Odyssey, and
that but vaguely. Hesiod, sa3^s Hehn, does not mention
it, and Archilochus (700 B.C.) is the first to mention
distinctly its cultivation by the Greeks of Paros. Accord-
ing to this, the species grew wild in Greece, at least in
the Archipelago, before the introduction of cultivated
varieties of Asiatic origin. Theophrastus and Dioscorides
mention wild and cultivated fi-js.'^

Romulus and Remus, according to tradition, were
nursed at the foot of a fig tree called raminalis, from
ruvien, breast or udder.'* The Latin name, ficiis, which
Hehn derives, by an efibrt of erudition, from the Greek
swA;a'i,^also argues an ancient existence in Italy, and Pliny's
opinion is positive on this head. The good cultivated
varieties were of later introduction. They came from
Greece, Syria, and Asia Minor. In the time of Tiberius,
as now, the best figs came from the East.

We learnt at school how Cato exhibited to the as-
sembled senators Carthaginian figs, still fresh, as a proof
of the proximity of the hated country. The Phoenicians
must have transported good varieties to the coast of
Africa and their other colonies on the Mediterranean,
even as far as the Canaries, where, however, the wild fig
may have already existed.

For the Canaries we have a proof in the Guanchos

' No imnortaTice shonid be attached to the exagg^erated divisions
made by Gasparini in Ficus carica, Linnaeus. Botanists who have
studied the fig tree since his time retain a single species, and name
several varieties of the vcild fig. The cultivated forms are numberless.

* Gassone, Enum. Plant. Inarimensium, p. 301.

* For the history of the fig tree and an account of the operation (of
doubtful utility) which consists in planting insect-bearing Cai)rijici
among the cultivated trees (caprification), see Solms' work.

* P.iny, Hist., lib. xv. cap 18. ' Hehn, Cultur^fianzen, edit. 3, p. 513.

298 OKIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

words, arahormaze and achormaze, green figs , tnhare-
menen and tehiJiunemen, dried figs. Webb and Ber-
thelot,^ who quote these names, and who admit the
common origin of the Guanchos and Berbers, a^ou Id have
noted with pleasure the existence among the Touaregs,
a Berber people, of the word tahart, fig tree,^ and in the
French-Berber dictionary, published since their time,
the names taheksist, green tig, and tagrourt, fig tree.
These old names, of more ancient and local origin than
Arabic, bear witness to a very ancient habitation in the
north of Africa as far as the Canaries.

The result of our inquiry shows, then, that the
prehistoric area of the fig tree covered the middle and
southern part of the Mediterranean ba^in from Syria to
the Canaries.

We may doubt the antiquity of the fig in the south
of France, but a curious fact deserves mention. Plan-
chon found in the quaternary tufa of Montpellier, and
de Saporta^ in those of Aygalades near Marseilles,
and in the quaternary strata of La Celle near Paris,
leaves and even fruit of the wild Ficus cavica, with
teeth of Elephas primigenius, and leaves of plants of
which some no longer exist, and others, like Laurus
canarieiisis, have survived in the Canaries. So that
the fig tree perhaps existed in its modern form in this
remote epoch. It is possible that it perished in the
south of France, as it certainly did at Paris, and re-
appeared later in a wild state in the southern region.
Perhaps the fig trees which Webb and Berthelot had seen
as old plants in the wildest part of the Canaries were
descended from those which existed in tlie fourth epoch.

Bread-Fruit— J^rifocai'pxts incisa, Linniens.

The bread-fruit tree was cultivated in all the islands
of the Asiatic Archipelago, and of the great oceans near

' Webb and Berthelot, Hist. Nat. des Canaries Ethnogr., p. 186;
rhytogr., iii. p. 257.

* Duveyrier, Les Touaregs du Nord., p. 193.

' Planchon, Jitude sur les tttfs de MontpelHer, p. 63 ; de Saporta,
Laflore des tufs quaternairrs en Provence, in Co^'ipfes rendus de la 32e
Session du CoKqres Scientifque de France; Bull. Soc. Geolog., 1873-7-1,
p. 442.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 299

the equator, from Sumatra to the Marquesas Isles, when
first Europeans began to visit them. Its fruit is con-
stituted, like the pine-apple, of an assemblage of bracts
and fruits welded into a fleshy mass, more or less
spherical; and as in the pine-apple, the seeds come to
nothing in the most productive cultivated varieties.*

Sonnerat ^ carried the bread-fruit tree to Mauritius,
where the Intendant Poivre took care to spread it.
Captain Bligh was commissioned to introduce it into
the English West Indian Isles. The mutiny of his
crew prevented his succeeding the first time, but a
second attempt proved more fortunate. In January,
1793, he landed 153 plants at St. Vincent, whence the
species has been dillused into several parts of tropical
America.^

Rumphius* saw the species wild in several of the
Sunda Isles. Modern authors, less careful, or acquainted
only with cultivated species, say nothing on this head.
Seemann ^ says for the Fiji Isles, " cultivated, and to all
appearance wild in some places." On the continent of
Asia it is not even cultivated, as the climate is not hot
enough.

The bread-fruit is evidently a native of Java, Am-
boyna, and the neighbouring islands ; but the antiquity
of its cultivation in the whole of the archipelago, proved
by the number of varieties, and the facility of propa-
gating it by buds and suckers, prevent us from knowing
its history accurately. In the islands to the extreme
east, like Otahiti, certain fables and traditions point to
an introduction which is not very ancient, and the
absence of seeds confirms this.''

Jack-Fruit — Artocarpus integrifolia, Linnseus.

The jack-fruit, larger than the bread-fruit, for it
sometimes weighs as much as eighty pounds, hangs from

' Seethe fine plates publisherl in Tussac's Flore des Antilles, vol. ii.
pis 2 and 3 ; and Hooker, Bot. Mag., t. 2869-2871.

* Voyages d la Nouvelle Guinee, p. 100. * Hooker, uhi supra.

* Rumphins, Herh. Amhoin, i. p. 112, pi. 33.

* Flora Vitiensis, p. 255.

* Seemann, Fl. Vit., p. 255 ; ISTadeaud, Enum. des PI. Indig. de Taiti,
p. 4i; Idem, PI. usuelles des Taitiens, p. 24,

14

300 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

the branches of a tree thirty to fifty feet high.^ The
common name is derived froia the Indian names ^'aca, or
tsjaka.

The species has long been cultivated in southern
A-sia, from the Punjab to China, from the Himalayas to
the Moluccas. It has not spread into the small islands
more to the east, such as Otahiti, which leads us to sup-
pose it has not been so long in the archipelago as upon
the continent. In the north-west of India, also, its
cultivation does not perhaps date from a very remote
epoch, for the existence of a Sanskrit name is not abso-
lutely certain. Roxburgh mentions one, punusa, but
Piddington does not admit it into his Index. The Per-
sians and the Arabs do not seem to have known the
species. Its enormous fruit must, however, have struck
them if the species had been cultivated near their fron-
tiers. Dr. Bretschneider does not speak of any Arto-
carpus in his work on the plants known to the ancient
Chinese, whence it may be inferred that towards China,
as in other directions, the jack-fiuit was not diffused at
a very early epoch. The first statement as to its exist-
ence in a wild state is given by Rheede in ambiguous
terms : " This tree grows everywhere in Malabar and
throughout India." He perhaps confounded the planted
tree with the wild one. After him, however, Wight
found the species several times in the Indian Peninsula,
notably in the Western Ghauts, with every appearance
of a wild and indigenous tree. It has been extensively
planted in Ceylon ; but Thwaites, the best authority for
the flora of this island, does not recognize it as wild.
Neither is it wild in the archipelago to the south of
India, according to the general opinion. Lastly, Brandis
found it growing in the forests of the district of Attaran,
in Burmah, but, he adds, always in the neighbourhood of
abandoned settlements. Kurz did not find it wild in
Biitish Bui mail. ^

' See Tussac's plates, Flore des Antilles, pi. 4; and Hooker, Bot. Mag.,
t. 2833, 2831..

• Rheede, Malnhar, iii. p. 18 ; Wi,<rlit, Ico}ie>t, ii. No. 678 ; Brandis,
Fm-est Flora of India, p. 426 ; Kurz, Forest Flora of Brit. Burmah, p. 432.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. SOI

The species is, thei-efore, a native of the region lying at
the foot of the western mountains of the Indian Penin-
sula, and its cultivation in the neighbourhood is probably
not earlier than the Christian era. It was introduced
into Jamaica by Admiral Rodney in 1782, and thence
into San Domingo.^ It has also been introduced into
Brazil, Mauritius, the Seychelles, and Rodriguez Island.^

Date-Palm — Phoenix dactylifera, Linnaeus.

The date-palm has existed from prehistoric times in
the warm diy zone, which extends from Senegal to the
basin of the Indus, principally between parallels 15 and
30. It is seen here and there further to the north, by
reason of exceptional circumstances and of the aim which
is proposed in its cultivation. For beyond the limit
within which the fruit ripens every year, there is a zone
in which they ripen ill or seldom, and a further region
within which the tree can live, but without fruiting or
even flowering. These limits have been traced by de
Martins, Carl Ritter, and myself^ It is needless to repro-
duce them here, the aim of the present work being to
study questions of origin.

As regards the date-palm, we can hardly rely on the
more or less proved existence of really wild indigenous
individuals. Dates are easily transported ; the stones
germinate when sown in damp soil near the source of a
river, and even in the fissures of rocks. The inhabitants
of oases have planted or sown date-palms in favourable
localities where the species perhaps existed before man,
and when the traveller comes across isolated trees, at a
distance from dwellings, he cannot know that they did
not spring from stones thrown away by caravans.
Botanists admit a variety, sylv<'stris, that is to say wild,
with small and sour fruit ; but it is perhaps the result
of recent naturalization in an unfavourable soil. His-
torical and philological data are of more value here,
though doubtless from the antiquity of cultivation they
can only e&tablish probabilities.

• Tussac, Flore des Antilles, pi. 4. ' Baker, Fl. of Maurit., p. 282.

* Martius, Gen. et Spec. Palmarum, in fclio, vol. iii. p. 257 ; C. Ritter,
Frdkunde, xiii. p. 760 ; Alpli. de Candolle, Geog. Bot. Rais., p. 343.

802 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

From Eg^-ptian and Assyrian remains, as well as from
tradition a'.id the most ancient writings, we find that the
date-palm grew in abundance in the region lying between
the Euphrates and the Nile. Egyptian monuments eon-
tain fruits and cbawings of the tree.^ Herodotus, in a
more recent age (fifth century before Christ), mentions
the wood of the date-palms of Babylonia, and still later
Strabo used similar expressions about those of Arabia,
whence it seems that the species was commoner than it
is now, and more in the condition of a natural forest
tree. On the other hand, Carl Ritter makes the incjenious
obsers'ation that the earliest Hebrew books do not speak
of the date-palm as producing a fruit valued as a food
for man. David, about one thousand years before Christ,
and about seven centuries aiter Aloses, does not mention
the date palm in his list of trees to be planted in his
gardens. It is true that except at Jericho dates seldom
ripen in Palestine Later, Herodotus says of the Baby-
lonian date-palms that only the greater part produced
good fruit which was used for food This seems to indi-
cate the beginning of a cultivation perfected by the
selection of varieties and of the transport of male flowers
into the middle of the branches of female trees, but it
perhaps signifies also that Herodotus was ignorant of the
existence of the male plant.

To the west of Egypt the date-palm had probably
existed for centuries or for thousands of years when
Herodotus mentioned them. He speaks of Libya.
There is no historical record with respect to the oases in
the Sahara, but Pliny ^ mentions the date-palm in the
Canaries.

The names of the species bear witness to its great
antiquity both in Asia and in Africa, seeing they ai-e nume-
rous and very different. The Hebrews called the date-
palm taviar, and the ancient Egyptians beq.^ Tiie com-
])lete diflerence between these words, both very anc'ent,
shows that these peoples found the species indigero is
and perhaps already named in Western Asia and in

* Unger, Pflanzen d. Alt, ^jypt., p. 38,
* Plinv, Hi>-t., lib vi. cap. 37. * IJuger, nhi supra.

PLANTS CtTLTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 303

Egypt. The number of Persian, Arabic, and Berber
names is incredible.^ Some are derived from the Hebrew
word, others from unknown sources. They often apply
to different states of the fruit, or to different cultivated
varieties, which aoain shows ancient cultivation in
different countries. Webb and Beiihelot have not dis-
covered a name for the date-palm in the language of the
Guanchos, and this is much to be regi'etted. The Greek
name, phwnix, refers simply to Phoenicia and the
Phoenicians, possessors of the date-palm.- The names
dactylus and date are derivations of dachel in a Hebrew
dialect.^ No Sanskrit name is known, whence it may be
inferred that the plantations of the date-palm in Western
India are not very ancient. The Indian climate does
not suit the species.^ The Hindustani name hhanna is
borrowed from the Persian.

Further to the East the date-palm remained long
unknown. The Chinese received it from Persia, in the
third century of our era, and its cultivation was resumed
at different times, but they have now abandoned it.^ As
a rule, beyond the arid region wliich lies between the
Euphrates and the south of the Atlas and the Canaries,
the date-palm has not succeeded in similar latitudes, or
at least it has not become an important culture. It might
be gTown with success in Australia and at the Cape, but
the Eui'opeans who have colonized these regions are not
satisfied, like the Arabs, with figs and dates for their
staple food. I think, in fine, that in times anterior to
the earliest Egyptian d}Tia.sties the date-palm already
existed, wild or sown here and there by wandering tribes,
in a narrow zone extending from the Euphiates to the
Canaries, and that its cultivation began later as far as
the north-west of India on the one hand and the Cape
de Verde Islands ^ on the other, so that the natural area

• See C. Bitter, uhi sv.pra. * Hehn, Culturpflanzen, edit. 3, p. 234.

• C. Eitter, ibid., p. 828. * According to Eoxbiu-gli, Eovle, etc.
' Bretschneider, Study and Value, etc., p. 31.

• According to Schmidt, Fl. d. Cap.-Verd. Isl., p. 168, the date-
palm is rare in these islands, and is certainly not -wild. Webb and
Berthelot, on the contrary, assert that in some of the Canaries it ia
apparently indigenous {Hist. Nat. des Canaries, Botanique, iii. p. 289).

301 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

has remained very nearly the same for about five thou-
sand years. VViiat it was previously, palieontologica]
discoveries may one day reveal.

Banana— i)/itS(X sapientum and M. paradi&iaca,
Linnaeus ; M. sapientu7n, Brown.

The banana or bananas were generally considered
to be natives of Southern Asia, and to have been carried
into America by Europeans, till Humboldt threw
doubts upon their purely Asiatic origin. In his work
on New Spain ^ he quoted early authors who assert
that the banana was cultivated in America before the
conquest.

He admits, on Oviedo's authority,^ its introduction
by Father Thomas of Berlangas from the Canaries into
San Domingo in 1516, whence it was introduced into
other islands and the mainland.^ He recognizes the
absence of any mention of the banana in the accounts of
Columbus, Alonzo Negro, Pinzon, Vespuzzi, and Cortez.
The silence of Hernandez, who lived half a century after
Oviedo, astonishes him and appears to hira a remarkable
carelessness ; " for," he says,* " it is a constant tradition
in Mexico and on the whole of the mainland that the
platano arton, and the dominico were cultivated long
before the Spanish conquest." The author who has
most carefully noted the different epochs at which
American agriculture has been enriched by foreign pro-
ducts, the Peruvian Garcilasso de la Vega,^ says dis-
tinctly that at the time of the Incas, maize, quinoa, the
potato, and, in the warm and temperate regions, bananas
formed the staple food of the natives. He describes the
Musa of the valleys in the Andes ; he even distinguishes
the rarer species, with a small fruit and a sweet aromatic
flavour, the dominico, from the common banana or arton.

* Humbolflt, Nouvelle Espajrte, 1st edit., ii. p. 3G0.

<■' • Oviedo, if is*. A'at, Ibbij, p. 112. Oviedo's first work is of 152fi.
He is the earliest naturalist quoted by Di-yander (Bihl. Lanlcs) for
America.

• I have also seen tkis passage in the translation of Oviedo by
Ramusio, vol. iii. p. 115.

♦ Humboldt, Nouvelle Eapagne, 2nd edit., p. 385.

• Garcilasso de la Vega, Cvmmentarios Realen, i. p. 282.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 305

Father Acosta^ asserts also, although less positively,
that the Musa was cultivated by the Americans before
the arrival of the Spaniards. Lastly, Humboldt adds
from his own observation, " On the banks of the Orinoco,
of the Cassiquaire or of the Beni, between the mountains
of Esmeralda and the banks of the river Carony, in the
midst of the thickest forests, almost everywhere that
Indian tribes are found who have had no relations with
European settlements, we meet with plantations of
Manioc and bananas." Humboldt suggests the hypothesis
that several species or constant varieties of the Banana
have been confounded, some of which are indigenous to
the new world.

Desvaux studied the specific question, and in a really
remarkable work, published in 1814),^ he gives it as his
opinion that all the bananas cultivated for their fruits
are of the same species. In this species he distinguishes
forty -four varieties, which he arranges in two groups ;
the large-fruited bananas (seven to fifteen inches long),
and the small- fruited bananas (one to six inches),
commonly called fig bananas. R. Brown, in 1818, in his
work on the Plants of the Congo, p. 51, maintains also
that no structui-al difference in the bananas cultivated in
Asia and those in America prevents us from considering
them as belonging to the same species. He adopts the
name Musa sapieiiituin, which appears to me preferable
to that of M. paradisiaca adopted by Desvaux, because
the varieties with small fertile fruit appear to be nearer
the condition of the wild Mivsce found in Asia.

Brown remarks on the question of origin that all the
other species of the genus Musa belong to the old world ;
that no one pretends to have found in America, in a
wild state, varieties with fertile fruit, as has happened
in Asia ; lastly, that Piso and Marcgraf considered that
the banana was introduced into Brazil from Congfo. In
spite of the force of these three arguments, Humboldt,
in his second edition of his essay upon New Spain
(ii. p. 397), does not entirely renounce his opinion. He

' Acosta, Hist. Nat. De Indias, 1608, p. 250.
• Desvaux, Journ. Bot., iv. p. 5.

30G ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

says that the traveller Caldcleugh ^ found among the
Turis the tradition that a small species of banana was
cultivated on the borders of the Prato long before they
had any communications with the Portuguese. He adds
that words which are not borrowed ones are found in
American languages to distinguish the fruit of the Musa;
for instance, paruru in Tamanac, etc., arata in Maypur.
I have also read in Stevenson's travels^ that beds of
the leaves of the two bananas commonly cultivated in
America have been found in the huacas or Peruvian
tombs anterior to the conquest; but as this traveller
also says that he saw beans ^ in these huacas, a plant
which undoubtedly belongs to the old world, his asser-
tions are not very trustworthy.

Boussingault ^ thought that the platano arton at
least was of American origin, but he gives no proof.
Meyen, who had also been in America, adds no argument
to those wdiich were already known ;^ nor does the
geographer Ritter,^ who simply reproduces the facts
about America, given by Humboldt.

On the other hand, the botanists who have more
recently visited America have no hesitation as to the
Asiatic origin. I may name Seemann for the Isthmus of
Panama, Ernst for Venezuela, and Sagot for Guiana.'
The two first insist upon the absence of names for the
banana in the languages of Peru and Mexico. Piso
knew no Brazilian name. Martins^ has since indicated,
in the Tupi language of Brazil, the names pacoha or
hacoha. This same word bacove is used, according to
Sagot, by the French in Guiana. It is perhaps derived
from the name bala, or palan, of Malabar, from an intro-
duction by the Portuguese, subsequent to Piso's voyage

The antiquity and wild character of the banana in
Asia are incontestable facts. There are several Sanskrit

' Caldcleugh, Trav. in S. Amer., 1823, i. p. 23.

» Stevenson, Trav. in S. Amer., i. p. 328.

» Ibid., p. 363. ♦ Boussintranlt, C. r. Acad. Sc. Poris, May 9, 1836.

* Meyen, Fflanzen Geog., 1836, p. 383. • Ritter, Erdk., ir. p. 870.
^ Seemann, Bat. of the Herald, p. 213 ; Ernst, in Seemann's Joiirn,

of Bot., 1867, p. 289 ; Sagot, Journ. de la Soc. d'Hort. de Fr., 1872, p. 226

• Martins, Eth. Sprachenkunde Avier., p. 123.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 307,

names.* The Greeks, Latins, and Arabs have mentioned
it as a remarkable Indian fruit tree. Pliny ^ speaks of
it distinctly. He says that the Greeks of the expedi-
tion of Alexander saw it in India, and he quotes the
name pala which still persists in Malabar. Sages re-
posed beneath its shade and ate of its fruit. Hence
the botanical name Miisa scqnentum. Miisa is from the
Arabic inouz or mamvz, which we find as early as the
thirteenth century in Ebn Baithar. The specific name
paradisiaca comes from the ridiculous hypothesis which
made the banana figure in the story of Eve and of
Paradise.

It is a curious fact that the Hebrews and the ancient
Egyptians^ did not know this Indian plant. It is a
sign that it did not exist in India from a very remote
epoch, but was first a native of the Malay Archipelago.

There is an immense number of varieties of the
banana in the south of Asia, both on the islands and on
the continent; the cultivation of these varieties dates
in India, in China, and in the archipelago, from an epoch
impossible to realize; it even spread formerly into the
islands of the Pacific * and to the west coast of Africa ; ^
lastly, the varieties bore distinct names in the most
separate Asiatic languages, such as Chinese, Sanskrit,
and Malay. All this indicates great antiquity of culture,
consequently a primitive existence in Asia, and a diffii-
sion contemporary with or even anterior to that of the
human races.

The banana is said to have been found wild in several
places. This is the more worthy of attention since the
cultivated varieties seldom produce seed, and are
multiplied by division, so that the species can hardly
have become naturalized from cultivation by sowing itself
lioxburgh had seen it in the forests of Chittacronor ^ in

» RoxbursrK and WalHch, Fl. Ind., ii. p. 485 ; Piddington, Index.

* Pliny, Hist., lib. xii. cap. 6.

* Unger, uhi supra, and Wilkinson, iL p. 403, do not mention it. The
banana is now cultivated in Egypt.

* FoiBter, Plant. Esc, p. 28.

* Clusius, Exot., p. 229; Brown, Bot. Congo, p. 51.

* Roxburgh, Coroni., tab. 275 j Fl. Ind.

308 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

the form of Miisa sajnentum. Rumpliius ^ describes a
wild variety with small fruits in the Philippine Isles.
Loureiro ^ probably speaks of the same form by the
name 31 seminifera agrestis, which he contrasts with 31.
seminifera domestica, which is wild in Oochin-China.
Blanco also mentions a wild banana in the Philippines,^
but his description is vague. Finlayson^ found the
banana wild in abundance in the little island of Pulo
Ubi at the southern extremity of Siam. Thwaites ^ saw
the variety 31. sapientiim in the rocky forests of the
centre of Ceylon, and does not hesitate to pronounce it
the original stock of the cultivated bananas. Sir Joseph
Hooker and Thomson ' found it wild at Khasia.

The facts are quite different in America. The wild
banana has been seen nowhere except m Barbados,^ but
here it is a tree of which the fruit does not ripen, and
which is, consequently, in all probalility the result of
cultivated varieties of which the seed is not abundant.
Sloane's tvilcl ijlantain ^ appears to be a plant very
different to the Tnusa. The varieties which are supposed
to be possibly indigenous in America are only two, and
as a rule far fewer varieties are gro^\Ti than in Asia. The
culture of the banana may be said to be recent in the
greater part of i^merica, for it dates from but little more
than three centuries. Piso ^° says positively that it was
imported into Brazil, and has no Brazilian name. He
does not say whence it came. We have seen that,
according to Oviedo, the species was brought to San
Domingo from the Canaries. This fact and the .silence of
Hernandez, generally so accurate about the useful plants,
wild or cultivated, in Mexico, convince me that at the
time of the discovery of America the banana did not
exist in the whole of the eastern part of the continent.

, EuTnphius, Amh., v. p. 139. * Lonreiro, Fh Coch., p. 791.

, Loureiro, Fl. Coch., p. 791. * Blanco, Flwa, 1st edit., p. 247.
Finlayson, Journey to Siam, 1826, p. 86, according to Kilter, Erdk.,
W. 878.

pThwaites, Enum. PI. Cexj., p. 321.
' Aitchison, Catal. of Punjab, p. 14-7.

• Hughes, Barb., p. 182 ; Maj cock, Fl. Barb., p 396.

• Sioane, Jamai a, ii. p. 118. " Piso, edit. 164!8, Hist. Nat., p. 75.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS, 309

Did it exist, then, in the western part on the shores
of the Paeihc ? This seems very unlikely when we
reflect that communication was easy between the two
coasts towards the isthmus of Panama, and that before
the arrival of the Europeans the natives had been active
in diffusing throughout America useful plants like the
manioc, maize, and the potato. The banana, which they
have prized so highly for three centuries, which is so
easily multiplied by suckers, and whose appearance must
strike the least observant, would not have been forgotten
in a few villages in the depths of the forest or upon the
littoral.

I admit that the opinion of Garcilasso, descendant
of the Incas, an author who lived from 1580 to 1568, has
a certain importance when he says that the natives knew
the banana before the conquest. However, the expressions
of another writer, extremely worthy of attention, Joseph
Acosta, who had been in Peru, and whom Humboldt
quotes in support of Garcilasso, incline me to adopt the
contrary opinion.^ He says,^ " The reason the Spaniards
called it plane (for the natives had no such name) was
that, as in the case of their trees, they found some
resemblance between them." He goes on to show how
different was the plane (Flatanus) of the ancients. He
describes the banana very well, and adds that the tree
is very common in the Indies (i.e. Ameiica), " although
they (the Indians) say that its origin is Ethiopia. . . . There
is a small white species of plantain (banana), very delicate,
which is called in Espagnolle ^ dominico. There are others
coarser and larger, and of a red colour. There are none in
Peru, but they are imported thither from the Indies,* as

* Humboldt quotes the Spanish edition of 1608. The first edition is
of 1591. I have only been able to consult the French translation of
Eegnault, published in 1598, and which is apparently accurate.

* Acosta, trans., lib. iv. cap. 21.

* That is probably Hispaniola or San Dominoro ; for if he had meant
the Spanish languas^e, it would have been trauslated by castillan and
without the capital letter.

* This is probably a misprint for Andes, for the word Indes has no
sense. The work says (p. 166) that pine-apples do not gi-ow in Peru, but
that they are brought thither from the Andes, and (p. 173) that the cacao
oomes from the Andes. It seems to have meant hot regions. The wrod

313 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

into Mexico from Cuemavaca and the other valleys. On
the continent and in some of tlie islands there are great
plantations of them which form dense thickets." Surely it
is not thus that the author would express himself were
he writincr of a fruit tree of American orioin. He would
quote American names and customs ; above all, he would
not say that the natives regarded it as a plant of foreign
origin. Its ditiusion in the warm regions of Mexico may
Avell have taken place between the epoch of the conquest
and the time when Acosta wrote, since Hernandez, whose
conscientious researches go back to the earliest times of
the Spanish dominion in Mexico (though published later
in Rome), says not a word of the banana.-^ Prescott the
historian saw ancient books and manuscripts which assert
that the inhabitants of Tumbez brought bananas to
Pizarro when he disembarked upon the Peruvian coast,
and he believes that its leaves were found in the huacas,
but he does not give his proofs.'^

As recrards the argument of the modern native
2)lantations in regions of America, remote from European
settlements, I find it hard to believe that tribes have
remained absolutely isolated, and have not received so
useful a tree from colonized districts.

Briefly, then, it appears to me most probable that the
species was early introduced by the Spanish and Portu-
ofuese into San Domingo and Brazil, and I confess that
this implies that Garcilasso was in error with regard to
Peruvian traditions. If, however, later research should
prove that the banana existed in some parts of America
before the advent of the Europeans, I should be inclined
to attribute it to a chance introduction, not very ancient,
the etfect of some unknown communication with the
islands of the Pacific, or with the coast of Guinea, rather
than to believe in the primitive and simultaneous existence

Andes has since been applied to the chain of monntains by a strange
and unfortunate transfe.-.

' I have read through the entire work, to make sure of this fact.

• Prescott, Conquest of Peru. The author has consulted valuable
records, among others a manuscript of Montesinos of 1527 ; but he
does not quote his authorities for each fact, and contents himself with
vague and gei-eral indications, w hich are very inbutficient.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 311

of the species in both hemispheres. The whole of geo-
graphical botany renders the latter hypothesis improbable,
I might almost say impossible, to admit, especially in a
genus which is not divided between the two worlds.

In conclusion, I would call attention to the remarkable
way in which the distribution of varieties favours the
opinion of a single species — an opinion adopted, purely
l'ir>m the botanical point of view, by Roxburgh, Desvaux,
an<l R. Brown. If there were two or three species, one
would probably be represented by the varieties suspected
to be of American origin, the other would belong, for
instance, to the Malay Archipelago or to China, and the
third to India. On the contrary all the varieties are
geographically intermixed, and the two which are most
widely diffused in America differ sensibly the one from
the other, and each is confounded with or approaches
very nearly to Asiatic varieties.

Pine-Apple — Ananassa sativa, Lindley; Bromelia
Ananas, Linnaeus.

In spite of the doubts of a few writers, the pine-
apple must be an American pjlant, early introduced by
Europeans into Asia and Africa

Nana was the Brazilian name,^ which the Portucfuese
turned into ananas. The Spanish called it pinas, because
the shape resembles the fruit of a species of pine.^ All
early writers on America mention it.^ Hernandez says
that the pine-apple grows in the warm regions of Haiti
and Mexico. He mentions a Mexican name, matzatli A
]jine-apj)le was brought to Charles V., who mistrusted it,
and would not taste it.

The woi'ks of the Greeks, Romans, and Arabs make no
allusion to this species, which was evidently introduced
into the old world after the discovery of America.
Rheede * in the seventeenth century was persuaded of
this; but Rumphius ^ disputed it later, because he said

' Marc^af, Brasil., p. 33.

* Oviedo, Kamnsio's trans., iii. p. 113 ; Jos. Acosta, Hist. Kat. des.
I Tides, French trans., p. 166.

* Thevet, Piso, etc. ; Hernandez, Thes., p. 341.

* Rheede, Hort. Ma'ah., xi. p. 6. * Eumphius, Arahcin, v. p. 228.

312 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

the pine- apple was cultivated in his time in every part of
India, and was found wild in Celebes and elsewhere. He
notices, however, the absence of an Asiatic name. That
given by Rheede for Malabar is evidently taken from a
comparison with the jack-fruit, and is in no sense
original. It is doubtless a mistake on the part of
Piddington to attribute a Sanskrit name to the pine-apple,
as the name anaritsh seems to be a corruption of ananas.
Roxburgh knew of none, and Wilson's dictionary does
not mention the word anarush. Royle ^ says that the
pine-apple was introduced into Bengal in 1594<. Kircher ^
says that the Chinese cultivated it in the seventeenth
century, but it was believed to have been brought to
them from Peru.

Clusius^ in 1599 had seen leaves of the pine-apple
brought from the coast of Guinea. This may be explained
by an introduction there subsequent to the discovery of
America, Robert Brown speaks of the pine-apple among
the plants cultivated in Congo; but he considers the
species to be an American one.

Although the cultivated pine-apple bears few seeds
or none at all, it occasionally becomes naturalized in
hot countries. Examples are quoted in Mauritius, the
Seychelles, and Rodriguez Island,^ in India,^ in the
Malay Archipelago, and in some parts of America, where
it was probably not indigenous — the West Indies, for
instance.

It has been found wild in the warm regions of Mexico
(if we may trust the phrase used by Hernandez), in the
province of Veraguas ^ near Panama, in the upper
Orinoco valley,' in Guiana ^ and the province of Bahia.^

» Royle, III, p. 376.

« Kircher, Chine IllusMe, trans, of 1670, p. 253.

' Clusius, Exotic, cap. 44. * Baker, Fl. of Maurit.

* Royle, uhi supra. * Seemann, Bot. of the Herald, p. 215.
' Humboldt, Nouv. Esp., 2nd edit., ii. p. 478.

* Gardeners' Chronicle, 1881, vol. i. p. 657.

* Martius, letter to A. de CandoUe, Ge'ojr. Bot. Eais , p. 927.

CHAPTER T.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS.

Article I. — Seeds used for Food.

Cacao — Theohroma Cacao, Linnreus.

The genus Theohroma, of the order Byttneriacece,
allied to the Malvacece, consists of fifteen to eighteen
species, all belonging to tropical America, principally in
the hotter parts of Brazil, Guiana, and Central America.

The common cacao, Theohroma Cacao, is a small tree
wild in the forests of the Amazon and Orinoco basins ^
and of their tributaries up to four hundred feet of alti-
tude. It is also said to grow wild in Trinidad, which
lies near the mouth of the Orinoco.^ I find no proof that
it is indigenous in Guiana, although it seems probable.
Many early writers indicate that it was both wild and
cultivated at the time of the discovery of America from
Panama to Guatemala and Campeachy ; but from the
numerous quotations collected by Sloane,^ it is to be
feared that its wild character was not sufficiently verified.
Modem botanists are not very explicit on this head, and
in general they only mention the cacao as cultivated in
these reorions and in the West India Islands. G. Ber-
noulli/ who had resided in Guatemala, only says, " wild

* Humboldt, Toy., ii. p. oil; Kanth, in Humboldt and Bonpland,
Kova Genera, v. p. 316 ; Martius, Ueber den Cacao, in Biicbner, Eepert
Pharm.

' Schach, in Grisebach, Flora of Brit. W. Ind. Is., p. 91.

* Sloane, Jamaica, ii. p. 15.

* G. Bernoulli, UebersicM der Arten von Theohroma^ p. 5.

314 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

and cultivatedthroiigliouttroplcal America;" anclHemsley,*
in his review of the plants of Mexico and Central America,
made in 1879 from the rich materials of the Kewherbarium,
gives no locality where the species is indigenous. It was
perhaps introduced into Central America and into the
warm regions of Mexico by the Indians before the dis-
covery of America, Cultivation may have naturalized it
here and there, as is said to be the case in Jamaica.^ In
support of this hypothesis, it must be observed that
Triana^ indicates the cacao as only cultivated in the
warm regions of New Granada, a country situated be-
tween Panama and the Orinoco valley.

However this may be, the species was grown in
Central America and Yucatan at the time of the dis-
covery of America. The seeds were sent into the high-
lands of Mexico, and were even used as money, so highly
were they valued. The custom of drinking chocolate
was general. The name of this excellent drink is Mexi-
can. The Spaniards carried the cacao from Acapulco to
the Philippine Isles in IGTl? and 1G80,* where it succeeded
wonderfully. It is also cultivated in the Sunda Isles. I
imao;ine it would succeed on the Guinea and Zanzibar
coasts, but it is of no use to attempt to grow it in
countries which are not very hot and very damp.

Another species, Theohroma hicolor, Humboldt and
Bonpland, is found growing Avith the common cacao in
American plantations. It is not so much prized. On
the other hand, it does not require so high a temperature,
and can live at an altitude of nearly three thousand feet
in the valley of the Magdalena. It abounds in a wild
state in New Granada.^ Bernoulli asserts that it is only
cultivated in Guatemala, though the inhabitants call it
mountain cacao.

Litchi — Nepheliuiin Litchi, Cambessides.

The seed of this species and of the two following is

* Hemsley, Biologia Centrali Americana, part ii. p. 133.

* Grisebach, Kbi supra.

* Triana and Planchon, Prodr. Fl. Novo Granatenais, p. 209.

* Blanco, jF^. de Filipinas, edit. 2, p. 420.

* Kunth, in Humboldt aud Bonplnnd, ubi supra ; Triana, vbt supra-

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 815

covered with a fleshy excrescence, very sweet and scented,
which is eaten with tea.

Like most of the Sapindacece, the nepheliums are
trees. This one has been cultivated in the south of China,
India, and the Malay Archipelago from a date of which
we cannot be certain. Chinese authors living at Pekin
only knew the Litchi late in the third century of our
era.^ Its introduction into Bengal took place at the end
of the eighteenth century.^ Every one admits that the
species is a native of the south of China, and, Blume^
adds, of Cochin-China and the Philippine Isles, but it does
not seem that any botanist has found it in a truly wild
state. This is probably because the southern part of
China towards Siam has been little visited. In Cochin-
China and in Burmah and at Chittagong the Litchi is
only cultivated.*

Longan — Nephelium loiigana, Cambessides.

This second species, very often cultivated in Southern
Asia, like the Litchi, is wild in British India, from Ceylon
and Concan as far as the mountains to the east of
Bengal, and in Pegu.^ The Chinese introduced it into
the Malay Archipelago some centuries ago.

Rambutan — Nej^heliuni lajipaceum, Linnaeus.

It is said to be wild in the Indian Archipelago, where
it must have been long cultivated, to judge from the
number of its varieties. A Malay name, given by Blume,
signifies wild tree. Loureiro says it is wild in Cochin-
China and Java. Yet I find no confirmation for Cochin-
China in modern works, nor even for the islands. The
new flora of British India ^ indicates it at Singapore and
Malacca without aflirming that it is indigenous, on which
head the labels in herbaria commonly teU us nothino-.
Certainly the species is not wild on the continent of
Asia, in spite of the vague expressions of Blume and

» Bretschneider, letter of Aug. 23, 1881.

* Roxburgh, Fl. Indica, ii. p. 269. ' Blume, Rumphia, iii. p. 106.

* Loureiro, Flora Coch., p. 233 ; Kurz, Forest Fl. of Brit. Burmah
p. 293.

* Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., ii. p. 271 ; Thwaites, Enum. Zeyl., p. 58 ; Hiern
in Fl. of Brit. Ind., i. p. 688. '

« HLrn, in Fl. of Brit. Ind., i. p. 687.

316 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Miquel/ but it is more probably a native of the Malay
Archipelago.

In spite of the reputation of the nepheliums, of which
the fruit can be exported, it does not appear that these
trees have been introduced into the tropical colonies
of Africa and America except into a few gardens as
curiosities.

Pistachio Nut — Pistacia vera, Linnseus.

The pistachio, a shrub belonging to the order Ana-
cardiacecB, grows naturally in Syria. Boissier ^ found it
to the north of Damascus in Anti-Lebanon, and he saw
specimens of it brought from Mesopotamia, but he could
not be sure that they were found wild. There is the
same doubt about branches gathered in Arabia, which
have been mentioned by some writers. Pliny and Galen^
knew that the species was a Syrian one. The former
tells us that the plant was introduced into Italy by
Vitellius at the end of the reign of Tiberius, and thence
into Spain by Flavins Pompeius,

There is no reason to believe that the cultivation of
the pistachio was ancient even in its primitive country,
but it is practised in our own day in the East, as well
as in Sicilv and Tunis. In the south of France and
Spain it is of little importance.

Broad Bean — Faba vulgaris, Moench ; Vicia faba,
Linnjeus.

Linnseus, in his best descriptive work, Horhis cliff or-
tianus, admits that the origin of this species is obscure,
like that of most plants of ancient cultivation. Later,
in his Sj^ecies, which is more often quoted, he says, with-
out giving any proof, that the bean "inhabits Egypt."
Lerche, a Russian traveller at the end of the last
century, found it wild in the Mungan desert of the
Mazanderan, to the south of the Caspian Sea.^ Travellers

' BluTue, Rumphia, iii. p. 103 ; Miquel, Fl. Indo-Batava, i. p. 554.

* Bossier, Fl. Orient., ii. p. 5.

3 Pliny, Hist. Nat., lib. xiii. cap. 15; lib. xv. cap. 22; Galen, De Alt-
menti.s, lib. ii. cap. 30.

* Lerche, Noi-a Acta Acad. Cesareo-Leopold, vol. v., appendix, p. 203,
published in 1773. Maximowicz, in a letter of Feb. 24, 1882, tells me
that Lerche's specimen exists in the herbarium of the Imperial Garden

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 817

who have collected in this region have sometimes come
across it/ but they do not mention it in their writings,^
excepting Ledebour,^ and the quotation on which he
relies is not correct. Eosc ^ says that Olivier found the
bean wild in Persia ; I do not find this confirmed in
Olivier's Voyage, and as a rule Bosc seems to have
been too ready to believe that Olivier found a good
many of our cultivated plants in the interior of Persia.
He says it of buckwheat and of oats, which Olivier does
not mention.

The only indication besides that of Lerche which I
find in floras is a very different locality. Munby
mentions the bean as wild in Algeria, at Oran. He
adds that it is rare. No other author, to my knowledge,
has spoken of it in northern Africa. Cosson, who knows
the flora of Algeria better than any one, assures me he
has not seen or received any specimen of the wild bean
from the north of Africa. I have ascertained that there
is no specimen in Munby 's ^ herbarium, now at Kew.
As the Arabs grow the bean on a large scale, it may
perhaps be met with accidentally outside cultivated plots.
It must not be forgotten, however, that Pliny (lib. xviii.
c. 12) speaks of a wild bean in Mauritania, but he adds
that it is hard and caimot be cooked, which throws
doubt upon the species. Botanists who have written
upon Egypt and Cyrenaica, especially the more recent,®
give the bean as cultivated.

This plant alone constitutes the genus Faha. We
cannot, therefore, call in the aid of any botanical analogy

at St. Petersbnrgh. It is in flower, and resembles the cultivated bean
in all points excepting height, which is aboat half a foot. The label
mentions the locality and its wild character without other remarks.

' There are Transcaucasian specimens in the same herbariom, but
taller, and they are not said to be wild.

* Marschall Bieberstein, Flora Caucaso-Taurica ; C. A. Meyer, Fer-
zeichniss ; Hohenacker, Enum. Plant. Talysch ; Boissier, Fl. Orient.,
p. 578, Buhse and Boissier, Plant. TranscaucasicB.

* Ledebour, Fl. Ross., i. p. 6Qi, quotes de Candolle, Prodromiis, ii. p.
354 ; now Seringe wrote the article Faba in Prodromus, in which the
eouth of the Caspian is indicated, probably on Lerche's authority.

* Diet. d'Agric, v. p. 512.

* Munby, Catal. Plant, in Alger, sponfe nascent., edit. 2, p. 12.

* Schweinfiu'th and Ascherson, Aufzdhlwng, p. 256 j Eohlfs, Kvfra.

318 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

to discover its origin. We must have recjurse to the
history of its cultivation and to the names of the species
to find out the country in which it was originally
indigenous.

We must first eliminate an error which came from a
wrong interpretation of Chinese works. Stanislas Julien
believed that the bean was one of the five plants which
the Emperor Chin-nong commanded, 4600 years ago, to
be sown every year with great solemnity.^ Now, accord-
ing to Dr. Bretschneider,^ who is surrounded at Pekin
with every possible resource for arriving at the truth, the
seed similar to a bean which the emperors sow in the
enjoined ceremony is that of Dolichos soja, and the bean
was only introduced into China from Western Asia a
century before the Christian era, at the time of Chang-
kien's eml assy. Thus falls an assertion which it is hard
to reconcile with other facts, for instance with the
absence of an ancient cultivation of the bean in India,
and of a Sanskrit name, or even of any modern Indian
name.

The ancient Greeks were acquainted with the bean,
which they called kuamos, and sometimes hiiamos
ellenikos, to distinguish it from that of Egypt, which was
the seed of a totally different aquatic species, Neliim-
hium. The IliacP already mentions the bean as a culti-
vated plant, and Virchow found some beans in the
excavations at Troy.* The Latins called it faba. ^ We
find nothing in the works of Theophrastus, Dioscorides,
Pliny, etc., which leads us to believe the plant indigenous
in Greece or Italy. It was early known, because it was
an ancient Roman rite to put beans in the sacrifices to
the goddess Carna, whence the name Faharice Galendce.^
The Fabii perhaps took their name from faha, and the
twelfth chapter of the eighteenth book of Pliny shows,
without the possibility of a doubt, the antiquity and
importance of the bean in Italy.

* Loiscleur Deslongcliamps, Consid. sur les C^reales, part i. p. 29.
2 Bretschneider, Study and Value, etc., pp. 7, 15.

« Iliad, 13, V. 589.

* Wittmack, Sitz. hericht Yereins, Brandenburg, 1879.

* Novitius Dktionnarium, at the woi'il Faba,

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 3lD

The -word faha recurs in several of the Aiyan lan-
guages of Europe, but with modifications which philolo-
gists alone can recognize. We must not forget, however,
Adolphe Pictet's very just remark,^ that in the cases of
the seeds of cereals and leguminous plants the names of
one species are often transferred to another, or that cer-
tain names were sometimes specific and sometimes generic.
Several seeds of like form were called kiiannos by the
Greeks; several different kinds of haricot bean {Pha-
seolus,I)olichos) bear the same name in Sanskrit, and /afect
in ancient Slav, hohu in ancient Prussian, hobo in Armo-
rican, fav, etc., may very well have been used for peas,
haricot beans, etc. In our own day the phrase coffee-6eaw
is used in the trade. It has been rightly supposed that
when Pliny speaks o{ fabarice islands, where beans were
found in abundance, he alludes to a species of wild pea
called botanically Phiiin marithnum.

The ancient inhabitants of Switzerland and of Italy
in the age of bronze cultivated a small-fruited variety of
Faba vulgaris.'^ Heer calls it Celtica nana, because it
is only six to nine millimetres long, whereas our modem
field bean is ten to twelve millimetres. He has compared
the specimens from Montelier on Lake Morat, and St.
Peter's Islands on Lake Bienne, with others of the same
epoch from Parma. Mortellet found, in the contem-
porary lake-dwellings on the Lake Bourget, the same
small bean, which is, he says, very like a variety culti-
vated in Spain at the present day.^

The bean was cultivated by the ancient Egyptians.*
It is true that hitherto no beans have been found in the
sarcophagi, or drawings of the plant seen on the monu-
ments. The reason is said to be that the plant was
reckoned unclean.^ Herodotus^ says, "The Egyptians

^ Orirjines Indo-Euroi'^ennes, edit. 2, vol. i. p. 35^.

* Heer, Pflanzen der Pfahlhauten, p. 22, figs. 445-47.
' Perrin, £tude Pr^historique sur la Savoie, p. 2.

* Delile, Plant. Cult, en £gypte, p. 12 ; Reynier, Aconomie des Egyp.
tiens et Carthaginois, p. 340; "Uuger, Pjlan. d. Alt. ^gyp., p. 64; Wilkiu-
Bon, Man. and Cus. of Anc. Egyptians, p. 402.

* Eeynier, uhi supra, tries to discover the reason of this.
' Herodotus, Histoire, Larcher's trans., vol. ii. p. 32.

320 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANT9L

never sow the bean in their land, and if it grows they do
not eat it either cooked or raw. The priests cannot even
endure the sight of it; they imagine that this vegetable is
unclean." The bean existed then in Egypt, and probably
in cultivated places, for the soil which would suit it was
as a rule under cultivation. Perhaps the poor population
and that of certain districts did not share the prejudices
of the priests ; we know that the superstitions varied
with the nomes. Plutarch and Diodorus Siculus mention
the cultivation of the bean in Egypt, but they wrote
five hundred years later than Herodotus.

The word pol occurs twice in the Old Testament ; ^ it
has been translated bean because of the traditions pre-
served by the Talmud, and of the Arabic name foul, fol,
or fid, which is that of the bean. The first of the two
verses shows that the Hebrews were acquainted with the
bean one thousand years before Christ.

Lastly, I shall mention a sign of the ancient existence
of the bean in the north of Africa. This is the Berber
name ibiou, in the plural iahouen, used by the Kabyles of
the province of Algiers.^ It has no resemblance to the
Semitic name, and dates perhaps from a remote antiquity.
The Berbers formerly inhabited Mauiitania, where Pliny
asserts that the species was wild. It is not known
whether the Guanchos (the Berber people of the Canaries)
knew the bean. I doubt whether the Iberians had it, for
their supposed descendants, the Basques, use the name
haha^ answering to the Roman faha.

We judge from these facts that the bean was culti-
vated in Europe in prehistoric terms. It was introduced
into Europe probably by the western Aryans at the time
of their earliest migrations (Pelasgiaus, Kelts, Slavs). It
was taken to China later, a century before the Christian
era, and still later into Japan, and quite recently into
India.

Its wild habitat was probably twofold some thousands
of years ago, one of the centres being to the south of the

' 2 Sam. xvii. 28 ; Ezek. iv. 9.

^ Diet. Franrais-Bei-here, j)ul)lished by the French government;,

•■ Note communicated to M. Clos by M. d'Abadie.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 321

Caspian, the other in the north of Africa. This kind of
area, which I have called disjunctive, and to which I
formerly paid a good deal of attention,^ is rare in dicoty-
ledons, but there are examples in those very countries
of which I have just spoken.^ It is probable that the
area of the bean has long been in process of diminution
and of extinction. The nature of the plant is in favour
of this hypothesis, for its seed has no means of dispersing
itself, and rodents or other animals can easily make prey
of it. Its area in Western Asia was probably less limited
at one time, and that in Africa in Pliny's day was more
or less extensive. The struggle for existence which was
going against this plant, as against maize, would have
gradually isolated it and caused it to disappear, if man
had not saved it by cultivation.

The plant which most nearly resembles the bean is
Vicia narbonensis. Authors who do not admit the genus
Faba, of which the characters are not very distinct from
those of Vicia, place these two species in the same section.
Now, Vicia narbonensis is wild in the Mediterranean
basin and in the East as far as the Caucasus, in the
north of Persia, and in Mesopotamia.^ Its area is con-
tinuous, but this renders the hypothesis I mentioned
above probable by analogy.

Lentil — Ervum lens, Linnaeus ; Lens esculenta, Moench.

The plants which most nearly resemble the lentil are
classed by authors now in the genus ErvuTn, now in a
distinct genus Lens, and sometimes in the genus Cicer ;
but the species of these ill-defined groups all belong
to the Mediterranean basin or to Western Asia. This
throws some light on the origin of the cultivated plant.
Unfortunately, the lentil is no longer to be found in a
Avild state, at least with certainty. The floras of the
south of Europe, of Northern Africa, of the East, and of
India always mention it as cultivated, or as growing in
fields after or with other cultivated species. A botanist^

^ A. de Candolle, Geogr. Bot. Rais., chap. x.

* Rhododendron ponticum now exists only in Asia Minor and in the
south of the Spanish ] eninsila.

' Boissier, Fl. Orient., ii. p. 577.

* C. A. Meyer, Verzeichniss Fl. Caucas,, p. 147.

322 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

saw it in the provinces to the south of the Caucasus,
"cultivated and nearly wild here and there round vil-
lages." Another^ indicates it vaguely in the south of
Russia, hut more recent floras fail to confirm this.

The histor}^ and names of this plant may give clearer
indications of its origin. It has been cultivated in the
East, in the Mediterranean basin and even in Switzerland,
from prehistoric time. According to Herodotos, Theo-
phrastus, etc., the ancient Egyptians used it largely. If
their monuments give no proof of this, it was probably
because the lentil was, like the bean, considered common
and coarse. The Old Testament mentions it three times,
by the name adaschum or adasch'nn, which must cer-
tainly mean lentil, fur the Arabic name is ads,^ or adas.^
The red colour of Esau's famous mess of pottage has not
been understood by most authors. Reynier,^ who had
lived in Egypt, confirms the explanation given formerly
by Josephus ; the lentils were red because they were
hulled. It is still the practice in Egypt, says Reynier, to
remove the husk or outer skin from the lentil, and in
this case they are a pale red. The Berbers have the
Semitic name ades for the lentil.^

The Greeks cultivated the species — faJiOS or faJcai.
Aristophanes mentions it as an article of food of the
poor.^ The Latins called it lens, a name whose origin is
unknown, which is evidentl}' allied to the ancient Slav
^esAa, Illyrian lechja, Lithuanian lenszic? The difier-
ence between the Greek and Latin names shows that the
species perhaps existed in Greece and Italy before it was
cultivated. Another proof of ancient existence in Europe
is the discovery of lentils in the lake-dwellings of St.
Peter's Island, Lake of Bienne,^ which are of the age of

' Georgi, in Leclebour, J7. Ross.

* Forskal, Fl. ^oypt.; Delile, Plant. Cult, en Jirjijpfe, p. 13.
' Ebn Baithar, ii. p. 134.

* Revnier, £conomie publique et rurale des Arahes et desJuifs, Geneve,
1820, p."'429.

* Diet. Fravf.-Berhere, in 8vo, 1844.

* Hehn, Culturpflanzen, etc., edit. 3, vol. ii. p. 188.

' Ad. Pictet, Origines Tndo-Europeennes, edit. 2, vol. i. p. 364;
FJelin, nhi sitpra.

* Heer, Pjlanzen der Pfahlhauten, p. 23, fig. 49.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 323

bronze. The species may liave been introduced from
Italy.

Accoi'ding to Theophrastus/ the inhabitants of Bac-
triana (the modern Bokkara) did not know the fakos of
the Greeks. Adolphe Pictet quotes a Persian name,
rivingu or inargii, but he does not say whether it is an
ancient name, existing, for instance, in the Zend Avesta.
He admits several Sanskrit names for the lentil, TYiasura,
renuka, viangalya, etc., while Anglo-Indian botanists,
R.ixburgh and Piddington, knew none.^ As these
authors mention an analogous name in Hindustani and
Bengali, Tnussour, we may suppose that iniasura signifies
lentil, while mangu in Persian recalls the other name
mangahja. As Roxburgh and Piddington give no name
ill other Indian languages, it may be supposed that the
lentil was not known in this country before the invasion
of the Sanskrit-speaking race. Ancient Chinese works
do not mention the species; at least, Dr. Bretschneider
says nothing of them in his work published in 1870, nor
in the more detailed letters which he has since written
to me.

The lentil appears to have existed in western tem-
perate Asia, in Greece, and in Italy, where its cultivation
was first undertaken in very early prehistoric time, when
it was introduced into Egypt. Its cultivation appears
to have been extended at a less remote epoch, but still
hardly in historic time, both east and west, that is into
Europe and India.

Chick-Pea — Cicer arietinum, Linnseus.

Fifteen species of the genus Cicer are known, all ot
Western Asia or Greece, except one, which is Abyssinian.
It seems, therefore, most probable that the cultivated
species comes from the tract of land lying between
Greece and the Himalayas, vaguely termed the East.
The species has not been found undoubtedly wild. All
the floras of the sovith of Europe, of Egypt, and of
Western Asia as far as the Caucasus and India, give it as
a cultivated species, or growing in fields and cultivated

' Theophrastus, Hist., lih. iv. cap. 5.

* Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., edit. 1832, to', iii. p. 324; PicLlington, Index.

15

324 ORIGIN Ov CULTIVATED PLANTS.

grounds. It has sometimes* been indicated in the
Crimea, and to the north, and especially to the south of
the Caucasus, as nearly wild ; but well-informed modein
authors do not think so.^ This quasi-wildness can only
point to its oriofin in Armenia and the nei'hbouiincr
countries. The cultivation and the names of the species
may perhaps throw some light on the question.

The Greeks cultivated this species of pea as early as
Homer's time, under the name of erehinthos,^ and also oJ'
hrios,^ from the resemblance of the pea to the head of a
ram. The Latins called it cicer, which is the origin of
all the modern names in the south of Europe. The
name exists also among the Albanians, descendants of the
Pelasgians, under the form kikere.^ The existence of
such widely different names shows that the plant was
very early known, and perhaps indigenous, in the south-
east of Europe.

The chick-pea has not been found in the lake-dwell-
ings of Switzerland, Savoy, and Italy. In the fiist-
named locality its absence is not singular ; the climate is
not hot enough. A common name among the peoples of
the south of the Caucasus and of the Caspian Sea is, in
Georgi&n, nachiida ; in Turkish and Armenian, -jiocAims,
nachunt ; in Persian, noc/io^.^ Philologists can tell if this
is a very ancient name, and if it has any connection with
the Sanskrit chennuka.

The chick-pea is so frequently cultivated in Egypt
from the earliest times of the Christian era,' that it is
supposed to have been also known to the ancient
Egyptians. There is no proof to be found in the draw-
ings or stores of grain in their monuments, but it may be
supposed that this pea, like the bean and the lentil, was

' Ledebour, Fl. Rons., i. p. 6fi0, according to Pallas, Falk, and Kodi.

* Boissier, Fl. Orient., ii. p. 5G0; Steven, Verzeicl:ni^s dea Taurischen
Hahlinseln, p. 134.

' Iliad, bk. 13, verse 589 ; Theophrastns, Hi*/., lib. viii. c. 3.

* Dioscorides, lib. ii. c. 126.

* Heldreich, l^utzpjlanzen Griechenlavds, p. 71.

* Nemnich, Polyjlott. Lev., i. p. 1037 ; Buuge, in Goehels Reise, ii. p.
328.

* Clement d' Alexandria, Slrom., lib. i., quoted fiom Keynier, /con. deii
E'jyp. et Carthaij., p. 3-13.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 325

considered common or unclean. Reynier^ thought that
the hetscch, mentioned b}' Isaiah in the Old Testament,
was perhaps the chick-pea; but this name is generally
attributed, though without certainty, to JS'igeUa sativa
or Vicia sativa.^ As the Arabs have a totally different
name for the chick-pea, omnos, homos, which recurs in
the Kabyl language as hamiiiez^ it is not likely that
the ketsech of the Jews was the same plant. These de-
tails lead me to suspect that the species was unknown
to the ancient Egyptians and to the Hebrews. It was
perhaps introduced among them from Greece or Italy
towards the beginning of our era.

It is of more ancient inti'oduction into India, for
there is a Sanskrit name, and several others, analogous or
different, in modern Indian languages.* Bretschneider
does not mention the species in China.

I do not know of any proof of antiquity of culture in
Spain, yet the Castilian name gai hanzo, used also by
the Basques under the form garlantziut, and by the
French as garvance, being neither Latin nor Arabic, may
date from an epoch anterior to the Roman conquest.

Botanical, historical, and philological data agree in
indicating a habitation anterior to cultivation in the
countries to the south of the Caucasus and to the north
of Persia. The western Aryans (Pelasgians, Hellenes)
perhaps introduced the plant into Southern Europe,
where, however, there is some probability that it was also
indigenous. The western Aryans carried it into India.
Its area perhaps extended from Persia to Greece, and the
species now exists only in cultivated ground, where we
do not know whether it springs from a stock originally
wild or from cultivated plants.

Lupin — Liijpinus alhus, Linnaeus.

The ancient Greeks and Romans cultivated this
leguminous plant to bury it as a green manure, and also

' Reynier. Aeon, ries Ardbes et Juifi-, p. 430.

* Rosenmiiller, Bibl. Alterth., i. p. 100; Hamilton, Bot. de la Bible, p.
ISO.

» Rauwolf, Fl. Orient, No. 220; Forskal, Fl. Mjypt., p. 81 j Diet.
Franf.-Berhere.

* Roxburgh, Fl. Tnd., iii. p. 324 ; Piddington, Index.

326 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS,

for the sake of the seeds, "which are a good fodder for
cattle, and wlii^h are also used by man. The expressions
of Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Cato, Varro, Pliny, etc.,
quoted by modern writers, refer to the culture or to the
medical |)roperties of the seeds, and do not show whether
the species was the white lupin, L. albus, or the blue-
flowered lupin, L. hir^utus, which grows wild in the
south of Europe. Fraas says ^ that the latter is grown in
the ]\rorea at the present day ; but Heldreich says ^ that
L. albus glows in Attica. As this is the species which
has been long cultivated in Italy, it is probable that it is
the lupin of the ancients. It was much grown in the
eighteenth centur}^ especially in Italy,^ and de I'Ecluse
settles the question of the species, as he calls it Lupinus
sativus albo floret The antiquity of its cultivation in
Spain is shown by the existence of four different common
names, according to the province ; but the plant is only
found cultivated or nearly wild in fields and sandy
places.^ The species is indicated by Bertoloni in Italy,
on the hills of Sarzana. Yet Caruel does not believe
it to be wild here, any more than in other pai'ts of the
pjeninsula.^ Gussone ' is very positive for Sicily — " on
barren and sandy hills, and in mcadoM's {in herbidis) "
Lastly, Grisebach^ found it in Turkey in Europe, near
Ruskoi, and d'Urville^ saw it in abundance, in a wood
near Constantinople. Castagne confirms this in a manu-
script catalogue in m_y possession. Boissier does not men-
tion any locality in the East ; the species does not exist
in India, but Russian botanists have found it to the
south of the Caucasus, though we do not know with
certainty if it A^'as really wild.^*^ Other localities will
perhaps be found between Sicily, Macedonia, and the
Caucasus.

' See Froaa, Fl. Clans., p. 51 ; Lenz., Bot. der Alten, p. 73.

* H< Idreicli, Nufzpjlanzen Griechenland,<s, p. 69.

s Oi:vier de Serves, Theatre de VAgric, edit. 1529, p. 88.

* Cliisius, Hist, riant., ii. p. 228.

* WillkoTTim and Laiige, FL Hisp., iii. p. 466.
« Cai uel, Fl. Toscana^p. 136.

^ GiBsone, Fl. Siculce Sjn., edit. 2, V...1. ii. p. 4GG.

» Cripcbach, SpicU. Fl. Rumel, p. 11. » D'UiTille, Enum., p. TG.

"" Lcdabo ir, FL I2o.<s., i. p. 510.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 327

Egyptian Lupin — Lnpinus tennis, Forskal.

This species of lupin, so nearly allied to L. alhus that
it has sometimes been proposed to unite them/ is largely
cultivated in Egypt and even in Crete. The most
olDvious difference is that the upper part of the flowers
of L. termis is blue. The stem is taller than that of
L. alhus. The seeds are used like those of the common
lupin, after they have been steeped to get rid of their
bitterness.

L. termis is wild in sandy soil and mountainous dis-
tricts, in Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica ; ^ in Syria and
Egypt, according to Boissier ; ^ but Schweinfurth and As-
cherson ^ say that it is only cultivated in Egypt. Hart-
niann saw it wild in Upper Egypt.^ linger '^ mentions
it among the cultivated specimens of the ancient Egyp-
tians, but he gives neither specimen nor drawing. Wil-
kinson ■^ says only that it has been found in the tombs.

No lupin is grown in India, nor is there any Sanskrit
name ; its seeds are sold in bazaars under the name
tourmus (Royle, III., p. 19 4-).

The Arabic name, termis or termus, is also that of the
Greek lupin, termos. It may be inferred that the Greeks
had it from the Egyptians. As the species was known
to the ancient Egyptians, it seems strange that it has no
Hebrew name ; ^ but it may have been introduced into
Egypt after the departure of the Israelites.

Field-Pea — Pisum arvense, Linnaeus.

This pea is grown on a large scale for the seed, and
also sometimes for fodder. Although its appearance and
botanical characters allow of its being easily distinguished
from the garden-pea, Greek and Roman authors con-
founded them, or are not explicit about them. Their
writings do not prove that it was cultivated in their
time. It has not been found in the lake-dweUings of

' Carnel, FL Tosc, p. 136.

« Gussone, Fl. Sic. Sijn., li. p. 267; Moris, Fl. Sardoa, i. p. 596.

3 Boissier, Fl. Orient., ii. p. 29. ■• Aufzahlung, etc., p. 257.

• Schweinfurth, Plantce Nilot. a Eartman Coll., p. 6.

• Uii?er, Pflavzen d. Alt. .S^gyp., p. 65.

' W.lkiiison, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptia7is,ii.p. 403.

• Koseuuiiirer, Bibl. Alferth., vol. i.

328 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Switzerland, France, and Italy. Bobbio has a legend
(a.d. 930), in which it is said that the Italian peasants
called a certain seed herhilia, whence it has been sup-
posed to be the modern riihiglia or the Pisum sativum of
botanists.^ The species is cultivated in the East, and as
far as the north of India.^ It is of recent cultivation in
the latter country, for there is no Sanskrit name, and
Piddington gives only one name in one of the modern
languages.

Whatever may be the date of the introduction of its
culture, the species is undoubtedly wild in Italy, not only
in hedges and near cultivated ground, but also in forests
and wild mountainous districts.^ I find no positive
indication in the floras that it grows in like manner
in Spain, Algeria, Greece, and the East. The plant is
said to be indigenous in the south of Russia, but some-
times its wild character is doubtful, and sometimes the
species itself is not certain, from a confusion with Pisum
sativum, and P. elaiius. Of all Anglo-Indian botanists,
only Royle admits it to be indigenous in the north of
India.

Garden-Pea — Pisum sativum,, Linn?eus.

The pea of our kitchen gardens is more delicate than
the field-pea, and suffers from frost and drought. Its
natural area, previous to cultivation, was probably more
to the south and more restricted. It has not hitherto
been found wild, either in Europe or in the west of Asia,
whence it is supposed to have come. Bieberstein's indica-
tion of the species in the Crimea is not correct, according
to Steven, who was a resident in the country.* Perhaps
botanists have overlooked its habitation ; perhaps the
plant has disappeared from its original dwelling ; perhaps
also it is a mere modification, effected by culture, of
Pisum arvense. Alefeld held the latter opinion,^ but he

» Mnratori, Antich. Ital., i. p. 317; Diss., 24, quoted by Targioni,
Cenni Storici, p. 31.

« Boissier, Ft. Orient., ii. p. 623; Eoyle, HI. Rimal, p. 200.

» Beitoloni, Fl. Ital., vii. p. 419; Carael, Fl. Tosc, p. 184; Gussone,
Fl. Sic. Synopsis, ii. p. 279 ; Moris, II. Sardoa, i. p. 577.

* Steven, Verzeichniss, p. 134.

» Alefeld, Bot. Zcitvmj., 18G0, p. 20 i.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 329

has published too little on the subject for us to be able
to conclude anything from it. He only says that, having
cultivated a great number of varieties both of the field
and garden pea, he concludes that they belong to the
same species. Darwin ^ learnt through a third person
that Andrew Knight had crossed the field-])ea with a
garden variety known as the Prussian pea, and that the
product was fertile. This would certaiidy be a proof
of specific unity, but further observation and expei-i-
ment is required. In the mean time, in the search for
geographic origin, etc., I am obliged to consider the two
forms separately.

Botanists who distinguish many species in the genus
Pisum, admit eight, all European or Asiatic. Pisum
sativunn was cultivated by the Greeks in the time of
Theophrastus.^ They called it pisos, or pisow. The
Albanians, descendants of the Pelasgians, call it pizelle.^
The Latins had j)isi(wi.* This uniformity of nomencla-
ture seems to show that the Aryans knew the plant
when they arrived in Greece and Italy, and perhaps
brought it with them. Other Aryan languages have
several names for the generic sense of pea ; but it is
evident, from Adolphe Pictet's learned discussion on the
subject,^ that none of these names can be applied to
Pisum sativinn in particular. Even when one of the
modern languages, Slav or Breton, limits the sense to the
garden-pea, it is very probable that formerly the word
signified field-pea, lentil, or any other leguminous plant.

The garden-pea ** has been found among the remains
in the lake-dwellings of the age of bronze, in Switzerland
and Savoy. The seed is spherical, wherein it differs from
Pisum arvense. It is smaller than our modern pea.
Heer says he found it also among relics of the stone age,

' Darwin, Animals and Plants under Domestication, p. 326.

* Theophrastns, Hist., lib. viii. c. 3 and 5.

* Heldreich, Nutzpflanzen Griechenlands, p. 71.

* Pliny, Hist., lib. xviii. c. 7 and 12. This is certainly P. sativum,
for the author says it cannot bear the cold.

* Ad. Pictet, Origines Indo-Europ6ennes, edit. 2, vol. i. p. 359.

* Heer, Pflnnzen der PfahlbaUten, xxiii. fig. 48 ; Perriu, Etudes Pr4.
historiques sur la Saroie, p. 22.

330 OPJGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

at Moosseedorf ; but he is less positive, and only gives
iigures of the less ancient pea of St. Peter's Island. If
the species dates from the stone age in Switzerland, it
would be anterior to the immigi-ation of the Aryans.

There is no indication of the culture of Pisum sativum
in ancient Egypt or in India. On the other hand, it has
long been cultivated in the north of India, if it had, as
Piddington says, a Sanskrit name, harenso, and if it has
several names very different to this in modern Indian
lanffuages.^ It has been introduced into China from
Western Asia. The Fent-sao, drawn up at the end of
the sixteenth century, calls it the Mahometan pea.^ In
conclusion : the species seems to have existed in Western
Asia, perhaps from the south of the Caucasus to Persia,
before it was cultivated. The Aryans introduced it into
Europe, but it perhaps existed in Northern India before
the arrival of the eastern Aryans. It no longer exists in
a wild state, and when it occurs in fields, half-wild, it is
not said to have a modified form so as to approach some
other species.

Soy — DoUchos soja, Linn?eus ; Glycine soja, Bentham.

This leguminous annual has been cultivated in China
and Japan from remote antiquity. This might be
gathered from the many uses of the soy bean and from
the immense number of varieties. But it is also supposed
to be one of the farinaceous substances called shu in
Chinese writings of Confucius' time, though the modern
name of the plant is ta-tou.^ The bean is nourishing,
and contains a large proportion of oil, and preparations
similar to butter, oil, and cheese are extracted from it and
used in Chinese and Japanese cooking.^ Soy is also
grown in the Malay Archipelago, but at the end of the
eighteenth century it was still rare in Amboyna,^ and
Forster did not see it in the Pacific Isles at the time of
Cook's voyages. It is of modern introduction in India,

' Pidfliiif^ton, Index. Eoxlinrgh does not give a Sansknt name.

* Bret Schneider, Study and Value, etc., p. 16.
» Ihid., p. 9.

* See Pailleux, in Bull, de la Snc. d'Acclim., Sept. and Oct., 1880.

* Eumphius, Amb., voL v. p. 388.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 331

for Roxburgh had only seen the jilant in the botanical
gardens at Calcutta, where it was brought from the Mo-
luccas.^ There are no common Indian nanies.^ Besides,
if its cultivation had been ancient in India, it would
have spread westward into Syria and Egypt, which is
not the case.

Kaimpfer^ formerly published an excellent illustration
of the soy bean, and it had existed for a century in
European botanical gardens, when more extensive infor-
mation about China and Japan excited about ten years
ago a lively desire to introduce it into our countries. In
Austria, Hungary, and France especially, attempts have
been made on a large scale, of wliioh the results have
been summed up in works worthy of consultation.* It
is to be hoped these eti'urts may be successful ; but we
must not digress from the aim of our researches, the
probable origin of the species.

Linnauis says, in liis Spccic>^, " habitat in India," and
refers to Kiempfer, who speaks of the plant in Japan, and
to his own flora of Ceylon, where he gives the plant as
cultivated. Thwaites's modern flora of Ceylon makes no
mention of it. We must evidently go further east to find
the origin both of the species and of its cultivation. Lou-
reiro says that it gi-ows in Cochin-China and that it is
often cultivated in China.^ I find no proof that it is wild
in the latter country, but it may perhaps be discovered, as
its culture is so ancient. Ilussian botanists *" have only
found it cultivated in the north of China and in the
basin of the river Amur. It is certainly wihl in Japan.'^
Junghuhn** found it in Java on Blount Gunung-Gamping,
and a plant sent also from Java by Zollinger is sujtposed
to belong to this species, but it is not cei'tain that the

' Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., iii. p. 314. * Piddington, Index.

' KaeniptVr, Amer. Exot., p. 837, pi. 838.

•* liaberlaudt, Die Sojabohne, in Svo, Vicuna, 1878, quoted by Pailleux,
ubi supra.

* Loureiro, JF7. Cochin., ii. p. 538.

* Bunge, Eniun. Plant. Chin., 118; Maximowicz, Primit. Fl: Amur.,
p. 87.

' Mlqnel, Prohmo, in Ann. Mv.". Lxigd. Bat., iii. p. 52; Fianchet and
Savatier, Enum. Plant. Jap., i. p. 108.

* Junghuhu, Planice Jur.gh., p. 255.

332 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS,

specimen was wild.* A Malay name, kaddee,^ quite
different to the Japanese and Chinese common names, is
in favour of its indigenous character in Java.

Known facts and historical and philological probabilities
tend to show that the species was wild from Cochin-Ohina
to the south of Japan and to Java when the ancient
inhabitants of this region began to cultivate it at a very
remote period, to use it for food in various ways, and to
obtain from it varieties of which the number is remark-
able, especially in Japan.

Pigeon-Pea — Cajanus indicus, Sprengel ; Cytisus
Cajan, Linnseus.

This leguminous plant, often grown in tropical coun-
tries, is a shrub, but it fruits in the first year, and in
some countries it is grown as an annual. Its seed is an
important article of the food of the negroes and natives,
but the European colonists do not care for it unless
cooked green like our garden-pea. The plant is easily
naturalized in poor soil round cultivated plots, even in
the West India Islands, where it is not indigenous.^

In Mauritius it is called amhrevade ; in the Eno-lish
colonies, doll, pigeon-pea; and in the French Antilles,
pois d' Angola, 2'>ois de Congo, pois pigeon.

It is remarkable that, though the species is difiused in
three continents, the varieties are not numerous. Two
are cited, based only upon the yellow or reddish colour
of the flower, which were formerly regarded as distinct
species; but a more attentive examination has resulted in
their being classed as one, in accordance with Linnseus'
opinion.* The small number of variations obtained even
in the organ for which the species is cultivated is a sign
of no very ancient culture. Its habitation previous to
culture is uncertain. The best botanists have sometimes
supposed it to be a native of India, sometimes of tropical

' Soja angustifolia, Miquel ; see Hooker, Fl. Brit. Ind., ii. p. 184.

* Enmphius, Amh., vol. v. p. 38S.

* Tussac, Flo7-e des Antilles, vol. iv. p. 94, pi. 32 ; Grisebach, Fl. of
Brit. W. Indies, i. p. 191.

* See Wight and Arnott, Prod. Fl. Penins. Ind., p. 256 ; Klotzsch, in
Peters, Reise nach Mozambique, i. p. 36. The yellow variety is figured
in Tuisac, that with the red flowers in the Botanical Register, 184:0, p\. 31.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 333

Afiiea. Bentham, who Las made a careful study of the
leguminous plants, believed in 18G1 in the African origin ;
in 1865 he inclined rather to Asia.^ The problem is,
therefore, an interesting one. There is no question of an
American origin. The cajan Avas introduced into the
West Indies from the coast of Africa by the slave trade,
as the common names quoted above show,^ and the
unanimous opinion of authors or American floras. It
lias also been taken to Brazil, Guiana, and into all the
warm parts of the American continent.

The facility with which the species is naturalized
would alone prevent attaching great importance to the
statements of collectors, who have found it more or less
wild in Asia or in Africa; and besides, these assertions are
not precise, but are usually dcjubtful. Most writers on
the flora of continental India have only seen the plant
cultivated,'^ and none, to my knowledge, affirms that it
exists wild. For the island of Ceylon Thwaites says,^
" It is said not to be really wild, and the country names
seem to confirm this." Sir Joseph Hooker, in his Flora
of British India, says, "Wild (?) and cultivated to the
hoiirlit of six thousand feet in the Himalavas." Loureiro^
gives it as cultivated and non-cultiv^ated in China and
Cochin-China. Chinese authors do not appear to have
spoken of it, for the species is not named by Bretschneider
in his work On the Stud)/, etc. In the Sunda Isles it
is mentioned as cultivated, and that rarely, at Amboyna
at the end of the eighteenth century, according to Rum-
])hius.® Forster had not seen it in the Pacific Isles at the
time of Cook's voyages, but Seemann says that it has
been recently introduced by missionaries into the Fiji
Isles.'' All this argues no very ancient extension of cul-
tivation to the east and south of the continent of Asia.
Besides the quotation from Loureiro, I find the species

* Bentham, Flora Hongl-ongensin, p. 89; Flora Bra»il., vol. xv. p. 199;
Bontham and Hooker, i. p. 541.

* Tussac, Flore des Antilles ; Jacquin, Ohs., p. 1.
■ Rhooile, Roxburgh, Kurz, Burm. Fl., etc.

* Thwaites, Enitm, PL Ceylan. * Loureiro, Fi. Coili i., p. 5G5

* Ruiupbius, Amb., vol. v. t. 135.

* Seemann, Fl. Vitiensis, p. 74.

334! ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

indicated on the mountain of Magelang, Java ; ^ but, sup-
posing this to be a true and ancient wild giowth in both
cases, it would be very extraordinary not to find the
species in many other Asiatic localities.

The abundance of Indian and Malay names ^ shows
a somewhat ancient cultivation. Piddinoton even sfives
a Sanskrit name, arhuhio, which was not known to Kox-
burgh, but he gives no proof in support of his assertion.
The name may have been merely supposed from the
Hindu and Bengali names urur and orol. No Semitic
name is known.

In Africa the cajan is often found from Zanzibar to
the coast of Guinea.^ Authors say it is cultivated, or
else make no statement on this head, which would seem
to show that the specimens are sometimes wild. In
Egypt this cultivation is quite modern, of the nineteenth
century.'*

Briefly, then, I doubt that the species is really wild
in Asia, and that it has been grown there for more than
three thousand years. If more ancient peoples had known
it, it would have come to the knowledge of the Arabs and
Egyptians before our time. In tropical Africa, on the
contrary, it is possible that it has existed wild or culti-
vated for a very long time, and that it was introduced
into Asia by ancient travellers trading between Zanzibar
and India or Ceylon.

The genus Cajanus has only one species, so that no
analogy of geographical distribution leads us to believe it
to be rather of Asiatic than African origin, or vice versa.

Carob Tree^ — Ceratonia siliqua, Linn?eus.

The seeds and pods of the carob are highly prized in
the hotter parts of the Mediterranean basin, as food for
animals and even for man. De Gasparin ^ has given in-

' Junghnhn, Plantce Jnngh., fasc. i. p. 241.

• Piddington, Index ; Rheede, Malah., vi. p. 23, (^^c.

• Pickering, Chron. Arrang. of Plants, p. 442; Fvters, Eeise, p. 36;
R. Brown, Bot. of Congo, p. 53 ; Oliver, Fl. of Trap. Afr., ii, p. 216.

■• Bulletin de la Societe d'Acclimationy 1871, p. 663.

• The species is given here in order not to separate it from tlie other
leguminous plants cultivated for the seeds alone.

• De Gasparin, Cours. d'Agric., iv. p. 31S.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 335

tcresting details about the raising, uses, and habitation of
the species as a cultivated tree. He notes that it does
not pass the noithern limit beyond which the orange
cannot be grown without shelter. This fine evergreen
tree does not thrive either in very liot countries, especially
where there is much humiditv. It likes the neiirhbour-
h(jod of the sea and rocky placos. Its original country,
according to Gasparin, is " probably the centre of Africa,
Denham and CJapperton found it in Burnou." This
proof seems to me insufficient, for in all the ^*ile Valley
and in Abyssinia the carob is not wild nor even culti-
vated.^ R. Brown does not mention it in his account of
Deiiham and (Jlapperton's journey. Travellers have seen
it in the forests of Cyrenaica between the high-lauds
and the littoral ; but the able botanists who have drawn
up the catalogue of the plants of this country are careful
to say,^ "perhaps indigencnis." Most botanists merely
mention the species in the centre and south of tlie Medi-
terranean basin, from Spain and Marocco to Syria and
Anatolia, without inquiring closely whether it is indi-
genous or cultivated, and without entering upon the
question of its true country previous to cultivation.
Usually they indicate the canjb tree, as "cultivated and
subspontaneous, or nearly wild." However, it is stated to
be wild in Greece by Heldreich, in Sicily by Gussone and
Bianca, in Algeria by 3[unl»y;^ and these autliors have
each lived loui]: enou'di in the country for which each is
(|uoted to form an enlightened opinion.

Bianca remarks, however, that the carob tree is not
always healthy and productive in those restricted localities
where it exists in Sicily, in the small adjacent islands,
and on the coast of Italy. He puts forward the opinion,
moreover, based upon the similarity of the Italian name
carruho with the Arabic word, that the species was

• Schweinfurthand Aschorson, J.it/zci?iiu7J^, p. 255 ; Richard, Te/itawien
Fl. Abyss.

• Ascherson, etc., in Rohls, Kiifra, 1 vol. in 8vo, 1881, p. 519.

• Heldreich, Nutzpflanzen GriechenJands, p. 73 ; Die Fdanzen der
Attischen Ehene, p. 477 ; Gussone, Syn. FL Sic, p. 64:6 ; Bianca, II Carruho,
in the Giomale d' Agricoltura Italiana, 1881 ; Muhbj, Catal. PL in Alg.
Spont., p. 13.

330 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

anciently introduced into the south of Europe, the species
being of Syrian or north African origin. He maintains
as probahle the theory of Hoefer and Bonn^,^ that the
h)tus oF thi h)tophagi was the carob tree, of which the
tiower is sweet and the fruit has a taste of honey, which
agrees with the expressions of Homer. The lotus-eaters
dwelt in Cyrenaica, so that the carob must have been
abundant in their country. If wo admit this hypothesis
we must suppose that Pliny and Herodotus did not know
Homer's plant, for the one describes the lotos as bearing
a fruit like a mastic berry {Pistacia lentiscus), the other
as a deciduous tree.^

An hypothesis regarding a doubtful plant formerly
mentioned by a poet can hardly serve as the basis of
an argument upon facts of natural history. After all,
Homer's lotus plant perhaps existed only in the fabled
garden of Hesperides. I return to more serious argu-
ments, on which Bianca has said a few words.

The carob has two names in ancient languages — the
one Greek, keraunia or kerateia;^ the other Arabic,
chirnuh or charuh. The first alludes to the form of the
pod, which is like a slightly curved horn ; the other means
merely pod, for we find in Ebn Baithar's ^ work that four
other leguminous plants bear the same name, with a quali-
fying epithet. The Latins had no special name ; they
used the Greek word, or the expression siliqua, siliqua
grceca (Greek pod).^ This dearth of names is the sign of a
once restricted area, and of a culture which probably does
not date from prehistoric time. The Greek name is still
retained in Greece. The Arab name persists among the
Kabyles, who call the fruit kharrouh, the tree takliar-
Toiii,^ and the Spaniards algarrobo. Curiously enough,

' Hoefer, JTisf. Bot. Mi->i6r. et Gi-ol., 1 vol. in 12mo, p. 20; Bonne, Le
Carnubier, on, VArhre dcs Lotophages, Algiers, 1SG9 (quoted by Hojfer).
See above, the article on the jujube tree.

=* Pliny, Hist., lib. i. cap. 30.

* Theophrastus, Hist. Plant., lib. i. cap. 11; Dioscorides, lib. i.
cap. 155 ; Fraae, Syn. Fl. Class., p. 65.

* Ebn Baithar, German trans., i. p. 351 ; Forskal, Fl. JEgypt., p. 77.

* Columna, quoted by Lenz, Bot. der Alien, p. 73; Fliuy, Hist.,
lib. xiii. cap. 8.

" Did. Fianr.-Berhere, at the word Caroube.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 837

the Italians also took the Arab name curraho, caruhio,
whence the French carouhier. It seems that it must
have been introduced after the Roman epoch by the
Arabs of the Middle Ages, when there was another name
for it. These details are all in favour of Bianca's
theory of a more southern origin than Sicily. Pliny
fays the species belonged to Syria, Ionia, Cnidos, and
Rhodes, but he does not say whether it was wild or
cultivated in these places. Pliny also says that the
carob tree did not exist in Egypt. Yet it has been
recognized in monuments belonoinnr to a much earlier
epoch than that of Pliny, and Egyptologists even
attribute two Egyptian names to it, kontrates or jiri}
Lepsius gives a drawing of a pod which appears to
him to be certainly a carob, and the botanist Kotschy
made certain by microscopic investigation that a stick
taken from a sarcophagus was made from the wood of
the carob tree.^ There is no known Hebrew name for
the species, which is not mentioned in the Old Testament.
The New Testament speaks of it by the Greek name in
the parable of the prodigal son. It is a tradition of the
Christians in the East that St. John Baptist fed upon
tlie fruit of the carob in the desert, and hence came
the names given to it in the Middle Ages — bread of
St. John, and Johannis brcdbaum.

Evidently this tree became important at the beginning
of the Christian era, and it spread, especially through
the agency of the Arabs, towards the West. If it had
previously existed in Algeria, among the Berbers, and in
Spain, older names would have persisted, and the species
would probably have been introduced into the Canaries
by the Phoenicians.

The information gained on the subject may be
summed up as follows : —

The carob grew wild in the Levant, probably on the
southern coast of Anatolia and in Syria, perhaps also in

* Lexicon Oxon., quoted by Pickerins?, Chron. Hist, of Plants, p. 141.

• The drawing is reproduced in Unger's Fjlanzen des Alien ^gyptens,
fig. 22. The observation which he quotes from Kotschy needs confirma-
tion by a special anatomist.

338 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Cyrenaica. Its cultivation began within historic time.
The Greeks diffused it in Greece and Italy; but it was
afterwards more highly esteemed by the Arabs, who
propagated it as far as Marocco and Spain. In all these
countries the tree has become naturalized here and there
in a less productive form, which it is needful to graft to
obtain good fruit.

The carob has not been found in the tufa and quater-
nary deposits of Southern Europe. It is the only one of
its kind in the genus Cerafonia, which is somewhat
exceptional among the Leguininosce, especially in Europe.
Nothing shows that it existed in the ancient tertiary or
quaternary flora of the south-west of Europe.

Common Haricot Kidney Bean — Phaseolus vulgaris,
Savi.

When, in 1855, I wished to investigate the origin of
the genera Phaseolus and Doliclios,^ the distinction of
species was so little defined, and the floras of tropical
countries so rare, that I was obliged to leave several
questions on one side. Now, thanks to the works of
Bentham and Georg von Martens,^ completing the previous
labours of Savi,^ the Legumince of hot countries are
better known ; lastly, the seeds discovered quite recently
in the Peruvian tombs of Ancon, examined by Wittmack,
have completely modified the question of origin.

I will speak first of the common haricot bean, after-
wards of some other species, without, however, enume-
rating all those which are cultivated, for several of these
are still ill defined.

Botanists held for a lon£j time that the common
haricot was of Indian origin. No one had found it wild,
nor has it yet been found, but it was supposed to be of
Indian origin, although the species was also cultivated in
Afiica and America, in temperate and hot regions, at
least in those where the heat and humidity are not
excessive. I called attention to the fact that there is

* A. de CandoUe, Geogr. Bof. Eais., p. 9G1.

* Bentham, in Ann. Wiener Museum, voL ii. ; Martens, Die Oarteri'
hohnen, in Jto, Stuttgart, 1860, edit. 2, 1869.

* Savi, Osserv. sopra Phaseolus e Dolichos, 1, 2, 3.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 339

no Sanskrit name, and that sixteenth-century gardeners
often called the species Turkish bean. Convinced, more-
over, that the Greeks cultivated this plant under the
names fasiolos and clolichos, I suggested that it came
originally from Western Asia, and not from India. Georg
von Martens adopted this hypothesis.

However, the meaning of the words clolichos of
Theophrastus, fasiolos of Dioscorides, faseolus and
phaseolus of the Romans,^ is far from being sufficiently
defined to allow them to be attributed with certainty to
Phaseolus vulgaris. Several cultivated Legitminosce are
supported by the trellises mentioned by authors, and
have pods and seeds of a similar kind. The best argu-
ment for translating these names by Phaseolus vulgaris
is that the modern Greeks and Italians have names
derived from fasiolus for the common haricot. In
modern Greek it is fasoulia, in Albanian (Pelasgic ?)
fasule, in Italian fagiolo. It is possible, however, that
the name has been transferred from a species of pea
or vetch, or from a haricot formerly cultivated, to our
modern haricot. It is rather bold to determine a species
of Phaseolus from one or two epithets in an ancient
author, when we see how difficult is the distinction of
species to modern botanists w^ith the plants under their
eyes. Nevertheless, the dolichos of Theophrastus has
been definitely referred to the scarlet 'runner, and the
fasiolos to the dwarf haricot of our gardens, which are
the two principal modern varieties of the common
haricot, with an immense number of sub-varieties in the
form of the pods and seed. I can only say it may be so.

If the common haricot was formei'ly known in Greece,
it was not one of the earliest introductions, for the
faseolos did not exist at Rome in Cato's time, and it is
only at the beginning of the empire that Latin authors
speak of it. Yirchow brought from the excavations at
I'roy the seeds of several legumin?e, which Wittmack ^

' Th?Qphrastns, Hist., lib. Ti'ii. cap. 3; Dioscorides, lib. ii. cap. 130;
Pliny, Hi<t., lib. xviii. cap. 7, 12, interpreted by Fraas, Syn. Fl. Class.,
p. 52 ; Lenz, Bot. der Alien, p. 731 ; Marten?, Die Gnrfenhohnen, p. 1,

" Wiitmack, Bot. Veni7is Bmndenhurg, Dec. 19, 1879.

o4D OEIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

has ascertained to belong to the following species: broad
bean (Faba vulgaris), gsivden--pea, {Fisum sativum), ervilla
(Ervum ere ilia), and perhaps the flat-podded vetchling
(Lathyrus Cicera), but no haricot. Nor has the species
been found in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, Savoy,
Austria, and Italy.

There are no proofs or signs of its existence in
ancient Egypt. No Hebrew name is known answering
to the FJiaseolus or Dolichos of botanists. A less ancient
name, for it is Arabic, louhia, exists in Egypt for Dolichos
luhia, and in Hindustani as loha for Fhaseohts vulgaris}
As regards the latter species, Piddington only gives two
names in modern languages, and those both Hindustani,
loba and bakla. This, together with the absence of a
Sanskrit name, points to a recent introduction into
Southern Asia. Chinese authors do not mention F.
vulgaris^ which is a further indication of a recent
introduction into India, and also into Bactriana, whence
the Chinese have imported plants from the second
century of our era.

AJl these circumstances incline me to doubt whether
the species was known in Asia befor§ the Christian era.
The argument based upon the modern Greek and Italian
names for the haricot, derived from fasiolos, needs some
support. It may be said in its favour that it was used
in the Middle Ages, probably for the common haricot.
In the list of vegetables which Charlemagne commanded
to be sown in his farms, we find fasiolum,^ without ex-
planation. Albertus Magnus describes under the name
faseolus a leguminous plant Avhich appears to be our
d warf haricot.'* I notice, on the other hand, that writers

• Dolile, P?a«fe.s CnUirees en £gypte, p. 1 i ; Piddington, Index.

' Bretsclineider does not mention any, either in his pamphlet On the
Study and Value of Chinese Botanical Works, or in his private letters
lo me.

^ E. Meyer, Geschichte der Bofanique, iii. p. 404.

* " Faseolus est species leguminis et yrani, quod est in qtiantifate parum
minus quani Faha, et in figura est columnare sicut faha, herhaqioe ejus
minor est aliqvantulum quam herha Faba'. Et sunt faseoli multorvm
colorum, .led quodlihet granorum hahet maculain nigram in loco cotyledonis"
(Jessen, Alberti Magni, De Vegetahilihvs, edit, critica, p. &15).

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOE, THEIR SEEDS. 341

in the fifteenth century, such as Pierre Crescenzio ^ and
Macer Floridus,^ mention no faseolus or similar name.
On the other hand, after the discovery of America, from
the sixteenth century all authors publish descriptions
and drawings of F/iaseolus vidgaris, with a number of
varieties

It is doubtful that its cultivation is ancient in tropical
Africa. It is indicated there less often than that of other
species of the Dolichos and Phaseolus genera.

It had not occurred to any one to seek the origin of
the haricot in America till, quite recently, some remark-
able discoveries of fruits and seeds were made in Peru-
vian tombs at Ancon, near Lima. Hochebrune ^ published
a list of the species of different families from the collection
made by Cossac and Savatier. Among the number are
three kinds of haricot, none of which, says the author, is
Phctseolus vulgaris; but Wittmack,* who studied the
leguminae brought from these same tombs by Reiss
and Stubel, says he made out several varieties of the
common haricot among other seeds belonging to Phaseolus
lunatus, Linnreus. He had identified them with the
varieties of P. vulgaris called by botanists Ohlongus
piuyureus (Martens), ElUpticus prcecox (Alefeld), and
Elllpticiis atrofiiscus (Alefeld), which belong to the oate-
gory of dwarf or branchless haricots.

It is not certain that the tombs in question are all
anterior to the advent of the Spaniards. The work of
Keiss and Stubel, now in the press, will perhaps give
some information on this head ; but Wittmack admits, on
their authority, that some of the tombs are not ancient.
I notice a fact, however, which has passed without
observation. The fifty species of Rochebrune are all
American, There is not one which can be suspected to
be of European origin. Evidently these plants and seeds

' P. Cresceng, French trans., 1539.

* Macer Floridus, edit. 1485, and Choulant's commentarr, 1832.

' De Eochebruue, Actes cle la Soc. Linn.de Bordeaux, vol. xxxiii. Jan.,
18S0, of which I saw an analysis in Botanisches Centralblatt, 1830,
p. Ifi33.

* Wittmack, Sifzungshericht des Bot. Yereins Brandenburg, Dec. 19,
187'^, and a pri ate letter.

342 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

were eitlier deposited before the conquest, or, in certain
tombs vvliich perhaps belong to a subsequent epoch, tlie
inhabitants took care not to put species of foreign origin.
This was natural enough according to their ideas, for the
custom of depositing plants in the tombs was not a result
of the Catholic religion, but was an inheritance from the
customs and opinions of the natives. The presence of
the common haricot among exclusively American plants
seems to me important, whatever the date of the tombs.

It may be objected that the seeds are insufficient
ground for determining the species of a phaseolus, and
that several species of this genus which are not yet
well known were cultivated in South America before
the arrival of the Spaniards. Molina ^ speaks of thirteen
or fourteen species (or varieties ?) cultivated formerly in
Chili alone.

Wittmack insists upon the general and ancient use
of the haricot in several parts of South America. This
proves at least that several species were indigenous and
cultivated. He quotes the testimony of Joseph Acosta,
one of the first writers after the conquest, who says
that " the Peruvians cultivated vegetables which they
called fi'lsoles and ixdcires, and which they used as the
Spaniards use garbanzos (chick-pea), beans and lentils.
I have not found," he adds, " that these or other European
vecretables were found here before the cominfj of the
Europeans." Frisole, fajol, fasoler, are Spanish names for
the common haricot, cori'uptions of the Latin faselus,
fasolus, faseolus. Puller is American.

I may take this opportunity of explaining the origin
(jf the French name haricot. I sought for it formerly in
vain;^ but I noticed that Tournefort^ (Iiistit, p. 41.5)
was the first to use it. I called attention also to the
existence of the word arachos (apaxog) in Theophrastus,
])iobably for a kind of vetch, and of the Sanskrit word

' Molina (Essai sur I'llist. Nat. du Chili, French trans., p. 101)
mentions Phaseoli, which he calls pallar and aselhis, and CI. Gay's
Fi. du Chili adds, without much explanation, Ph. Cumingii, Bentham.

- A. de Candolle, Geoj. Bot. Rais., p. 691.

» Tournefort Elements (1694), i. p. 328; Instit., p. 415.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 343

harenso for the common pea. I rejected as improbable
the notion that the name of a vegetable could come from
the dish called haricot or laricot of mutton, as suggested
by an English author, and criticized Bescherelle, who
derived the word from Keltic, while the Breton words are
totally different, and signify small bean (fa-munno) or
kind of pea [ins-ram). Lettrd, in his dictionary, also seeks
the etymology of the word. Without any acquaintance
with my article, he inclines to the theory that haricot, the
plant, comes from the ragout, seeing that the latter is
older in the language, and that a certain resemblance
may be traced between the haricot bean and the morsels
of meat in the ragout, or else that this bean was suitable
to the making of the dish. It is certain that this
vegetable was called in French faseole or fazeole, from the
Latin name, until nearly the end of the seventeenth
century ; but chance has led me to discover the real
origin of the word haricot. An Italian name, araco,
found in Durante and Matthioli, in Latin Aracus niger^
was o-iven to a leguminous plant which modern botanists
attribute to Lathyrns ochrus. It is not surprising that
an Italian seventeenth-century name should be trans-
])orted by French cultivators of the following century to
another leguminous plant, and that ara should have been
ari. It is the sort of mistake which is common now.
Besides, aracos or araclios has been attributed by com-
mentators to several Xf^/wmiTiosce of the genera Lathy i us,
Vicia, etc. Durante gives the Greek arachos as the
synonym for his araco, whereby we see the etymology.
1 ere Feuillee ^ wrote in French aricot; before him Tourne-
fort spelt it haricot, in the belief, perhaps, that the
Greek word was wiitten with an aspirate, which is not
tie case, at least in the best authors.

I may sum up as follows : — (1) Fhaseolus vulgaris has
not been long cultivated in India, the south-west of Asia,
and Egypt ; (2) it is not certain that it was known in
Europe "before the discovery of America; (3) at this epoch

' Durante, He> hario Nuovo, 1585, p. 39 ; Matthioli ed Valgris, p. 322 ;
Tagioni, Dizion. Bot. Ifal., i. p. l.S.

^ Feuillee, Hi-it. des Plav. Mrdic. du Pe'ron, etc.. in 4to, 1725, p. 54.

34!4 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

the number of varieties suddenly increased in European
gardens, and all authors commenced to mention them ;
(4) the majority of the species of the genus exist in South
America ; (5) seeds apparently belonging to the species
have been discovered in Peruvian tombs of an uncertain
date, intermixed wiih many species, all American.

I do not examine whether Fhaseolus vulgaris existed
in both hemispheres previous to cultivation, because
examples of this nature are exceedingly rare among
non-aquatic phanerogamous plants of tropical countries.
Perhaps there is not one in a thousand, and even then
human agency may be suspected.^ To open this question
in the case of Ph. vulgaris, it should at least be found
wild in both old and new worlds, which has not happened.
If it had occupied so vast an area, we should see signs
of it in individuals really wild in widely separate regions
on the same continent, as is the case with the following
species, Ph. lunatiis.

Scimetar-podded Kidney Bean, or Sugar Bean. — Pha-
seolus lunatiis, Linnseus; Phaseolus lunatus raacrocarpus;
Bentham, Ph, inamcenus, Linnseus.

This haricot, as well as that called Lima, is so widely
diffused in tropical countries, that it has been described
under diti'erent names.^ All these forms can be classed
in two groups, of which Linnseus made different species.
The commonest in our gardens is that which has been
called since the beginning of the century the Lima
haricot. It may be distinguished by its height, by the
size of its pods and beans. It lasts several years in
countries which are favourable to it.

Linnaeus believed that his Ph. lunatus came from
Bengal and the other from Africa, but he gives no
proof. For a century his assertions were repeated.
Now, Bentham,^ who i? careful about origins, believes the
sjiecies and its varietj^to be certainly American ; he only
doubts about its presence as a wild plant both in Africa

' A. de Candolle, Gt^ogr. Bof. Rais., chapter on disjunctive species.
• Ph hipnnctatus, J acqn'm; Ph. inanicenvs, Liunaeus; Ph. puleiulus,
KuntVi ; Ph. i^accharatus, MacFadyen ; etc., etc.
" B ntham, in Fl. Bmail., vol. xv. p. 181.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 3i5

anl Asia. I see no indication whatever of ancient exist-
ence in Asia. The plant has never been found wild, and
it has no name in the modern lano'uasres of India or
in Sanskrit.^ It is not mentioned in Chinese works.
Anglo-Indians call it French bean,^ like the common
haricot, which shows how modem is its cultivation.

It is cultivated in nearly aU. tropical Africa. How-
ever, Schweinfurth and Ascherson ^ do not mention it
for Abyssinia, Nubia, or Egj^pt. Oliver ^ quotes a number
of specimens found in Guinea and the interior of Africa,
without saying whether they were wild or cultivated.
If we suppose the species of African origin or of very early
introduction, it would have spread to Egypt and thence
to India.

The facts are quite different for South America.
Bentham mentions wild specimens from the Amazon
basin and Central Brazil. They belong especially to the
large variety {macrocarjnis), which abounds also in the
Peruvian tombs of Ancon, according to Wittmack.^ It is
evidently a Brazilian species, diffused by cultivation, and
perhaps long since naturalized here and there in tropical
America. I am inclined to believe it was introduced into
Guinea by the slave trade, and that it spread thence
into the interior and the coast of Mozambique.

Moth, or Aconite-leaved Kidney Bean — Phaseolus
aeon itlfolius, Willdeno w.

An annual species grown in India as fodder, and of
which the seeds are eatable, though but little valued.
The Hindustani name is mout, among the Sikhs moth. It
is somewhat like Fh. trilohus, which is cultivated for the
seed. Fh. aconitifolius is wild in British India from
Ceylon to the Himalaj^as.^ The absence of a Sanskrit
name, and of different names in modern Indian lanofuaoes,
pomts to a recent cultivation.

Three-lobed Kidney Bean — Fhascohts trilohus, ^Yl[l-
denow.

» Roxhnrgli, Piddington, etc. * Eoyle, III. Himalaya, p. 190.

» Aufdzhlujvj, etc., p. 257. ■* Oliver, Fl. of Trap. Afr., p. 192.

» Wittmack, Sitz. Bot. Vereivs Branden., Dec. 19, 1879.
« Roxburgh, Fl. Ind. edit. 1832, vol. iii. p. 299; Aitchison, Catal. oj
Punjab, p. 48; Sir J. Hooker, Fl. of Brit. Ind., ii. p. 202.

346 OKIGIN OF C:ULT1VATED PLANTS.

One of the most commonly cultivated species in India;'
at least in the last few years, for Roxburgh,^ at the end
of the eighteenth century, had only seen it wild. All
authors agree in considering it as wild from the foot of
the Himalayas to Ceylon. It also exists in Nubia,
Abyssinia, and Zambesi ; ^ it is not said whether wild or
cultivated. Piddington gives a Sanskrit name, and
several names in modern Indian languages, which shows
that the species has been cultivated, or at least known
for three thousand years.

Green Gram, or Mting — Phaseolus muvgo, Linnpeus.

A species commonly cultivated in India and in the
Nile Valley. The considerable number of varieties, and
the existence of three different names in the modern
languages of India, point to a cultivation of one or two
thousand years, but there is no Sanskrit name.^ In
Africa it is probably recent. Anglo-Indian botanists
agree that it is wild in India.

Lablab, or Wall — Dolichos Lahlab, Linnreus.

This species is much cultivated in India and tropical
Africa. Roxburgh counts as many as seven varieties
with Indian names. Piddington quotes in his Index a
Sanskrit name, schhnhi, which recurs in modern lan-
guages. Its culture dates perhaps from three thousand
years. Yet the species was not anciently diffused in
China, or in Western Asia and Egypt; at least, I can
find no trace of it. The little extension of these edible
Lcguminosce beyond India in ancient times is a singular
fact. It is possible that their cultivation is not of
ancient date.

The lablab is undoubtedly wild in India, and also, it
is said, in Java.^ It has become naturalized from cultiva-
tion in the Seychelles.^ The indications of authors are
not positive enough to say whether it is wild in Africa.''

• Sir J. Hooker, Fl. of Brit. Ind., ii. p. 201. « Roxbnrgli. Fl. Ind., p. 209.

• Schweinfurth, Beitr. z. Fl. Ethiop., p. 15; Aujzdhlung, p. 257;
Oliver, Fl. Trap. Afr., p. 194..

• Sec authors quoted for P. triholus.

• Sir J. Uookcr, Fl. Brit. Ind., ii. p. 209; Junghulm, Plaiitw Jurt'jh.,
fasc ii. p. 240.

• Baker, FL o/ Mauritius, p. 83.

' Oliver, FL ofTrup. Africa, ii. p. 210.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 347

Lubia — DolicJios Luhia, Fbrskal.

This species, cultivated in Europe under the name of
lubia, loubya, louhye, according to Forskal and Delile/
is little known to botanists. According to the latter
author it exists also in Syria, Persia, and India ; but I
do not find this in any way confirmed in modern works
on these two countries. Schweinfurth and Ascherson^
admit it as a distinct species, cultivated in the Nile
Valley. Hitherto no one has found it wild. No DolicJios
or Fhaseolus is known in the monuments of ancient
Egypt. We shall see from the evidence of the common
names that these plants were probably introduced into
Egyptian agriculture after the time of the Pharaohs.

The name iuhia is used by the Berbers, unchanged,
and by the Spaniards as aliibia for the common haricot,
Phaseolus vn'garis. Although Phaseolits and Dolichos
are very similar, this is an example of the little value of
common names as a proof of species. Loha is, as we
have seen, one of the Hindustani names for Phaseohjus
vulgaris,^ and lohia that of Dolichos sinensis in the same
lanijcuafje.^ Orientalists should tell us whether lubia is an
old word in Semitic languages. I do not find a similar
name in Hebrew, and it is possible that the Armenians or
the Arabs took lubia from the Greek lobos (Ao/3oc), which
means any projection, like the lobe of the ear, a fruit of
the nature of a pod, and more particularly, according to
Galen, Ph. vulgaris. Lobion (Xo[iiov) in Dioscorides is
the fruit of Ph. vulgaris, at least in the opinion of com-
mentators.^ It remains as loubion in modern Greek, with
the same meaning.''

Bambarra Ground Nut — Glycine suhferranea, Linnseus,
junr. ; Voandzeia s abler ranea, Petit Thouars.

* Forskal, Descript., p. 133; Delile, Plant. Cult, en £gypte, p. 14.

* Schweinfurth and Ascherson. Aiifzahlung, p. 256.

* Diet. FranQ.-Berhere, at the word haricot; Willkomm and Lange,
Prod. Fl. Hisp., iii. p. 324. The common haricot has no less than five
diiferent names in the Iberian peninsula.

* Piddington, Index.

* Lenz, Bot. der Alt. Gr. und Rom., p. 732.

* Langkavel, Bot. der Spdteren Griechen, p. 4; Heldreich, Nutzpfl.
Oriechenl., p. 72.

16

ot8 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

The earliest travellers in Madaga53car remarked this
leguminous annual, cultivated by the natives for the pod
or seed, dressed like peas, French beans, etc. It resembles
the earth, particularly in that the flower-stem curves
downwards, and plunges the young fruit or pod into the
earth. Its cultivation is common in the gardens of
tropical Africa, and it is found, but less frequently, in
those of Southern Asia.-^ It seems that it is not much
grown in America,^ except in Brazil, where it is called
mandubi di Angola.^

Early writers on Asia do not mention it ; its origin
must, therefore, be sought in Africa. Loureiro* had
seen it on the eastern coast of this continent, and Petit
Thouars in Madagascar, but they do not say that it
was wild. The authors of the flora of Seneccambia^
described it as " cultivated and probably wild " in Galam.
Lastly, Schweinfurth and Ascherson*' found it wild on
the banks of the Nile from Khartoum to Gondokoro. In
spite of the possibility of naturalization from cultivation,
it is extremely probable that the plant is wild in tropical
Africa.

Buckwheat — Polygonum fagopyrum, Linnreus ; Fago-
pyrum esculentum, Moench.

The history of this species has been completely cleared
up in the last few years. It grows wild in Mantschuria,
on the banks of the river Amur,'^ in Dahuria, and near
Lake Baikal.^ It is also indicated in China and in the
mountains of the north of India,^ but I do not And that
in these regions its wild character is certain. Boxburgli

' Sir J. ITooker, Flora of Brit. Ind., ii. p. 205; Miquel, Fl. Indo-
Batava, i. p. 17o.

* Linnaeus, junr., Decad.^ ii. pi. 19, seems to have confounded this
plant with Arachis, and he gives, perhaps because of this error,
Voayidzeia as cultivated at his time in Surinam. Modern writers on
America either have not seen it or have omitted to mention it.

* Gardener's Chronicle, Sept. 4, 1880.

* Loureiro, Fl. Cochin., ii. p. 523.

* Guillemin, Perottet, Richard, FL Senegamhia Teiitamen, p. 254.

* Aufzdhlung, p. 259.

' Maximowicz, Primidce Fl. Amur., p. 236.
" Ledebour, Fl. Ross., iii. 517.

* Meissner, in Do Candolle, Prpdr., xiv. p. 143.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 349

has only seen it in a cultivated state in the north of
India, and Bretschneider^ thinks it doubtful that it is
indigenous in China. Its cultivation is not ancient, for
the first Chinese author who montions it lived in the
tenth or eleventh century of the Christian era.

Buckwheat is cultivated in the Himalayas under the
names ogal or ogla and koidon} As there is no Sanskrit
name for this s^^pcies nor for the two following, I doubt
the antiquity of their cultivation in the mountains of
Central Asia. It w^as certainlv unknown to the Greeks
and Romans. The name fagopyrinn is an invention of
modern botanists from the similarity in the shape of the
seed to a beech-nut, whence also the German huch-
ii'eitzen^ (corrupted in English into buckwheat) and the
\is\\a.n faggina.

The names of this plant in European languages of
Aryan origin have not a common root. Thus the western
Aryans did not know the species any more than the
Sanskrit-speaking Orientals, a further sign of the non-
existence of the plant in the mountains of Central Asia.
Even at the present day it is probably unknown in the
north of Persia and in Turkey, since tloras do not men-
tion it.* Bosc states, in the Didionnaire cV Agriculture,
chat Olivier had seen it wild in Persia, but I do not find
this in this naturalist's published account of his travels.

The species came into Europe in the Middle Ages,
through Tartary and Russia. The first mention of its
cultivation in Germanv occurs in a Mecklenburs: resfister
of 1436.^ In the sixteenth century it spread towards the
centre of Europe, and in poor soil, as in Brittany, it be-
came important. Reynier, who, as a rule, is very accurate,
imagined that the French name sarrasin was Keltic ;**
l)ut M. le Gall wrote to me formerly that the Breton
names simply mean black wheat or black corn, ed-du

' Bret Schneider, On Study, etc., p. 9.
^ Madden, Trans. Ediyihurgh Bot. Soc, v. p. 118.

^ The English name hucku-heat and the French name of some
ocalitifs, f)!(sctti'Z, come from the German.

* Boi-si( r, Fl. Orient.; Buhse and Boissier, Tfanzen Transcnncasien.

* Pritzel, Si'zunrj.^hericlUNaturforsch. freunde zu Berlin, May 15, 1866.

* Revnier, Economie den Celtes, p. 425.

3j0 origin of cultivated plants.

and givinis-du. Tlicrc is no oii^'inal name in Keltic
lan<]^ua<xes, which seems natural now that we know the
origin of the species.^

When the plant was introduced into Belgium and
into France, and even when it became known in Italy,
that is to say in the sixteenth century, the name hie
sarrasin (Saracen wheat) or sarrasin was commonly
adopted. Common names are often so absurd, and so
unthinkingly besto.ved, that we cannot tell dn this par-
ticular case whether the name refers to the colour of the
grain which was that attributerl to the Saracens, or to
the supposed introduction from the country of the Arabs
or Moors. It was not then known that the species did
not exist in the countries south of the Mediterranean,
nor even in Syria and Persia. It is also possible that
the idea of a southern oric»;in was taken from the name
sarrasin, which was given from the colour. This origin
was admitted until the end of the last and even in the
jjresent century.^ Reynier was, fifty years ago, the first
to oppose it.

Buckwheat sometimes escapes from cvdtivation and
becomes quasi-wild. The nearer we approach its original
country the more often this occurs, whence it results that i
it is hard to define the limit of the wild plant on the
confines of Europe and Asia, in the Himalayas, and in ,
China. In Japan these semi-naturalizations are not \
rare.^

Tartary Buckwheat — Polygonum to^aricum, Linnaeus;
Fagopyruni tatariciiin, GiTertner.

Less sensitive to cold than the common buckwheat,
but yielding a poorer kind of seed, this species is some-
times cultivated in Europe and Asia — in the Himalayas,^
for instance ; but its culture is recent. Authors of the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries do not mention it, and
LinniBUS was one of the first to speak of it as of Tartar

* I have given the vernacular ii.ames at greater length in Gcogr. Bot.
Rais., p. 953.

* Noiiniich, Pohjglott. Lexicon, p. 10.30; Bosc, Diet. (7'.l(7r!C., xi. p. 379

* Franchet and Savatior, Enum. PL Japon., i. p. 403

« Royle, III. Himal., p. 317. j

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 351

origin. Roxburgh and Hamilton had not seen it in
Northern India in the beginning of this century, and I
find no indication of it in China and Japan.

It is undoubtedly wild in Tartary and Siberia, as far
as Dauria;^ but Russian botanists have not found it
further east, in the basin of the river Amur.^

As this plant carae from Tartary into Eastern Europe
later than the common buckwheat, it is the latter which
bears in several Slav languages the names tatrika, tatarka,
or tat tar, w'hich would better suit the Tartary buck-
wheat.

It seems that the Aryan peoples must have known
the species, and yet no name is mentioned in the ancient
Indo-European languages. No trace of it has hitherto
been found in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland or of
Savoy.

Notch-seeded Buckwheat — Pohjgoniun emarginatuvi,
Roth ; Forjopyrmn emarginatu^n, Meissner.

This third species of buckwheat is grown in the high-
lands of the north-east of India, under the name ijliaphra
or phaj^har,^ and in China.* I find no positive proof that
it has been found wild. "Roth only says that it "inhabits
China," and that the grain is used fur food. Don,^ who
was the first of Anglo-Indian botanists to mention it,
says that it is hardly considered wild. It is not men-
tioned in floras of the Amur valley, nor of Japan.
Judging from the countries where it is cultivated, it is
probably wild in the Eastern Himalayas and the north-
west of China.

The genus Fagopyrum has eight species, all of tem-
perate Asia.

ftuinoa — Chenopodimn qidnoa, Willdenow.

The quinoa was a staple food of the natives of New
Granada, Peru, and Chili, in the high and temperate
parts at the time of the conquest. Its cultivation has

' Gmelin, Flora Sibirica, iii. p. 61; Ledebour, Fl. Ro.'^sica, iii. p. 576.
' Maximovvicz, Priwitice ; Ivegel, Opit. Flori, etc.; Schmidt, Eetieri in
Amur, do not mention it.

» Royle, III. Himal., p. 317 ; Maddeu, Trans. Bot. Soc. Edin , v. p. 118
* Roth, Cafalecfa Botanica, i. p. 48.
» Don, Prodr. FL Nepal., p. 74.

352 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

persisted in these countries from custom, and on account
of the abundance of the product.

From all time the distinction has existed between the
(juinoa with coloured leaves, and the quinoa with green
leaves and white seed ^ The latter was regarded by
Moquin ^ as a variety of a little known species, believed
to be Asiatic ; but I believe that I showed conclusively
that the two American quinoas are two varieties, pro-
bably very ancient, of a single species.^ The less coloured,
which is also the most farinacjous, is probably derived
from the other.

The white quinoa jaelds a grain which is much
esteemed at Lima, according to information furnished by
the Botanical Magazine, where a good drawing may be
seen (pi. 3641). The leaves may be dressed in the same
manner as spinach.^

No botanist has mentioned the quinoa as wild or
semi-wild. The most recent and complete work on one
of the countries where the species is cultivated, the
Flora of Chili, by CI. Gay, speaks of it only as a culti-
vated plant. Pere Feuill^e and Humboldt said the same
for Peru and New Granada. It is perhaps due to the
insignificance of the plant and its aspect of a garden
weed that collectors have neglected to brino- back wild
specimens.

Kiery — Aonarantus frumentaceus, Roxburgh.

This annual is cultivated in the Indian peninsula for
its small farinaceous grain, which is in some localities, the
principal food of the natives.^ Fields of this species, of a
red or golden colour, produce a beautiful effect.^ From
Roxburgh's account. Dr. Buchanan " discovered it on the
hills of Mysore and Coimbatore," which seems to indicate
a wild condition. Amarantus sjjeciosus, cultivated in
gardens and figured on pi. 2:^27 of the Botanical Maga-

' Molina, Hist. Nat. du Chili, p. 101.

* Moqniii, in De Candollo, Prcdromus, xiii. pnrt 1, p. 67.
^ A. de Candolle, Gthgr. Bot. Rain., p. 952.

* Bon Jardinier, 1880, p. 562.

* Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., edit. 2, vol. iii. p. 009 ; Wight, Icones, pi. 720;
Aitchison, Catalogue of Punjab Plants, p. 130.

6 Madden, Trans. Edin. Bot. Soc. v. p, US.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 353

zinc, appears to be the same species. Hamilton found
it in Nepal. ^ A variety or allied species, Amarantus
anardana, Wallich,^ is grown on the slopes of the Hima-
layas, but has been hitherto ill defined by botanists.
Other species are used as vegetables (see p. 100, Ama~
rantus gangeticus).

Chestnut — Castanea vulgaris, Lamarck.

The chestnut, belonging to the order CupuUferce,
has an extended but disjunctive natural area. It
forms forests and woods in mountainous parts of the
lemperate zone from the Caspian Sea to Portugal. It
has also been found in the mountains of Edouafh in
Algeria, and more recently towards the frontier of Tunis
(Letourneux). If we take into account the varieties
jajjonica and americana, it exists also in Japan and in
the temperate region of North America.^ It has been
sown or planted in several parts of the south and west of
Europe, and it is now difficult to know if it is wild or
cultivated. However, cultivation consists chiefly in the
operation of grafting good varieties on the trees which
yield indifferent fruit. For this purpose the variety
which produces but one large kernel is preferred to those
which bear two or three, separated by a membrane, which
is the natural state of the species.

The Romans in Pliny's time^ already distinguished
eight varieties, but we cannot discover from the text of
this author whether the}^ possessed the variety with a
single kernel (Fr. onarron). The best chestnuts came
from Sardis in Asia Minor, and from the neicrhbourhood
of Naples. Olivier de Serres,^ in the sixteenth century,
praises the chestnuts 8ard<ynne and Tuscane, which pro-
duced the single-kernelled fruit called the Lyons miarvon.^

' Don, Trodr. Ft. Nepal, p. 76.

* Wallich, List, No. 6903 ; Moqnin, in D. C, Prodi:, xiii. sect. 2,
p. 256.

' For further details, see my article in Prodromus, vol. xvi. part 2,
p. 114; and Boissier, Flora Orientalis, iv. p. 1175.

* Plinj, Hist. Nat., lib. xix. c. 23.

* Olivier de Serres, Theatre de rA'U-ic.. p. 114.

* Lyons marrons now come chiefly from Dauphine and Vivarais.
Some are also obtained from Luc in tlie department of Var (Gasparin,
Trade d'Agric, iv. p. 744).

354 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

He considered that these varieties came from Italy, and
Targioni^ tells us that the name niarrone or marone was
employed in that country in the Middle Ages (1170).

Wheat and Kindred Species. — The innumerable varie-
ties of wheat, projjerly so called, of which the ripened
grain detaches itself naturally from the husk, have been
classed into four groups by Vilmorin,'-^ which form dis-
tinct species, or modifications of the common wheat
according to diiierent authors. I am obliged to distin-
guish them in order to study their history, but this, as
will be seen, supports the opinion of a single species.^

1. Common Wheat — Triticum vidgare,\i\\duv&; Triti-
cum hybernum and T. cestivum, lannseus.

According to the experiments of the Abbe Eozier, and
later of Tessier, the distinction between autumn and
spring wheats has no importance. " All wheats," says the
latter,'^ " are either spring or autumn sown, according to
the country. They all pass with time from the one state
to the other, as I have ascertained. They only need to
be gradually accustomed to the change, by sowing the
autumn wheat a little later, spring wheat a little earlier,
year by year." The fact is that among the immense
number of varieties there are some which feel the cold of
the winter more than others, and it has become the cus-
tom to sow them in the spring.^ We need take no note
of this distinction in studying the question of origin,
especially as the greater number of the varieties thus
obtained date from a remote period.

The cultivation of wheat is prehistoric in the old
world. Very ancient Egyptian monuments, older than
the invasion of the shepherds, and the Hebrew Scriptures
show this cultivation already established, and when the

' Tarpp'oni, Cenni Storici, p. 180.

' Vilaiorin, Essai d' un Catalogue Methodique et Synonymique des Fro-
nents, Paris, 1850.

^ The best drawings of the different kinds of Trheat may be found in
Metzgrer's Europivische Cerealien, in folio, Heidelberg, 182-1; and in Host,
Gi'aminoe, in folio, vol. iii.

* Tessier, Dirt. d'Agrir., vi. p. 198. *

* Loiselear Djslougeliamps, Consid, sur les Cereales, 1 vol. in 8vo,
p. 219.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 355

EgjqDtians or Greeks speak of its origin, they attribute it
to mythical personages, Isis, Ceres, Triptolemus.^ The
earliest lake-dwellino-s of Western Switzerland cultivated
a small-grained wheat, which Heer^ has carefully
described and figured under the name Triticum vulgare
antiquorum. From various facts, taken collectively, we
gather that the first lake-dwellers of Robenhausen were
at least contemporary with the Trojan war, and perhaps
earlier. The cultivation of their wheat persisted in
Switzerland until the Roman conquest, as we see from
specimens found at Buchs. Regazzoni also found it in-
the rubbish-heaps of the lake-dwellers of Varese, and
Sordelli in those of Lagozza in Lombardy.^ linger found
the same form in a brick of the pyramid of Dashur,
Egypt, to which he assigns a date, 3359 B.C. (Unger, Bot.
Streifzilge, vii. ; Eiri Ziegel, etc., p. 9). Another variety
{Triticum vulgare compactum Tnuticuvi, Heer) was less
common in Switzerland in the earliest stone age, but it
has been more often found among the less ancient lake-
dwellers of Western Switzerland and of Italy .^ A thii-d
intermediate variety has been discovered at Aggtelek in
Hungary, cultivated in the stone age.^ None of these is
identical with the wheat now cultivated, as more profitable
varieties have taken their place.

The Chinese, who grew wheat 2700 B.C., considered it
a gift direct from heaven.^ In the annual ceremony of
sowing five kinds of seed, instituted by the Emperor
Shen-nung or Chin-nong, wheat is one species, the others
being rice, sorglium, Sctaria italica, and soy.

The existence of different names for wheat in the most
ancient languages confirms the belief in a great antiquity

^ These questions have been discussed with learning and judgment by
four authors : Link, Ueber die dltere Geschichte der Getreide Arten, in
Abhandl. der Berlin Akad., 1816, voL xvii. p. 122; 1826, p. 67; and ia
Die Urivelt und das AUerfhum, 2nd edit., Berlin, 1834, p. 399 ; Keynier,
Economie des Celfes et des Germains, 1818, p. 417 ; Durean de la JVIalle,
Ann. des Sciences Nat., vol. ix. 1826 ; and Loiseleur Deslongchamps,
Conti-id. sur les Ccreale.-!, 1812, part i. p. 52.

^ Heer, t^flanzen der Pfahlhauten, p. L3, pi. 1, figs. 14-18.

3 Sordelli, SuUe piante delta tovbiera. di La'jozza, p. 31.

* Heer, ibid.; Sordelli, ibid. * Nyari, quoted by Sordelli, ibid.

* Bretschneider, Study and Value, etc., pp. 7 and 8.

356 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

of cultivation. < The Chinese name is mai, the Sanskiit
sumana and godhuma, the Hebrew c/tittah, Egyptian hr,
Guancho yric/ien, without mentioning several names in
languages derived from the primitive Sanskrit, nor a
Basque name, ogaia or okhaya, which dates perhaps
from the Iberians,^ and several Finn, Tartar, and Turkish
names, etc.,^ which are probably Turanian. This great
diversity might be explained by a wide natural area in
the case of a very common wild plant, but this is far from
being the case of wheat. On the contrary, it is difficult
to prove its existence in a wild state in a few places in
Western Asia, as we shall see. If it had been widely
diffused before cultivation, descendants would have
remained here and there in remote countries. The
manifold names of ancient languages must, therefore, be
attributed to the extreme antiquity of its culture in the
temperate parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa — an antiquity
greater than that of the most ancient languages.' We
have two methods of discovering the home of the species
previous to cultivation in the immense zone stretching
from China to the Canaries : first, the opinion of ancient
authors ; second, the existence, more or less proved, of
wheat in a wild state in a given country.

According to the earliest of all historians, Berosus, a
Chaldean priest, fragments of whose writings have been
preserved by Herodotus, wild wheat (/^rumewf 11771 agresfe^)
might be seen growing in Mesopotamia. The texts of tlie
Bible alluding to the abundance of wheat in Canaan
prove no more than that the plant was cultivated there,
and that it was very productive. Strabo,^ born 50 B.C.,
says that, according to Aristobulus, a grain very similar
to wheat grew wild upon the banks of the Indus on the
25th parallel of latitude. He also says^ that in Hircania

* Bretschneider, Study and Value, etc. ; Ad. Pictet, Les Origines Tndo-
Euro., edit. 2, voL i. p. 328 ; Ro.senmiiller, Bihl. Naturgesch., i. p. 77 ;
Pickering, Chronol. Arrang., p. 78; Webb and Berthelot, Canarie.-^,
Eflinogr., p. 187; D'Abadie, Notes MSS. sur les Noms Basques; De
Charencey, Reclierches sur les Koms Basques, in Actes Soc. Fhilolog.,
March, 1869.

* Ncmiiich, Lexicon, p. 1192.

» G. SynccUi, Chronogr., fol. \C,r,2, p. 28.

* Strabo, edit. 1707, vol. ii. p. 1017. * IhuL, vol. i. p. 124 ; ii. p. 770.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 357

(the modern Mazanderan) the grains of wheat which fell
from the ear sowed themselves. This may be observed
to some degree at the present day in all countries, and
the author says nothing upon the important question
whether this accidental sowing reproduced itself in the
same place from generation to generation. According to
the Odyssey} wheat grew in Sicily without the help of
man. But it is impossible to attach great importance to
the words of a poet, and of a poet whose very existence
is contested. Diodorus Siculus at the beginnincf of the
Christian era says the same thing, and deserves greater
confidence, since he is a Sicilian. Yet he may easily have
been mistaken as to the wild character, as wheat was
then generally cultivated in Sicily. Another passage in
Diodorus ^ mentions the tradition that Osiris found wheat
and barley growing promiscuously with other plants at
Nisa, and Dureau de la Malle has proved that this town
was in Palestine. Among all this evidence, that of Berosus
and that of Strabo for Mesopotamia and Western India
alone appear to me of any value.

The five species of seed of the ceremony instituted
by Chin-nong are considered by Chinese scholars to be
natives of their country,^ and Bretschneider adds that com-
munication between China and Western Asia dates only
from the embassy of Chang- kien in the second century
before Christ. A more positive assertion is needed, how-
ever, before we can believe wheat to be indigenous in
China ; for a plant cultivated in western Asia two or three
thousand years before the epoch of Chin-nong, and of
which the seeds are so easily transported, may have been
introduced into the north of China bv isolated and un-
known travellers, as the stones of peaches and apricots
were probably carried from China into Persia in pre-
historic time.

Botanists have ascertained that wheat is not wild m
Sicily at the present day.'* It sometimes escapes from

• Lib. ix. V. 109.

' Diodorus, Terasson's trans., ii. pp. 1S6, 190.

• Bretschneider, ihid., p. 15.

• Parlatore, Fl. Ifal., i. pp. 4B, S^^S. His assertion is ttie more
wortlij of attention that he was a Sicilian.

358 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

cultivation, but it does not persist indefinitely^ The
plant which the inhabitants call wild wheat, Frumentvu
sarvaggiu, which covers uncultivated ground, is yEgilops
ovata, according to Inzenga.^

A zealous collector, Balansa, believed that he had
found wheat growing on Mount Sip^dus, in Asia Minor,
under circumstances in which it was impossible not to
believe it wild;^ but the plant he brought back is a
spelt, TriticuTn monococcum, according to a very careful
botanist, to w^hom it was submitted for examination.*
Olivier,^ before him, when he was on the right bank of
the Euphrates, to the north-west of Anah, a country
unfit for cultivation, "found in a kind of ravine, wheat,
barley, and spelt, which," he adds, "we have already seen
several times in Mesopotamia."

Linnseus says,*" that Heintzelmann found wheat in the
country of the Baschkirs, but no one has confirmed this
statement, and no modern botanist has seen the species
really wild in the neighbourhood of the Caucasus or
the north of Persia. Bunge,' whose attention was drawn
to this point, declares that he has seen no indication
which leads him to believe that cereals are indigenous in
that country. It does not even appear that wheat has a
tendency inthese regions to spring up accidentally outside
cultivated ground. I have not discovered any mention of
it as a wild plant in the north of India, in China, or
Mongolia.

It is remarkable that wheat has been twice asserted
to be indigenous in Mesopotamia, at an interval of twenty-
three centuries, once by Berosus, and once by Olivier in
our own day. The Euphrates valley lying nearly in the
middle of the belt of cultivation which formerly extended
from China to the Canaries, it is infinitely probable that
it was the principal habitation of the species in very early

' St rob], in Flora, 1880, p. 3-48. ^ luzeiig-a, Annali Agric. Sicil.

» Bull, de la ISoc. Bot. de France, 1854, p. 108.

* J. Gay, Bull. Soc. Bot. de France, 1860, p. 30.

* Olivier, Voy. dans I'Emp. Othoman (1807), vol. iii. p. 4G0.
" LiiuisBus, Sp. Plant., edit. 2, vol. i. p. 127.

■ Bmige, Bull. Soc. Bot. France, 1860, p. 29.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 359

prehistoric times. The area may have extended towards
Syria, as the cHmate is very similar, but to the east and
west of Western Asia wheat has probably never existed
but as a cultivated plant; anterior, it is true, to all known
civilization.

2. Turgid, and Egyptian Wheat — Triticum turgidam
and T. composltara, Linnaius.

Amono- the numei'ous common names of the varieties
which come under this head, we find that of Egyptian
wheat. It appears that it is now much cultivated in that
country and in the whole of the Nile valley. A. P. de
Candolle says^ that he recognized this wheat amongst seeds
taken from the sarcophagi of ancient mummies, but he
had not seen the ears. Unger ^ thinks it was cultivated
by the ancient Egyptians, yet he gives no proof founded
on drawings or specimens. The fact that no Hebrew or
Armenian name ^ can be attributed to the species seems to
me important. It proves at least that the remarkable forms
with branching ears, commonly called wheat of rtiiracle,
wheat of abundance, did not exist in antiquity, for they
would not have escaped the knowledge of the Israelites.
No Sanskrit name is known, nor even any modern Indian
names, and I cannot discover any Persian name. The Arab
names which Delile'^ attributes to the species belong
perhaps to other varieties of wheat. There is no Berber
name.^ From all this it results, I think, that the plants
united under the name of Triticitni turgiduni, and
especially the varieties with branching ears, are not
ancient in the north of Africa or in the west of Asia.

Oswald Heer,'' in his curious paper upon the plants
of the lake-dwellers of the stone age in Switzerland,
attributes to T. turgidmn two non-branched ears, the
one bearded, the other almost without beard, of which
he gives drawings. Later, in an exploration of the lake-

' De Canclolle, Fhijsiolojie Botanique, ii. p. 696.
^ Unger, Die Pflanzen des Alten J<]'jiipfenff, p. 31.

' See RosenmuUer, BibZ. Xatur-^esch. ; and Low, Aramaische Pflanzen
Kc.men, 1881.

* Delile, PI. Cult, en Efjypte, p. 3 ; Fl. jEgypt. Illus., p. 5.
' Diet. Fr.-Berb., published by the Government.

* Heer, PJlanzen der Pfahlhauten. p. 5, fig. 4; p. 52, fig. 20.

360 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

dwellings of Robenhaiisen, Messicommer did not find it,
although there was abundant store of grain.^ Stroebel
and Pigorini said they found wheat with grano grosso
duro {T. turgiduni), in the lake-dwellings of Parmesan.^
For the rest, Heer ^ considers this to be a variety or race
of the common wheat, and Sordelli inclines to the same
opinion.

Fraas thinks that the krithanias of Theophrastus was
T. turgidwni, but this is absolutely uncertain. Accord-
ino; to Heldreich,'* the great wheat is of modern intro-
duction into Greece. Pliny ^ spoke briefly of a wheat
with branching ears, yielding one hundred grains, which
was most likely our ')niracidous ivheat.

Thus history and philology alike lead us to consider
the varieties of Triticum turgiduin as modifications of
the common wheat obtained by cultivation. The form
with branching ears is not perhaps earlier than Pliny's
time.

These deductions would be overthrown by the dis-
covery of the T. turgidum in a wild state, which has not
hitherto been made with certainty. In spite of C. Koch,^
no one admits that it grows, outside cultivation, at Con-
stantinople and in Asia Minor. Boissier's herbarium, so
lich in Eastern plants, has no specimen of it. It is given
as wild in Egypt by Schweinfurth and Ascherson, but
this is the result of a misprint.'

8. Hard Wheat — Triticum durum, Desfontaines.

Long cultivated in Barbary, in the south of Switzer-
land and elsewhere, it has never been found wild. In
the different provinces of Spain it has no less than
fifteen names,** and none are derived from the Arab
name qiiemah used in Algeria^ and Egypt.^° The

' Messicommer, in Flora, 18^9, p. 320.

* Quoted from Sordelli, Notisie sull. Lagozza, p. 32.

* Heer, uhi supra, p. 50.

* Heldreich, Die Nutzpflavzen Griechenlartdn, p. 5.

* Pliny, Hint., lib. xviii. cap. 10, * Koch, Linnwa, tti. p. 427.
^ Letter from Ascherson, 1881. ^ Diet. MS. of Verna'ular Names.

* Debeaux, Catal. des Plan, de Boghar, p. 110.

'" Delile says (ubi supra) tliat wheat is called qamh, and a red
Variety qamh-ahmar

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOE THEIR SEEDS. 361

absence of names in several other countries, especially of
original names, is very striking. This is a further indi-
cation of a derivation from the common wheat obtained
in Spain and the north of Africa at an unknown epoch,
[lerhaps witliin the Christian era.

4. Polish 'Whea.t—Triticuin polonicum, Linnseus.

This other hard wheat, with yet longer grain, culti-
vated chiefly in the east of Europe, has not been found
wild. It has an original name in German, Gdner, Gommer,
Gummer)- and in other languaijes names which are
connected only with persons or with countries whence
the seed was obtained. It cannot be doubted that it is
a form obtained by cultivation, probably in the east of
Europe, at an unknown, perhaps recent epoch.

Conclusion as to the Specific Unify of the Principal

Races of Wheat.

We have just shown that the history and the ver-
nacular names of the gi'eat races of wheat are in favour
of a derivation contemporary with man, probably not
ver}^ ancient, from the common kind of M^heat, perhaps
from the small-grained wheat formerly cultivated by the
Egyptians, and by the lake-dwellers of Switzerland and
Italy. Alefeld ^ arrived at the specific unity of T. vid-
gare, T. turgidum, and T. durum, by means of an atten-
tive observation of the three cultivated together, under the
same conditions. The experiments of Henri Vilmorin^
on the artificial fertilization of these wheats lead to the
same result. Although the author has not yet seen the
product of several generations, he has ascertained that
the most distinct principal forms can be crossed with
ease and produce fertile hybrids. If fertilization be
taken as a measure of the intimate degree of affinity
which leads to the grouping of individuals into the same
species, we cannot hesitate in the case in question,
especially with the support of the historical considera-
tions which I have given.

' Xemnich, Lexicon, p. 148S. 2 Alefeld, Bot. Zcitnng, 1865, p. 9

* II. Vilmorin, Bull. Soc. Bot. de France, 1881, p. 35G.

3G2 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

On the supposed Mummy Wheat.

Before concluding this article, I think it pertinent to
say that no grain taken from an ancient Egyptian
sarcophagus and sown by horticulturists has ever been
known to germinate It is not that the thing is impos-
sible, for grains are all the better preserved that they are
protected from the air and from variations of temperature
or humidity, and certainly these conditions are fultilled
by Egyptian monuments ; but, as a matter of fact, the
attempts at raising wheat from these ancient seeds have
not been successful. The experiment which has been
most talked of is that of the Count of Sternberg, at
Prague.-^ He had received the grains from a trustworthy
traveller, who assured him they were taken from a
sarcophagus. Two of these seeds germinated, it is said ,
but I have ascertained that in Germany well-informed
persons believe there is some imposture, either on the
part of the Arabs, who sometimes slip modern seeds into
the tombs (even maize, an American plant), or on that of
the employes of the Count of Sternberg. The grain
known in commerce as mummy wheat has never had
any proof of antitpiity of origin.

Spelt and Allied Varieties or Species.^

Louis Vilmorin,^ in imitation of Seringe's excellent
work on cereals,^ has grouped together those wheats
whose seeds when ripe are closely contained in their
envelope or husk, necessitating a special operation to
free them from it, a character rather agricultural than
botanical. He then enumerates the forms of these wheats
under three names, which correspond to as many species
of most botanists.

1. Spelt — Triticum spelta, Linnreus.

Spelt is now hardly cultivated out of south Germany
and German-Switzerland. This was not the case formerly.
The descriptions of cereals by Greek authors are so brief

' Journal, Flora, 183o, p. 4.

• See the plates of JNletzger and Host, in tbc works previously quoted.

• Essai d'un Catal. Method, des Froments, Paris, 1850.

• Seringe, Monogr. des Cer4. de la Suisse, in 8vo, Berne, 1818

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR TUEIR SEEDS. 363

and insignificant that there is always room for hesitation
as to the sense of the words they use. Yet, judging- from
the customs of which they speak, scholars think ^ that
the Greeks first called spelt olyra, afterwards zeia, names
which we find in Herodotus and Homer. Dioscorides^
distinguishes two sorts of zeia, which apparently answer
to Triticum spelta and T. monococcum. It is believed
that spelt was the semen (corn, par excellence) and the
far of Pliny, which he said was used as food by the Latins
for 360 years before they knew how to make bread.^ As
spelt has not been found among the lake-dwellers of
Switzerland and Italy, and as the former cultivated the
allied varieties called T. dicoccum and T. monococcum,^
it is possible that the far of the Latins was rather one
of these.

The existence of the true spelt in ancient Egypt and
the neighbouring countries seems to me yet more doubtful.
The olyra of the Egyptians, of which Herodotus speaks,
was not the olyra of the Greeks ; some authors have
supposed it to be rice, oryza.^ As to spelt, it is a plant
which is not grown in such hot countries. Modern
travellers from Rauwolf onwards have not seen it in
Egyptian cultivation,^ nor has it been found in the
ancient monuments. This is what led me to suppose '^
that the Hebrew word kussemeth, which occurs three
times in the Bible,^ ought not to be attributed to spelt,
as it is by Hebrew scholars.^ I imagined it was pei'haps
the allied form, 2\ monococcum, but neither is this grown
in Egypt.

* Fraas, Syn. Fl. Class., p. 307 ; Lenz, Bot. der Alien, p. 257.

* Dioscorides, Mat. Med., ii., 111-115.

' Pliny, Hist., lib. xviii. cap. 7; Targioni, Cenni Storici, p. 6.

* Heer, Pflanzen der Pfahlbauten, p. 6 ; Unger, I'Jldnzen des Alien
Mgyptens, p. 32.

* Delile, PI Cult, en ^gypte, p. 5.

' Reynier, Aeon, des Egyptiens, p. 337 ; Durean de la Malle, Ann. 8c.
Kat., ix. p. 72 ; Schweinfurth and Ascherson, Aiijsdh, Tr. spdta of
For~kal is not admitted by any subsequent author.

' Geogr. Bot. Bais., p. 933.

* Exod. ix. 32; Isa. xxviii. 25 ; Ezek. iv. 9.

* Roseumiiller, Bibl. Alterth., iv.p. 83; Second, Trans, of Old Test.,
1871.

oG4i ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Spelt has no name in Sanskrit, nor in any moclern
Indian languages, nor in Persian/ and therefore, of course,
none in Chinese. European names, on the contrary, are
numerous, and bear witness to an ancient cultivation,
especially in the east of Europe. Spelta in Saxon, whence
the English name, and the French, epcautre ; Dinlcel in
modern German, orkiss in Polish, pohla in Russian,^ are
names which seem to come from very different roots.
In the south of Europe the names are }-arer. There is
a Spanish one, however, of Asturia, escandia^ but I know
of none in Basque.

History, and especially philology, point to an origin
in eastern temperate Europe and the neighbouring
countries of Asia. We have to discover whether the
plant has been found wild.

Olivier,* in a passage already quoted, says that he
several times found it in Mesopotamia, in pai'ticular
upon the light bank of the Euphrates, north of Anah, in
places unlit for cultivation. Another botanist, Andre
Michaux, saw it in 1783, near Hamadan, a town in the
temperate region of Persia. Dureau de la Mails says
that he sent some grains of it to Bosc, who sowed them
at Paris and obtained the common spelt ; but this seems
to me doubtful, for Lamarck, in 178G,° and Bosc , himself,
in the Bictionnaire d'AgincultiLve, article Epeautre
(spelt), published in 1809, sa3's not a word of this. The
herbariums of the Paris Museum contain no specimens
of the cereals mentioned by Olivier.

There is, as we have seen, much uncertainty as to
the origin of the species as a wild plant. This leads me
to attribute more importance to the hj'pothesis that
spelt is derived by cultivation from the common wheat,
or from an intermediate form at some not very early
prehistoric time. The experiments of H. Yilmorin^
support this theory, for cross fertilizations of the spelt

' A(L Pictet, Orij. Indo-Europ., edit. 2, vol. i. p. 348.
' Afl. Pictet, ihid. ; Nemnicli, Lexicon.

* Willkomtn and Lange, Prodr. Fl. ni<p., L p. 107.

* Olivier, Voyage, 18u7, vol. iii. p. -460.

* Lam-irck, Diet. EncycL, ii. p. 560.
» H. Vilmoiin, Bull. Soc. But. de France, ISSl, p. 60S.

i

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 365

by the downy white wheat, and vice versa, yield "hybrids
whose fertility is complete, with a mixture of the
characters of both parents, those of the spelt pre-
ponderating."

2. Starch Wheat — Triticum dicoccum,Schraiik; THti-
cum amyleum, Seringe.

This form {Eminer, or Aemer in German), cultivated
for starch chiefly in Switzerland, resists a hard winter
It contains two grains in each little ear, like the true
spelt.

Heer ^ attributes to a variety of T. dicoccum an ear
found in a bad state of preservation in the lake-dwellings
of Wangen, SAvitzerland. Messicommer has since found
some at Robenhausen.

It has never been found wild; and the rari'^y of
common names is remarkable. These two circumstances,
anl the slight value of the botanical characters which
serve to distinguish it from Tr. spelta, lead to the con-
clusion that it is an ancient cultivated variety of the
latter.

3. Oae-grainedWheat — Triticummonoccccum L'nnseus.
The one-grained wheat, or little spe't, EinJconi in

German, is distinguished from the two preceding by a
single seed in the little ear, and by other characters which
lead the majority of botanists to consider it as a really
distinct species. The experiments of H. Vilmorin con-
firm this opinion so far, for he has not yet succeeded in
crossing T. monococcum with other spelts or wheats. This
may be due, as he says himself, to some detail in the
manner of operating. He intends to renew his attempts,
and may perhaps suecesd. [In the Bidletin de la Societe
Botanique de I ranee, 1883, p. 62, Mr. Vilmorin says that
he has not met with better success in the third and
fourth years in his attempts at crossing T. 7)ionococcum
with other species. He intends to make the experiment
with T. bceoticum, Boissier, wild in Servia, of which I
sent him some seeds gathered by Pancic. As this species
is supposed to be the original stack of T. monococcum,
the experiment is an interesting one. — Author's Note,

' Heer, Pflanz. der. Pfahlb., p. 5, fig. 23, and p. 15.

3G6 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

1884.J In the mean time let us see whether this form
of spelt has been long in cultivation, and if it has any-
where been found growing wild.

The one-grained wheat thrives in the poorest and
most stony S(nl. It is not very productive, but yields
excellent meal. It is sown especially in mountainous
districts, in Spain, France, and the east of Europe, but
I do not find it mentioned in Barbary, Egypt, the East,
or in India or China.

From some expressions it has been believed to be
the tiphai of Theophrastus.-^ It is easier to invoke
Dioscorides,^ for he distinguishes two kinds of zeia, one
with two seeds, another with onlv one. The latter would
be the one-grained wheat. Nothing proves that it was
commonly cultivated by the Greeks and Romans, Their
modern descendants do not sow it.^ There are no Sans-
krit, Persian, or Arabic names. I suggested formerly
that the Hebrew word kiissenieth might apply to this
species, but this hypothesis now seems to me difficult to
maintain.

Marschall Bieberstein* mentions Triticum, mono-
coccum, or a variety of it, growing wild in the Crimea
and the eastern Caucasus, but no botanist has confirmed
this assertion. Steven,^ who lived in the Crimea,
declares that he never saw the species except cultivated
by the Tartars. On the other hand, the plant which
Balansa gathered in a wild state near Mount Sipylus, in
Anatolia, is T. monococcum, according to J. Gay,^ who
takes with this form Triticinn boeoticmn, Boissier, which
grows wild in the plains of Boeotia ' and in Servia.^

' Fraas, Syn. FI. Class., p. 307.

* Dioscorides, Mat. Med., 2, c. iii. 155.

* Heldreich, Nutz. Griech.

* Bieberstein, Fl. Tauro-Caucasaica, vol. i. p. 85.

' Steven, Verzeichniss Tanr. Halhins. Pjian., p. 354.

* Bull. Soc. Bot. Fran., ISGO, p. 30.

^ Boissier, Diagnoses, 1st series, vol. ii. fasc. 13, p. G9.

* Balansa, 185-i, No. 137 in Boissier's Herbarium, in vrhich there ig
also a specimen found iu the fields in Servia, and a variety with brown
beards sent by Pancic, growing in Servian meadows. The same
botanist (of Belgrade) has just sent me wild specimens from Servia,
which I cannot distinguish from T. monococcum, which he assm^es me
is not cultivated in Servia. Bentham writes to me that T. hxoticum,

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 8G7

Aclmittincj these facts, T. raonococcuin is a native of
Servia, Greece, and Asia Minor, and as the attempts to
cross it Y\dth other spelts or wheats have not been
successful, it is rightly termed a species in the Linnajan
sense.

The separation of wheat with free grains from spelt
must have taken place before all history, perhaps before
the beginning of agriculture. Wheat must have appeared
first in Asia, and then spelt, probably in Eastern Europe
and Anatolia. Lastly, among spelts T. Tiionococcuni
seems to be the most ancient form, from which the others
have gradually developed in several thousand years of
cultivation and selection.

Two-rowed Barley — Hordeum distichon, Linnseus.

Barley is among the most ancient of • cultivated
plants. As all its forms resemble each other in nature
and uses, we must not expect to find in ancient authors
and in common names that precision which would enal)]e
us to recognize the species admitted by botanists. In
many cases the name barley has been taken in a vague
or generic sense. This is a difficulty which we must
take into account. Fur instance, the expression of the
Old Testament, of Berosus, of Moses of Chorene,
Pausanias, Marco Polo, and moi-e recently of Olivier,
indicating "wild and cultivated barley" in a given
country, prove nothing, because we do not know to
which species they refer. There is the same obscurity
in China. Dr. Bretschneider says^ that, according to
a work published in the year a.d. 100, the Chinese
cultivated barley, but he does not specify the kind. At
the extreme west of the old world the Guanchos also
cultivated a barley, of which we know the name but not
the species.

The common variety of the two-rowed barley, in
which the husk remains attached to the ripened grain,
has been found wild in Western Asia, in AraVjia Petrea,^

of which lie saw several specimens, is, he thinks, the same as T,
nionococcum.

' Bretschneider, On the Stiicly, etc., p. 8.

* A specimen determined by Keuter in Boissier's Herbarium.

333 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

near Mount Sinai,^ in the ruins of Persepolis,^ near
the Caspian Sea,^ between Lenkoran and Baku, in
the desert of Chirvan and Awliasia, to the south of the
Caucasus,^ and in Turcoinania.^ No author mentions it
in Greece, E;j:ypt, or to the east of Persia. Willdenow ^
indicates it at Samara, in tlie south-east of Russia; but
more recent authors do not confirm this. Its modern
ai-ea is, therefore, from the Red Sea to the Caucasus an I
tlie Caspian Sea.

Hence this barley should be one of the forms
cultivated by Semitic and Turanian peoples. Yet it
has not been found in Egyptian monuments. It seems
that the Aryans must have known it^ but I find no proof
in vernacular names or in history.

Theophrastus '^ speaks of the two-rowed IjarL -y. The
lake-dwellers of Eastern Switzerland cultivated it before
they possessed metals,^ but the six-rowed barley was
more common among them.

The variety in which the grain is bare at maturity
{R. disticJion nudum, Linnteus), which in France has all
sorts of absurd names, orge a cafe, orge dio Ferou (cotfee
barley, Peruvian barley), has never been found wild.

The fan-shaped barley (Hordeum Zeocriton, Linn?eus)
seems to me to be a cultivated form of the two-rowed
barley. It is not known in a wild state, nor has it been
found in Egyptian monuments, nor the lake-dwellings of
Switzerland, Savoy, and Italy.

Common Barley — Ilordev/ni vidgare, Linnreus.

The common barley with four rows of grain is
mentioned by Theophrastus,^ but it seems to have been

• Figari and de Notnris, Agrosfologim JEjypt. Fragm., p. 18.

- A very starved plant gathered by Kotscliy, No. 290, of -which 1
possess a specimen. Boissier terms it H. disiichon, varicias.

• C. A. Meyer, Verzeichniss, p. 26, from specimens seen also by
Ledobour, Fl. Boss., iv. p. 327.

• Ledebour, ihid.

5 Kegel, Di'scr. Plant., Nov., 18S1, fasc. 8, p. 37.

• Willdenow, S/ Plant., i. p. 473.

' Theophrastus, Ri^t. Plant., lib. viii. cap. 4.

• Heer, Pjlanzen der Pfahlbauteii, p. 13 ; iressicommcr, Flora Bot.
Zeitvnc,, lSti9i p. 320.

• Theophrastus, Hist., lib. viii. cap. 4.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 3G9

less cultivated in antiquity than that with two rows, and
considerably less than that with six rows. It has not
been found in Egyptian monuments, nor in the lake-
dwellings of Switzerland, Savoy, and Italy.

Willdenow ^ says that it grows in Sicily and in the
south-east of Russia, at Samara, but the modern floras of
these two countries do not confirm this. We do not
know what species of barley it was that Olivier saw
growing wild in Mesopotamia ; consequently the common
barley has not yet been found certainly wild.

The multitude of common names which are attributed
to it prove nothing as to its origin, for in most cases it
is impossible to know if they are names of barley in
general, or of a particular kind of barley cultivated in a
given country.

Six-rowed Barley — Hordeum hexastichon, Linnceus.

This was tlie .species most commonly cultivated in
antiquity. Not only is it mentioned by Greek authors,
but it has also been found in the earlie.st Egyptian monu-
ments,^ and in the remains of the lake-dwellino-s of
Switzerland (age of st(me), of Italy, and of Savoy (age
of bronze).^ Heer has even distinguished two varieties
of the species formerly cultivated in Switzerland. One of
them answers to the six-rowed barley represented on
the medals of Metapontis, a town in the south of Italy,
six centuries before Christ.

According to Roxburgh,'* it was the only kind of
barley grown in India at the end of the last century.
He attributes to it the Sanskrit name yiiva, which
has become juha in Bengali. Adolphe Pictet^ has care-
fully studied the names in Sanskrit and other Indo-
European languages which answer to the generic name

' Willdenow, Species Plant , i. p. 472.

^ Un!:^er, Tflanzen des Alien Egyptens, p. 33; Ein Ziegel der Dashur
Pijramide, p. luy.

' Heer, Pflanzen der Pfalilhauten, p. 5, figs. 2 and 3 ; p. 13, fig. 9 ;
Flora Bot. Zeitung, 1869, p. 320: de Mortillet, according to Perrin,
Etudes prehistoriques sur la Savoie, p. 23 j Sordelli, Sidle piante delta
torhiera di Lagozza, p. 33.

♦ Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., edit. 1832, voL i. p. 358.

* Ad. Pictet, Origines Indo-Europ., edit. 2, voL i. p. 333.

370 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

barley, but he has not been able to go into the details of
each species.

The six-rowed barley has not been seen in the con-
ditions of a wild plant, of which the species has been
determined by a botanist. I have not found it in Bois-
sier's herbarium, whicii is so rich in Eastern plants. It
is possible that the w'ild bin-leys mentioned by ancient
authors and by Olivier "svere Honlciuii hexaslichoa, but
there is no proof of this.

On Barleys in general.

We have seen that the only form which is now found
wild is the simplest, the least productive, Hordeuni dis-
tichon, which was, like H. hexa:^! ichon, cultivated in
prehistoric time. Perhaps //, viihjare has not been so
lono^ in cultivation as the two others.

Two hypotheses may be drawn from these facts: 1.
That the barleys with four and six rows were, in prehis-
toric aijriculture anterior to that of the ancient EL;vi)tiaTis
wdio built the monuments, derived from // distichon.
2. The barleys with six and four ranks were species
formerly wild, extinct since the historical epoch. It
would be straniie in this case that no trace of them has
remained in the floras of the vast region comprised be-
tween India, the Black Sea, and Abyssinia, where we
are nearlj- sure of their cultivation, at least of that of the
six-ranked barley.

Rye — Sec(de cereale, Linnrens,

Rye has not been very long in cultivation, unless,
perhaps, in Russia and Thrace. It has not been found
in Egyptian monuments, and has no name in Semitic
lauoiiao-es, even in the mixlern ones, nor in Sanskrit
and the modern Indian laniruafres derived from Sanskrit.
These facts agree with the circumstance that rye thrives
better in northern tl\an in southern countries, wdiere it
is not usually cultivated in modern times. ])r. Bret-
schneider^ thinks it is unknown to Chinese agriculture.
He doubts the contrary asseition of a modern writer,

' Bi'etsclmeicler, On Study and Value, etc., iip IS, 44.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIB SEEDS. C71

and remarks that the name of a cereal mentioned in the
memoirs of the Emperor Kanijhi, which may Vje sup-
posed to be this species, signifies Russian wheat. Now
rye, he says, Ls much cultivated in Siberia. There is no
mention of it in Japanese floras.

The ancient Greeks did not knovr it. The fiist
author who mentions it in the Roman empire is Pliny,^
who speaks of the secale cultivated at Turin at the
foot of the Alps, under the name of Asia. Galen,^
born in A.D. 131, had seen it cultivated in Thrace and
Macedonia under the name hriza. Its cultivation does
not seem ancient, at least in Italy, for no trace of rye
has been found in the remains of the lake-dwellings of
the north of that country, or of Switzerland and Savoy,
even of the age of bronze. Jetteles found remains of rye
near Olmutz, together with instruments of bronze, and
Heer,^ who .saw the specimens, mentions others of the
Roman epoch in Switzerland.

Failing archaeological proofs, European languages show
an early knowledge of rye in German, Keltic, and Sla-
vonic countries. The principal names, according to
Adulphe Pictet,^ belong to the peoples of the north of
Europe : Anglo-Saxon, ryge, rig ; Scandinavian, rugr ;
Old High German, rogfjo ; Ancient Slav, riiji, roji ;
Polish, rez ; Ilhrian, raz, etc. The origin of this name
must date, he says, from an epoch previous to the sepa-
ration of the Teutons from the Lithuano-Slavs. The
word secale of the Latins recurs in a similar form amoncr
the Bretons, segal, and the Basques, cekela, zekhalea ; but
it is not known whether the Latins borrowed it from the
GauLs and Iberians, or whether, conversely, the latter
took the name from the Romans. This second hypo-
thesis appears to be the more probable of the two, since
the Cisalpine Gauls of Pliny's time had quite a different
name. I also find mentioned a Tartar name, arescJt^ and
an Ossete name, syl, sil^ which points to an ancient
cultivation to the east of Europe.

i'lmy, Hist., lib. xviii. c. 16.

* Galen, De Alimentis, lib. xiii., quoted by Lenz, Bot. de Alien, p. 259.
' Heer, Die Fflinzen der Pjahlhauten, p. 16.

* Ad. Pictet, Urigiaes Indo-Europ., edit. 2, vol. i. p. .341.

^ Xemnicli, Lei:con Naturyesch. * Ad. I'ictet, uhi gv/pra.

17

372 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Thus historical and philological data show that the
species probably had its origin in the countries noi"th of
the Danulte, and that its cultivation is hardly earlier
than the Christian era in the Roman empire, but perhaps
more ancient in Russia and Tartary.

The indication of wild rye given by several authors
should scarcely ever be accepted, for it has often hap-
pened that Se-cale cercale has been confounded with
perennial species, or with others of which the ear is easily
broken, which modern botanists have rightly dis-
tinguished.^ Many mistakes which thus arose have been
cleared up by an examination of original specimens.
Others may be suspected. Thus I do not know what
to think of the a.ssertions of L. Ross, who said he had
found rye growing wild in several parts of Anatolia,^
and of the Russian traveller SsaewerzofF, who said he
saw it in Turkestan.^ The latter fact is probaljle enough,
but it is not said that any botanist verified the species.
Kunth * had previously mentioned it in " the desert
between the Black Sea and the Caspian," but he does
not say on what authority of traveller or of specimens, i
Boissier's herbarium has shown me no wild Secale cereale, ■
but it has persuaded me that another species of rye J
might easily be mistaken for this one, and that asser-
tions require to be carefully verified.

Failing satisfactory proofs of wild plants, I formerly
urged, in my Geographie Botanique Raisonnee, an argu-
ment of some value. Secale cereale sows itself from
cultivation, and becomes almost wild in pai'ts of the
Austrian empire/ which is seldom seen elsewhere.® Thus

' Secale fra/jile, Bieberstein ; S. avatoHcicm, Boissier ; S. monfanum, •
Gussone ; S. villoswm, Linnaeus. I explained in my Geogr. Bofaniqu-e, '
p. 936, the errors which result from this confusion, when rye was said to
be wild in Sicily, Crete, and sometimes in Russia.

* Flora, Bot. Zeitung, 185H, p. 520.

» Flora, Bot. Zeitung, 1869, p. 93. * Kunth, Fnum., i. p. 449.

* Sadler, Fl. Pesth., i. p. 80; Host, Fl. Austr., i. p. 177; Baiimgarten,
Fl. Tranxylv., p. 225; Neilreicli, Fl. Wien., p. 58; Viviani, PZ. Dalmat., i.
p. 97; Farkas, Fl. Croat., p. 1288.

* Strobl saw it, however, in the woods on the slopes of Etna, a result
of its introduction into cultivation in the eighteenth century {(E ter. Bot.
Zeit., 1881, p. 159).

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 378

in the east of Europe, where history points to an ancient
cultivation, rye finds at the present day the most favour-
able conditions for living without the aid of man. It
can hardly be doubted, from these facts, that its original
area was in the region comprised between the Austrian
Alps and the north of the Caspian Sea. This seems
the more probable that the five or six known sjiecies of
the genus Secede inhabit w^estern temperate Asia or the
south-east of Europe.

Admitting this origin, the Aryan natives would not
have known the species, as philology already shows us ;
but in their migi'ations westward they must have met
with it under d liferent names, which they transported
here and there.

Common Oats and Eastern Oats — Avena sativa, Lin-
na3us; Avena orienfalis, Schreber.

The ancient Egyptians and the Hebrews did not
cultivate oats, but they are now grown in Egj'pt.^ There
is no Sanskrit name, nor any in modern Indian languages.
They are only now and then planted by the Eng'lish in
India for their horses.^ The earliest mention of oats
in China is in an historical work on the period 618 to 907
A.D. ; it refers to the variety known to botanists as
Avena sativa inida.^ The ancient Greeks knew the
genus veiy well; they called it hromos,'^ as the Latins
called it_ avena; but these names were commonlj^ applied
to species which are not cultivated, and which are weeds
mixed with cereals. There is no proof that they culti-
vated the common oats. Pliny's remark^ that the
Germans lived on oatmeal, implies that the species was
not cultivated by the Romans.

The cultivation of oats was, therefore, practised an-
ciently to the north of Italy and of Greece. It was
diffused later and partially in the south of the Roman
empire. It is possible that it was more ancient in Asia
Minor, for Galen ^ says that oats were abundant in

Schweinfurth and Ascherson, Beitrage ziir Fl. Mthiop , p. 298.

Rojle, III., p. 419.

Bretschneider, On Study and Value, etc., pp. 18, 44.

Fraas, Syn. Fl. Class., p. 303 ; Lenz, Bot. der Alien, p. 213.

riiny, Hist., lib. sviii. cap. 17. ^ Galen, De Alimentij, Lb. i.c-aj). 12.

374 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Mysia, above Pergamus; that they were given to horses,
and tliat men used them for food in years of scarcity.
A colony of Gauls had formei-ly penetrated into Asia
Minor. Oats have been found ainonij; the remains of
the Swiss lake-dwellings of the age of bronze,^ and in
Germany, near Wittenburg, in several tombs of the
first centuries of the Christian era, or a little earlier.^
Hitherto none have been found in the lake-dwellini'S
of the north of Italy, which confirms the belief that
oats were not cultivated in Italy in the time of the Roman
republic.

The vernacular names also prove an ancient existence
north and west of the Alps, and on the borders of Europe
towards Tartary and the Caucasus. The most widely
diffused of these names is indicated by the Latin aveiia,
Ancient Slav ovisu, ovesu, ovsa, Russian ovesu, Lithuanian
aiviza, Lettonian ausas, Ostias ahis.^ The English word
oats comes, according to A. Pictet, from the Anglo-Saxon
ata or ate. The Basque name, olba or oloa,^ argues a
very ancient Iberian cultivation.

The Keltic names are quite different:^ Irish coirce,
cuirce, corca, Armorican kevch. Tartar sidii, Georgian
kaH, Hungarian zah, Croat zoh, Esthonian kaer, and
others are mentioned by Nemnich^ as applying to the
generic name oats, but it is not likely tliat names so
varied do not belong to a cultivated species. It is
strange that there should be an independent Berber name
zekkoam^ as there is nothing to show that the species
was anciently cultivated in Africa.

All these facts show how erroneous is the opinion
which reigned in the last century,*^ that oats were
brought originally from the island of Juan Fernandez, a
belief which came a])parently from an assertion of the
navigator Anson.^ It is evidently not in the Austral

* Heer, Pflanzen der Pfahlbauten, p. 6, fig. 24.

* I.eiiz, Bot. der Alten, p. 245.

* Ad. Pictet, Orig. Indo.-Europ., edit. 2, vul. i. p. 350.

* Notes communicateci by M. Clos. * Ad. Pictet, vli supra.
' Nernnicb, Pohjfjlott. Lexicon, p. 548.

* Diet. Fr.-Berbere, published by the French Government.

* L nnscus, Species, p. 118; Lamarck, Diet. Enc., i. p. 431.
8 Pli Hips, Cult. Vejet., ii. p. 4.

1

PLANTS cultivatl:d for their seeds. 375

hemispliere that we must seek for the home of the species,
but in those countries of the northern hemisphere where
it was anciently cultivated,

Oats sow themselves on rubbish-heaps, by the way-
side, and near cultivated ground more easily than other
cereals, and sometimes persist in such a way as to
appear wild. This has been observed in widely separate
])laces, as Algeria and Japan, Paris and the north of
China.^ Instances of this nature render us sceptical as
to tlie wild natuj-e of the oats which Bove said he found
in the desert of Sinai. It has also been said ^ that the
traveller Olivier saw oats wild in Persia, but he does not
mention the fact in his work. Besides, several annual
species nearly resembling oats may deceive the traveller. I
cannot discover either in books or herbaria the existence
of really wild oats either in Europe or Asia, and Bentham
has assured me that there are no such specimens in the
herbarium at Kew ; but certainly the half- wild or
naturalized condition is more frequent in the Austrian
states from Dalmatia to Transylvania^ than elsewhere.
This is an indication of origin which may be added to
the historical and philological arguments in favour of
eastern temperate Eui'ope.

Avena strigosa, Schreber, appears to be a variety of
the common oats, judging from the experiments in culti-
vation mentioned by Bentham, who adds, it is true, that
these need confirmation.^ There is a good drawing of the
variety in Host, Icones Graviinum Austriacorwni, ii. pi.
56, which may be compared Avith A. sativa, pi. 59. For
the rest. Arena strigosa has not been found wild. It
exists in Europe in deserted fields, which confirms the
hypothesis that it is a form derived by cultivation.

Avena orientaUs, Schreber, of which the spikelets

' Mnnby, Cafal. Alger., edit. 2, p. 33 ; Franchet and Savatier, Ennm.
n. Jap., ii. p. 175; Cosson, i^Z. Paris, ii. p. 637; Buiige, Enum. Chin.,
p. 71, for the variety niida.

* Lamarck, Diet. Encijcl., i. p. 331.

» Viviani, Fl. Dalmat., i. p. 69 ; Host, Fl. Amtr., i. p. 138 ; Neilreich,
Fl. Wien., p, 85; Baumgarten, Enum. TransijLv., iii. p. £59: Farkas,
Fl. Croatiea, p. 1277.

* Beathsim, Handbooh of Bri'.i^h Flora, edit. 4, p. 511.

old ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

lean all to one side, has also been grown in Europe from
the end of the eighteenth century. It is not known in a
■svild state. Often mixed with common oats, it is not to
be distiniruished from them at a oiance. The names it
bears in Germany, Turkish or Hungarian oats, points to
a modern introduction from the East. Host gives a good
drawing of it {Gram. Austr., i. pi. 44).

As all the varieties of oats are cultivated, and none
have been discovered in a truly wild state, it is very
probable that they are all derived from a single pre-
historic form, a native of eastern temperate Europe and
of Tartarv.

Common Millet — Panicum miliaceum, Linnfeus.

The cultivation of this plant is prehistoric in the
<50uth of Europe, in Egypt, and in Asia. The Greeks
knew it by the name kegchros, and the Latins by that of
iiilliiiin} The Swiss lake-dwellers of the age of stone
made great use of millet,^ and it has also been found in
the remains of the lake-dwellings of Varese in Italy.^
As we do not elsewhere find specimens of these early
times, it is impossible to know what was the panicum or
the sorghum mentioned by Latin authors which was
used as food by the inhabitants of Gaul, Panonia, and
other countries. Unger ^ counts P. iniliaceiiin among the
s[)ecies of ancient Egypt, but it does not apj^ear that he
had positive proof of this, for he has mentioned no monu-
ment, drawinof, or seed found in the tombs. Nor is there
any material proof of ancient cultivation in Mesopotamia
India, and China. For the last-named country it is a
question whether the shu, one of the five cereals sown by
the emperors in the great yearly ceremony, is Panicuni
miliaceain, an allied species, or sorghum ; but it appears
that the sense of the word shu has changed, and that
formerly it was perhaps sorghum which was sown.°

The passages from Theophrastus, Cato, and others, are translated in
Lena, Boianik der Alien, p. 232.

'^ Heer, Pflanzen der PJ'ahlhaufert, p. 17.

3 Kegazzoni, Riv. Arch. Prov. di Como, 18S0, fasc. 7.

♦ Unjjer, PJltnzen des AUen jEimpiens, p. 3 k

* Bretschueider, Study and Value of Chinese Botanical Works, pp.
7, 8, 45.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 377

Anglo-Indian botanists^ attribute two Sanskrit
names to the modern species, unu and vreehib-heda,
although the modern Hindu and Bengali name cheena and
the Telinga name tuorga are quite different. If the
Sanskrit names are genuine, they indicate an ancient
cultivation in India. No Hebrew nor Berber name is
known, ^ but there are Arab names, dokhn, used in
Egj'pt, and kosjccjb in Arabia.^ There are various
European names. Besides the Greek and Latin words,
there is an ancient Slav name, proso,^ retained in Russia
and Poland, an old German word hirsi, and a Lithuanian
name soiu^ The absence of Keltic names is remarkable.
It appears that the species was cultivated especially in
Eastern Europe, and spread westward towards the end of
the Gallic dominion.

With regard to its wild existence, Linnaeus says ^ that
it inhabits India, and most authors repeat this ; but
Anglo-Indian botanists ^ always give it as cultivated. It
is not found in Japanese floras. In the north of China
de Buno-e only saw it cultivated,^ and Maximowicz near
the Ussuri, on the borders of fields and in places near
Chinese dwellings.^ Ledebour says ^" it is nearly wild in
Altaic Siberia and Central Russia, and wild south of the
Caucasus and in the country of Talysch, He quotes
Hohenacker for the last-named locality, who, however,
says only " nearly wild." ^^ In the Crimea, where it
furnishes bread fur the Tartars, it is found here and there
nearly wild,^^ which is also the case in the south of
France, in Italy, and in Austria.^^ It is not wild in

> Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., edit. 1832, p. 310 ; Pidclin^ton, Indeie.

* Eosenmuller, Bibl. Alterth. ; Diet. Franr.-Eerbere.
» Delile, Fl. ^gypt, p. 3 ; Forskal, Fl. Arab., civ.

* Ad. Pictet, Orijines Indo-Europeennes, edit. 2, vol. i. p. 351,
s Ihid. ® Linnseus, Spec. Plant, i. p. 86.

' Roxburgh, PZ. I/m3., edit. 1832, p. 310; Aitchison, Cat. of Punjab PL,

p. 159.

8 Biint^e, Enum., No. 400. • Maximowicz, Primitice Amur., p. 330.

" Ledebonr, Fl. Ross., iv. p. 469.

" Hohenacker, Plant. Talysch., p. 13.

'* Steven, Verzeich. Ealb. Taur., p. 371.

" Mutel, FL Frayiq., iv. p. 20 ; Parl.itore, Fl. Ifal, i. p. 122 ; Viviani,
Fl. Damat., i. p. 60 ; Neiheich, Fl. Nied. (Esterr., p. 32.

378 OllIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Greece/ and no one has found it in Persia or in Syria.
Forskal and Delile indicated it in Egypt, but Ascherson
does not admit this;^ and Forskal gives it in Arabia.''
1 he species may have become naturalized in these regions,
as the result of frequent cultivation from the time of the
ancient Egyptians. However, its wild nature is so
doubtful elsewhere, that its Egypto-Ai-abian origin is
very probable.

Italian Millet — Paniewm Italicuim, Linnoeus; Sctaria
Italica, Beaiivois.

The cultivation of this species was very common in
the temperate parts of the old world in prehistoric
times. Its seeds served as food for man, though now
they are chiefly given to birds.

In China it is one of the five plants which the
emperor sows e^cli year in a public ceremony, according
to the command issued bv Chin-nong 2700" B.C.^ The
common name is siao 'mi (little seed/, the more ancient
name being kii ; but the latter seems to be applied also to
a very ditlerent species.^ Pickering says he recognized it
in two ancient Egj'ptian drawings, and that it is now
cultivated in Egypt ^ under the name dokhn; but that is
the name oi Panicwm miliaceuin. It is, therefore, very
doubtful that the ancient Egyptians cultivated it. It has
been found among the remains of the Swiss lake-dwell-
ings of the stone epoch, and therefore d fortiori among
the lake-dwellers of the sul )sequent epoch in Savoy.'^

The ancient Greeks and Latins did not mention it, or
at least it has not been possible to certify it from what
they say of several panicums and millets. In our own
day the species is rarely cultivated in the south of
Europe, not at all in Greece," for instance, and I do not

1 Heklreieh, Nntz. Griechenl., p. 3 ; Tflinz. Attltch. Ehenc, p. 516.
» M. Ascherson informs nie in a letter that in his Aufz'ifiiunc the
word cult, has been omitted by mistake after Faiiicum miiiaceum.
» Forskal, Fl. Arab., p. civ.

* Bretschneider, Study and Value, etc., pp. 7, 8

* Bretschneider, ihid.

* AccordiiK^ to Unger, Pflanz. d. Alt. JEgypt., p. 31-.

' Heer, Pjlan~en d. Pfahlbant., p. 5, fig. 7 ; p. 17, tig^. 28, 29 j Perriii,
Etudes Pn'hLstnrifjiU's .<nr la Savoie, p. 22.

* Heklreieh, Nulzpfi. Griech.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 879

find it indicated in Egypt, but it is common in Southern
Asia.^

The Sanskrit names Jcunc/ii and i')riyungil, of which
the first is retained in Bengali,^ are attributed to this
species. Piddington mentions several other names in
Indian languages in his Index. Ainslie^ gives a Per-
sian name, arznn, and an Arabic name ; but the latter is
commonly attributed to Panicum miliaceiiTn. There is
no Hebrew name, and the plant is not mentioned in
botanical works upon Egypt and Arabia. The European
names have no historical value. They are not original,
and commonly refer to the transmission of the species or
to its cultiv^ation in a given country. The specific name,
italicitm, is an absurd example, the plant being rarely
cultivated and never wild in Italy.

Rumphius saj'S it is wild in the Sunda Isles, but not
very positively.* Linnasus probably started from this
basis to exaggerate and even promulgate an error, saying,
" inhabits the Indies." ^ It certainly does not come from
the West Indies; and further, Roxburgh asserts that ho
never saw it wild in India. The Graminte have not
yet appeared in Sir Joseph Hooker's flora; but Aitchi-
son^ gives the species as only cultivated in the north-
west of India. The Australian plant which Robert
Brown said belonged to this species belongs to another.^
P. italicum appears to be wild in Japan, at least in the
form called gennanica by different authors,^ and the
Chinese consider the five cereals of the annual ceremony
to be natives of their country. Yet Bunge, in the
north of China, and Maximowicz in the basin of the
river Amur, only saw the species cultivated on a large
scale, in the form of the germanica variety.^ In

» Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., edit. 1832, voL i. p. 302; Rumphius, Amboin v,
p, 202, t. 75.

2 Roxburgh, ibid. ' Ainslie, 3Iat. Med. Ind., i. p. 226.

■• " Obcurrit in Baleya," etc. (Rumphius, v. p. 20:^).

• "Habitat in Indiis " (Liniiseus, Species, i. p. 83).

• Aitchison, Catal. of Pu7ijah PI., p. 162.
' Bentham, Flora Austral., vii. p. 493.

• Franchet and Savatier, Enum. Jcqwn., ii. p. 2G2.

• Bunge, Enum., No. 399; Maximowicz, Frimitim Amur., p. 330.

380 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Persia,^ the Caucasus ]\Iountains, and Europe, I only
find in floras the plant indicated as cultivated, or escaped
sometimes from cultivation on rubbish-heaps, waysides,
waste ground, etc.^

The sum of the historical, philological, and botanical
data make me think tliat the species existed before all
cultivation, thousands of years ago in China, Japan, and
in the Indian Archipelago. Its cultivation must have
early spread towards the West, since we know of Sanskrit
names, but it does not seem to have been known in Syria,
Arabia, and Greece, and it is probably through Russia
and Austria that it early arrived among the lake-dwellers
of the stone age in Switzerland.

Common Sorghum — Holcus sorghum, Linnreus; An-
clropogon sorr/hum, Brotero; Sorghum vidgare, Persoon.

Botanists are not agreed as to the distinction of
several of the species of sorghum, and even as to the
genera into which this group of the Graminre should be
divided. A good monograph on the sorghums is needed,
as in the case of the panicums. In the mean time I will
give some information on the principal species, because
of their immense importance as food for man, rearing
of poultry, and as fodder fur cattle.

We may take as a typical species the sorghum culti-
vated in Europe, as it is figured by Host in his Gramince
Austriacce (iv. pi. 2). It is one of the plants most com-
monly cultivated by the modern Egyptians, under the
name of dourra, and also in equatorial Africa, India, and
China.^ It is so productive in hot countries that it is a
staple food of immense populations in the old world.

Linmneus and all authors, even our contemporaries,
.say that it is of Indian origin ; but in the first edition of
Roxburgh's flora, published in 1820, this botanist, who
should have been consulted, asserts that he had only seen
it cultivated. He makes the same remark for the allied
forms (bicolor, saccharatus, etc.), which are often regarded

' Buhse, Aufzdhhing, p. 232.

* See Pai-latore, Fl. ItaL, i. p. 113 ; Mute], Fl. Franc., iV. p. 20, etc.

* Delilc, Plantes Cult, en ^'jiipte, p. 7 ; Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., edit. 1832,
vol. i. p. 269; Aitchison, Catal. oj Punjab FL, p. 175; Bretschnoider,
Study and Value, etc., p. 9.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 381

as mere varieties. Aitcliison also had only seen the sor-
ghum cultivated. The absence of a Sanskrit name also
renders the Indian origin very doubtful. Bretschneider,
on the other hand, savs the soro-hum is indio-enous in
China, although he says that ancient Chinese authors
have not spoken of it. It is true that he quotes a name,
common at Pekin, kao-liang (tall millet), which also
applies to Holcus saccharatus, and to Vvdiich it is better
suited.

The soro-hum has not been found amoncj the remains
of the lake-dwellings of Switzerland and Italy. The
Greeks never spoke of it. Pliny's phrase ^ about a iniliuin
introduced into Italy from India in his time has been
supposed to refer to the sorghum ; but it was a taller plant,
perhaps Holcus saccharatus. The sorghum has not been
found in a natural state in the tombs of ancient Egypt.
Dr. Hannerd thought he recognized it in some crushed
seeds brought by Kosellini from Thebes ; ^ but Mr. Birch,
the keeper of Egj-ptian antiquities in the British Museum,
has more recently declared that the species has not been
found in the ancient tombs.^ Pickering says he recog-
nized its leaves mixed with those of the papyrus. He
says he also saw paintings of it ; and Leipsius has copies
of drawings which he, as well as Unger and Wilkinson,
takes to be the dourra of modern cultivation.^ The height
and the form of the ear are undoubtedly those of the
sorghum. It is possible that this species is the dochan,
once mentioned in the Old Testament ^ as a cereal from
which bread was made ; 3''et the modern Arabic word
dokhn refers to the sweet sorghum.

Common names tell us nothing, either from their lack
of meaning, or because in many cases the same name
has been applied to the different kinds of panicum and
soro-hum. I can find none which is certain in the
ancient languages of India or Western Asia, which

> Pliny, Hist, lib. xviii. c, 7.

* Qanted by Urger, Die rflanzen des AUen Egyptens, p. 34.

' S. Birch, in Wilkinson, Man. and Cxist. ofAnc. Egyptians, 1S78, toI. ii.
p. 427.

* Lepsius' drawings are reprodnced by Unger and by Wilkinson.
« Ezek. iv. 9.

382 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

aro'ufts an introduction of but few jenturies before the
Christian era.

No botanist mentions the dourra as wild in Ei,''ypt
or in Ara1)ia. An analogous form is wild in eqiuitoiial
Africa, but R. Brown has not been able to identify it/
and the flora of tropical Africa in course of publication at
Kcw has not 3^et reached the order Graniinoe. There
remains, therefore, the single assertion of Dr. Bretsch-
neider, that the tall sorghum is indigenous in China.
If it is really the species in question, it spread westAvard
very late. But it was known to the ancient Eg3'ptians,
and how covdd they have received it from China while
it remained unknown to the intermediate peoples ? It
is easier to understand that it is indigenous in tropical
Africa, and was introduced into Egypt in prehistoric
time, afterwards into India, and fioally into China, where
its cultivation does not seem to be very ancient, for the
first work which mentions it belongs to the fourth cen-
tury of our era.

In support of the theory of African origin, I may quote
the observation of Schmidt,- that the species abounds in
tlie island of San Antonio, in the Cape Verde group, in
rocky places. He believes it to be " completely natural-
ized," which perhaps conceals a true origin.

Sweet Sorghum — Holcus saccharatiis, Linnajus ; Ati-
drojjogon saccharatas, Roxburgh ; Sorghum sacchara-
tiwi, Persoon.

This species, taller than the common sorghum and
with a loose panicle,^ is cultivated in tropical countries
for the seed — which, however, is not so good as that of
the common sorghum — and in less hot countries as fodder,
or even for the suuar which the stem contains in con-
siderable quantities. The Chinese extract a spirit from
it, but not sugar.

The opinion of botanists and of the pulilic in genei'al M
is that it comes from India ; but Roxburgh says that it
is only cultivated in that country. It is the same in

' Brown, Bof. of Congo, p. 544.

• Sclunidt, Beifrijge zur Flora Capverditichen Inseln, p. 118.

* See Host, Gramina' Audriaccr, vol. iv. jil. 4.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. S83

the Sunda Isles, where the hattari is certainly this
species. It is the hao-liang, or great millet of the Chinese.
It is not said to be indigenous in China, nor is it men-
tioned by Chinese authors who lived before the Christian
era.^ From these facts, and the absence of any Sanskrit
name, the Asiatic origin seems to me a delusion.

The plant is now cultivated in Egypt less than the
common sorghum, and in Arabia under the name dokhna
or doJchn.^ No botanist has seen it wild in these
countries. There is no proof that the ancient Egyptians
cultivated it. Herodotus ^ spoke of a " tree-millet " in
the plains of Assyria. It might be the species in question,
but it is not possible to prove it.

The Greeks and Romans were not acquainted with it,
not at least before the Roman empire, but it is possible
that this was the millet, seven feet high, which Pliny
mentions ^ as having been introduced from India in his
lifetime.

We must probably seek its origin in tropical Africa,
where the species is generally cultivated. Sir William
Hooker ^ mentions specimens from the banks of the river
Nun, which were perhaps wild The approaching pub-
lication of the Graminse in the flora of tropical Africa
will probably throw some light on this question. The
spread of its cultivation from the interior of Africa to
Egypt after the Pharaohs, to Arabia, the Indian Archi-
pelago, and, after the epoch of Sanskrit, to India, lastly
to China, towards the beginning of our era, tallies with
historical data, and is not difficult to admit. The inverse
hypothesis of a transmission from east to west presents
a number of objections.

Several varieties of sorghum are cultivated in Asia
and in Africa; for instance, ceriuuLS with drooping

' Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., edit. 2, vol. i. p. 271 ; Rumphins, Amhoin., v. p.
191, pi. 75, fig. 1; Miqnel, FI. Indo-Batava, iii. p. 503; Bretsclmeider,
Study and Value, etc., pp. 9, 4G ; Lonreiro, FL Cochin., ii. p. 792.

* Forskal, Delile, Scliweinfurth, and Ascherson, ubi supra.

* Herodotus, lib. i. cap. 193.

* Pliny, Hist., lib. xviii. cap. 7. This may also be the variety or
species known as hicolor.

* W. Hooker, Niger Flora.

SS'i ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

panicles, mentioned by Roxburgh, and which Prosper
Alpin had seen in Egypt; hicolor, which in height re-
sembles the saccharaius ; and niger and rubens, which
also seem to be varieties of cultivation. None of these
has been found wild, and it is probable that a monograph
would connect them with one or other of the above-
mentioned species.

Coracan — Eleusine coracana, Gsertner

This annual grass, which resembles the millets, is cul-
tivated especially in India and the Malay Archipelago.
It is also grown in Egypt ^ and in Abyssinia ; ^ but the
silence of many botanists, who have mentioned the plants
of the interior and west of Africa, shows that its cultiva-
tion is not widely spread on that continent. In Japan ^
it sometimes escapes from cultivation. The seeds will
ripen in the south of Europe, but the plant is valueless
there except as fodder *

No author mentions having fovmd it in a wild state
in Asia or in Africa. Roxburgh,^ who is attentive to
such matters, after speaking of its cultivation, adds,
" I never saw it wdld." He distinguishes under the
name Eleusine strida a form even more commonly
cultivated in India, which appears to be simplj^ a variety
of E. coracana, and which also he has not found
uncultivated.

We shall discover its country by other means.

In the first place, the species of the genus Eleusine are
more numerous in the south of Asia than in other
tropical regions. Besides the cultivated plant, Royle ^
mentions other species, of which the poorer natives of
India gather the seeds in the plains. According to
Piddington's Index, there is a Sanskrit name, rajika, and
several other names in the modern languages of India.
That of coracana comes from an old name used in Ceylon,
Iwurahhan? In the IMalay Archipelago the names
appear less numerous and less original.

' Schweinfurth and Ascherson, Aufzdhlung, p. 299.

' Bon Jardinier, 1880, p. 585.

* PVanchefc and Savatier, Env.m. Plant. Japan., ii. p. 172.

♦ Bo7i Jardinier, ihid. * Roxburgh, Fl. Indica, edit. 2, vol. i. p. 3t3.

• Eoyle, III. Him, Plants. ' Thwaites, Enum. PI. Zeylan., p. 371.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 385

In Egypt the cultivation of this species is perhaps
not very ancient. Tlie monuments of antiquity bear no
trace of it. Grseco-Roman authors who knew the country
did not speak of it, nor later Prosper Alpin, Forskal, and
Delile. We must refer to a modern work, that of
Schweinfurth and Ascherson, to find mention of the
species, and I cannot even discover an Arab name.^
Thus botany, history, and philology point to an Indian
origin. The flora of British India, in which the Graminse
have not yet appeared, will perhaps tell us the plant
has been found wild in recent explorations.

A nearly allied species is grown in Abys^mia,, Eleusine
Tocussa, Fresenius,^ a plant very little known, which is
perhaps a native of Africa.

Rice — Oryza sativa, Linnreus.

In the ceremony instituted by the Chinese Emperor
Chin-nong, 2S00 years B.C., rice plays the principal part.
The reigning emperor must himself sow it, whereas the
four other species are or may be sown by the princes of
his family^ The five species are considered by the
Chinese as indigenous, and it must be admitted that this
is probably the case with rice, which is in general use,
and has been so for a long time, in a country intei'sected
by canals and rivers, and hence peculiarly favourable
to acpiatic plants. Botanists have not sufficiently studied
Chinese plants for us to know whether rice is often found
outside cultivated ground ; but Loureiro ^ had seen it in
marshes in Cochin-China, ^^

Rumphius and modern writers upon the Malay
Archipelago give it onl}^ as a cultivated plant. The
multitude of names and varieties pohits to a very ancient
cultivation. In British India it dates at least from the
Aryan invasion, for rice has Sanskrit names, vrihi,

* Several synonyms and the Arabic name in LinnEeus, Delile, etc.,
apply to Dactyloctenium cegyptiacum, Willdenow, or Eleusine cegijptiaca
of some authors, which is not cultivated.

■^ Freseuius, Catal. Sem. Horti. Franco/., 1834, Beitr. z. Fl. Abyss-
p. 141.

* Stanislas Julien, in Loiseleur, Consid. sur les C^reaJes, part i. p. 29 ;
Bretsc-hneider, Study and Value of Chinese Botanical Worlcs, pp. 8 and 9.

* Loureiro, Fl. Cochin., i. p. 267.

386 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

arunya} whence come, probably, several names in modern
Indian lanoruawes, and oviiza or oruzon of tlie ancient
Greeks, rouz or arous of the Arabs. Thcophrastus ^
mentioned rice as cultivated in India. The Greeks
became acquainted with it through Alexander's expedi-
tion. "According to Aristobulus," says Strabo,^ "rice
grows in Bactriana, Babylonia, Susida ; " and he adds,
" we may also add in Lower Sj-ria." Further on he notes
that the Indians use it for food, and extract a spirit from
it. These assertions, doubtful perhaps for Bactriana,
show that this cultivation was firmly established, at
least, from the time of Alexander (400 B.C.), m the
Eujihrates valley, and from the beginning of our era
in the hot and irrigated districts of Syria. The Old
Testament does not mention rice, but a careful and
judicious writer, Reynier,^ has remarked several passages
in the Talmud which relate to its cultis^ation. These
facts lead us to suppose that the Indians employed
rice after the Chinese, and that it spread still later
towards the Euphrates — earlier, however, than the Ar3"an
invasion into India. A thousand 3'ears elapsed between
the existence of this cultivation in Babylonia and its
transportation into S3^ria, whence its introduction into
, Egypt after an interval of probably two or three centuries.
' There is no trace of rice among the grains or paintings of
' ancient Egypt.^ Strabo, who had visited this country
^' as well as Syria; does not say that rice was cultivated in
Egvpt in his time, but that the Garamantes ^ grew it,
and this people is believed to have inhabited an oasis to
the south of Cartilage. It is possible that they received
it from Syria. At all events, Egypt could not long fail

* riddingtori, Index ; Hehn, Culturpfljnzen, edit. 3, p. -i37.
« Theophrastus, Hist, lib. iv. cap. 4, 10.

' Strabo, Giographie, Tardieu's translation, lib. xv. cap. 1, § 18;
lib. XV. cap. 1, § 53. . ^ ^

* Kcynier, ^"cononiie des Arabes et des Juifs (1820), p. 450 ; Ecinomie
Puhlique et Rurale des Egypt iens et des Cnrthaijivois (1S23). p. 32k

* linger mentions none ; Birch, in 1878, furnishes a note to Wilkin-
son's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, ii. p. 402, " Tliere
is no proof of the cultivation of rice, of which no grains have been found. '

' Rejnier, ibid.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 887

to possess a crop so well suited to its peculiar conditions
of irrigation. The Arabs introduced the species into
Spain, as we see from the Spanish name arroz. Rice was
first cultivated in Italy in 14G8, near Pisa.^ It is of
recent introduction into Louisiana.

> When I said that the cultivation of rice in India was
probably more recent than in China, I did not mean that
the plant was not wild there. It belongs to a family of
vv'hich the species cover wide areas, and, besides, aquatic
jilants have commonly more extensive habitations than
others. Rice existed, perhaps, before all cultivation in
Southern Asia from China to Bengal, as is shown by the
variety of names in the monosyllabic languages of the
races between India and China.^ It has been found
outside cultivation in several Indian localities, according
to Roxburgh.^ He says that wild rice, called neivaree by
' the Telino-as, otows in abundance on the shores of lakes
in the country of the Circars. Its grain is prized by rich
Hindus, but it is not planted because it is not very
productive. Roxburgh has no doubt that this is the
original plant. Thomson ^ found wild rice at Moradabad,
in the province of Delhi. Historical reasons support the
idea that these specimens are indigenous. Otherwise
they might be supposed to be the result of the habitual
cultivation of the species, all the more that there are
examples of the facility with which rice sows itself and
becomes naturalized in warm, damp climates.^ In any
case historical evidence and botanical probability tend to
the belief that rice existed in India before cultivation.®

Maize — Zea 'mays, Linnajus.

'■ Maize is of American origin, and has only been intro-
duced into the old world since the disco veiy of the new.

* Targioni, Cenni Storici.

8 Crawfurd, in Journal of Botany, 1866, p. 324.
» Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., edit. 1832, vol. ii. p. 200.

* Aitchinson, Catal. Punjab., p. 157.

* Nees, in Martius, Fl. Brazil., in 8vo, ii. p. 518 ; Baker, Fl. oj
ilavri ius, p. 458.

® Von Mueller ■wi-ites to me that rice is certainly wild in tropical
A'lPtrilia. It may have been accidentally sown, aud have become
naiura'>.ed. — Althoe's note, 1884.

388 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS,

I consider these two assertions as positive, in spite of the
contrary opinion of some authors, and the doubts of
tlie celebrated agriculturist Bonafous, to whom we ai'e
indebted for the most complete treatise upon maize." ^
I used these words in 1855, after havin^j alreadv contested
the opinion of Bonafous at the time of the publication of
his work.^ The proofs of an American origin have been
since reinforced. Yet attempts have been made to prove
the contrary, and as the French name, hie da Tarqide,
gives currency to an error, it is as well to resume the
discussion with new data.

No one denies that maize was unknown in Europe at
the time of the Roman empire, but it has been said that
it was brought from the East in the Middle Aofes. The
principal argument is based upon a charter of the thir-
teenth century, published by Molinari,^ according to
which two crusaders, companions in arms of Boniface III.,
Marquis of Monferrat, gave in 1204 to the town of Incisa
a piece of the true cross . , . and a purse containing a
kind of seed of a golden colour and partly white, unknown
in the country and brought from Anatolia, where it was
called meliga, etc. The historian of the crusades, Michaux,
and later Daru and Sismondi, said a great deal about this
charter; but the botanist Delile, as well as Targioni-
tozzetti and Bonafous himself, thought that the seed in
question might belong to some sorghum and not to maize.
These old discussions have been rendered absurd by the
Comte de Ki ant's discovery ^ that the charter of Incisa
is the fabrication of a modern impostor. I quote this
instance to show how scholars who are not naturalists
may make mistakes in the interpretation of the names of
plants, and also how dangerous it is to rely upon an isolated
proof in historical questions.

The names lie de Tarquie, Turkish wheat (Indian

* Bonafous, Ilist. Nat. Ajric. et £conomiqiie du Mais, 1 vol. in folio,
Paris and Turin, 1836.

* A. tie Candolle, Bibliotheque TIniverselle de Geneve, Aug. 1836,
O^orir Bot. Rais., p. 942.

* Molinari, Storia d'Incisa, Asti, ISIO.

* Riant, La Charfe d'Incisa, 8to pamphlet, 1877, reprinted frcm the
Revue des Questions Uistoriqiies.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 3S9

corn), given to maize in almost all modern European lan-
guages no more prove an Eastern origin than the charter
of Jncisa, These names are as erroneous as that of coq
cVInde, in English turkei/, given to an American bird.
Maize is called in Lorraine and in the Voscjes Roman corn ;
in Tuscany, Sicilian corn ; in Sicily, Indian corn ; in the
Pyrenees, Spanish corn ; in Provence, Barbary or Guinea
corn. The Turks call it Egyptian corn, and the Egyp-
tians, Syrian doiirra. This last case proves at least that
it is neither Egyptian nor Syrian. The widespread
name of Tuikish wheat dates from the sixteenth century.
It sprang from an error as to the origin of the plant,
which was fostered perhaps by the tufts which terminate
the ears of maize, which were compared to the beard of
the Turks, or by the vigour of the plant, which may have
given rise to an expression similar to the French fort
comme iin turc. The first botanist who uses the name,
Turkish wheat, is Ruellius, in 1536.^ Bock or Tragus,^ in
1552, after giving a drawing of the species which he calls
Frumentum twrcicum, Welnchkorn, in Germany, having
learnt by merchants that it came from India, conceived
the unfortunate idea that it was a certain typha of Bac-
triana, to wliich ancient authors alluded in vague terms.
Dodoens in 1583, Camerarius in 1588, and Matthiole^ rec-
tified these errors, and positively asserted the American
origin. They adopted the name mays, which they knew
to be American. We have seen (p. 363) that the zea of
the Greeks was a spelt. Certainly the ancients did not
know maize. TJie first travellers* who described the
productions of the new world were surprised at it, a clear
proof that they had not known it in Europe. Hernandez,^
who left Europe in 1571, according to some authorities,
in 1593 according to others,*' did not know that from the

' Ruellius, De Natura Stirpium, p. 428, " Hanc quoniam nostroruTn
aetate e Graecia vel Asia veuerit Turci cum frumentum noininant." Fuch-
bius, p. 824, repeats this phrase in 1543.

* Tragus, Stirpium, etc., edit. 1552, p. 650.

• Dodoens, Pemptades, p. 509; Camerarius, J/orf , p. 94; Mat thiole,
deit. 1570, p. 305.

* P. Martyr, Ercilla, Jean de Lcry, etc., 1516-1578.

• Hernandez, Thes. Mexic. , p. 242. ^ Lasegue, lAts^e Delessert, p. 467.

oUO ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

year 1500 maize had been sent to Seville for cultivatu n
This idct, attested by Fee, who has seen the municipal
records,^ clearly shows the American origin, which caused
Hernandez to think the name of Turkish wheat a very
bad one.

It may perhaps be urged that maize, new to Europe :
in the sixteenth century, existed in some parts of Asia or
Africa before the discovery of America. Let us see what
truth there may be in this.

The famous orientalist D'Herbelot^ had accumulated
several errors pointed out by Bonafous and by me, on
the subject of a passage in the Persian historian Mirkoud
of the fitteenth century, about a cereal which Rous, son
of Japhet, sowed upon the shores of the Caspian Sea, and
which he takes to be the Indian corn of our day. It is
hardly worth considering these assertions of a scholar to
whom it had never occurred to consult the works of the
botanists of his own day, or earlier. What is more im-
portant is the total silence on the subject of maize of the
travellers who visited Asia and Africa before the discovery
of America; also the absence of Hebrew and Sanskrit
names for this plant ; and lastly, that Egyptian monu-
ments present no specimen or drawing of it.^ Rifaud, it
is true, found an ear of maize in a sarcophagus at Thebes,
but it is believed to have been the trick of an Arab
impostor. If maize had existed in ancient Egypt, it would
be seen in all monuments, and would have been connected
with religious ideas like all other remarkable plants. A
species so easy of cultivation would have spread into all
neighbouring countries. Its cultivation would not have .
been abandoned; and we find, on the contrary, that Prosper
Alpin, visiting Egypt in 1592, does not speak of it, and
that Forskal,"* at the end of the eighteenth century, men-
tioned maize as still but little grown in Egypt, where it
had no name distinct from the sorghums. Ebu Baithar,

' Fee, Souvenirs de la Guerre d' E-^pagne, p. 128.

* Bibliotheque Orienfale, Paris, IG'J?, at the word Boris.

' Kunth, Ann. Sc. Nat., ser. 1, vol. viii. p. 418 ; Raspail, Hid. ; Unger,
rjlavzen des Alfen Jinyptens; A. Braun, PJlanzenreitfe JE'jypt. Mus. in
Beiiin; Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of Ancient Egyptians.

* Forskal, p. liii.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 391

an Arab physician of the thirteenth century, who had
travelled through the countries lying between Spain and
Persia, indicates no plant which can be supposed to be
maize.

J. Crawfurd,^ having seen maize generally cultivated
in the Malay Archipelago under a name jarung, which
appears to be indigenous, believed that the species was a
native of these islands. But then how is it Rumphius
makes no mention of it. The silence of this author points
to an introduction later than the seventeenth century.
]\[aize was so little diffused on the continent of India in the
last century, that Roxburgh ^ wi'ote in his flora, which
was published long after it was drawn up, " Cultivated
in different parts of India in gardens, and only as an
ornament, but nowhere on the continent of India as an
object of cultivation on a large scale." We have seen
that thei-e is no Sanskrit name.

Maize is frequently cultivated in China in modern
times, and particularly round Pekin for several genera-
tions,^ although most travellers of the last century make
no mention of it. Dr. Bretschneider, in his work pub-
lished in 1870, does not hesitate to say that maize is not
indi<Tenous in China; but some words in his letter of
1881 make me think that he now attributes some impor-
tance to an ancient Chinese author, of whom Eonafous
and afterwards Hance and Makers have said a great deal.
This is a work by Li-chi-tchin, entitled Fhen-thsao-kang-
mou, or Pen-tsao-kung-inu, a species of treatise on natural
history, which Bretschneider^ says was written at the end
of the sixteenth centuty. Bcmafous says it was conckde 1
in 1578, and the edition which he had seen in the Huzard
library was of lGo7. It contains a drawing of maize
with the Chinese character. This plate is copied in
Bonafous' work, at the beginning of the chapter on the
ori-^anal country of the maize. It is cle a- that it repre-

* Crawfnrd, Bidory of the Indian Archipelago, Edinbui gh, 1820, vol. i,;
Journal of Botany, 18G6, p. 326.

« Roxbiu-gh, Flora IiuHca, edit. 1832, voL iii. p. 5G3.
' Bretschueider, Study and Value, etc., pp. 7, 18.

^ Ibid.

392 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS

i

sents the plant. Dr. Hance^ appears to have based hia
arguments upon the researches of j\rayers, who says that
early Chinese authors assert that maize was imported
from Sifan (Lower Mongolia, to the west of China) long
before the end of the fifteenth century, at an unknown
date. The article contains a co})y of the drawing in the
Pen-tsao-kang-'mu, to which he assigns the date 1597.

The importation through Mongolia is improbable to
such a degree that it is hardly worth speaking of it, and
as for the principal assertion of the Chinese author, the
dates are uncertain and late. The work was finished in
1578 according to Bonafous, in 1597 according to Mayers.
If this be true, and especially if the second of these dates
is the true one, it may be admitted that maize was brought
to China after the discovery of America. The Portuguese
came to Java in 1490,^ that is to say four years after the
discovery of America, and to China in 1516.^ Magellan's \
voyage from South America to the Philippine Islands took
place in 1520. During the fifty-eight or seventy-seven
years between 1516 and the dates assigned to the Chinese
work, seeds of maize may have been taken to China by '■■
navigators fiom America or from Europe. Dr. Bret-
schneider wrote to me recently that the Chinese did not
know the new world earlier than the Europeans, and that
the lands to the east of their countr}^, to which there are
some allusions in their ancient writings, are the islands of
Japan. He had already quoted the opinion of a Chinese
savant, that the introduction of maize in the neighbourhood
of Pekin dates from the last years of the Ming dynasty,
which ended in 1614. This date agrees with the other
facts. The mtroduction into Japan was pi-obably of later
date, since Kasmpfer makes no mention of the species.*

From all these facts, we conclude that maize is not a
native of the old world. It became rapidly diffused in it

' The article is in the Pharmaceutical Journal of 1870; I only know
it from a short extract in Seemann's Journal of Botany, 1871, p. 62.

• Runiphius, Amhoin., voL v. p. 5^:5.
» Malte-Brun, Gca(/mp/ite, i. p. 493.

* A plant engraved on an ancient weapon which Siebold liad taki^i
for maize is a sorghum, according to Eein, quoted by Wittmack, Ueb?r
Antiken Mais.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 39

o

after the discovery of America, and this very rapidity
completes the proof that, had it existed anywhere in Asia
or Africa, it would have played an important part in
agriculture for thousands of years.

We shall see that the facts are quite contrary to these
in America.

At the time of the discovery of the new continent,
maize was one of the staples of its agriculture, from the
La Plata valley to the United States. It had names in
all the languages.^ The natives planted it round their
temporary dwellings where they did not form a fixed
population. The burial-mounds of the natives of North
America who preceded those of our day, the tombs of
the Incas, the catacombs of Peru, contain ears or ofrains of
maize, just as the monuments of ancient Egypt contain
grains of barley and wheat and millet-seed. In Mexico,
a goddess who bore a name derived from that of maize
(Cinieatl, from Cintli) answered to the Ceres of the
Greeks, for the first-fruits of the maize harvest were
offered to her, as the first-fruits of our cereals to the
Greek goddess. At Cusco the virgins of the sun offered
sacrifices of bread made from Indian corn. Nothing is
better calculated to show the antiquity and generality of
the cultivation of a plant than this intimate connection
with the religious rites of the ancient inhabitants. We
must not, liowever, attribute to these indications the
same importance in America as in the old world. The
civilizalion of the Peruvians under the Incas, and that of
the Toltecs and Aztecs in Mexico, has not the extra-
ordinary antiquity of the civilizations of China, Chaldea,
and Egypt. It dates at earliest from the beginning of the
Christian era ; but the cultivation of maize is more
ancient than the monuments, to judge from the numerous
varieties of the species found iu them, and their dispersal
into remote regions.

A yet more remarkable proof of antiquity has been
discovered by Darwin. He found ears of Indian corn,
and eighteen species of shells of our epoch, buried in the
soil of the shore in Peru, now at least eighty-five feet

' See Martius, Beitrdge zur Ethnographie Amerikas, p. 127.

394 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

above the level of the sca.^ This maize was perhaps not
cultivated, but in this case it would be yet more
interesting, as an indication of the origin of the species.

Although America has been explored by a^ great
number of botanists, none have found maize in the
conditions of a wild plant.

Augubte de Saint-Hilaire ^ thought he recognized the
wild type in a singular variety, of which eaih grain is
enclosed wiihin its sheath or bract. It is known at
Buenos-Ayres under the name jnnsigallo. It is Zea Mayf^
funicata of Saint- Hilaire, of which Bonafous gives an
illustration, pi. 5, his, under the name Zea crTjptosperma.
Lindley^ also gives a description and a drawing from
seeds brought, it is said, from the Rockv Mountains, but
this is not Confirmed by recent Califom'an Horas. A
yourg Guarany, born in Paraguay on its frontiers^ had
recognized this maize, and told Saint-Hilaire that it grew
in the damp forests of his country. This is very in-
sufficient proof that it is indigenous. No traveller to my
knowledge has seen this plant wild in Paraguay or
Brazil. But it is an interesting fact that it has been
cultivated in Europe, and that it often passes into the
ordinary state of maize. Lindley observed it when it
had been only two or three years in cultivaiion, and
Professor Radic obtained from one sowing 225 ears of the
form tuniccda, and 105 of the common form with naked
grains."^ Evidently this form, which might be believed a
true species, but whose country is, however, doubtfub is
hardly even a race. It is one of th e innumerable varieties,
more or less hereditary, of which botanists who are con-
sidei ed authorities make only a single species, because of
their want of stability and the transitions which they
frequently present.

On the condition of Zea Mays, and its habitation in
America before it was cultivated, we have nothing but con-

* Darwin, Tar. of Plants and Anim. under Domesf., i. p. 320.

* A. de Saint-Hi'laire, Aim. Sc. Nat., xvi. p. 1-13.
8 Linrlley, Joitrn. of the Hortic. Soc, i. p. 114.

* I quote tliese facts from Wittmack, Ueher Antilcen Ma'is aim Nord
u»d Slid Aitierika, p. 87, in Berlin Antlivopol. Ges., Nov. lU, 1879.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 395

jectural knowledge. I will state w^hat I take to be the sum
of this, because it leads to certain probable indications.

I remark first that maize is a plant singularly un-
provided with means of dispersion and protection. The
grains are hard to detach from the ear, which is itself
enveloped. They have no tuft or wing to catch the wind,
and when the ear is not gathered by man the grains fall
still fixed in the receptacle, and then rodents and other
animals must destroy them in quantities, and all the
more that they are not sufiiciently hard to pass intact
through the digestive organs. Probably so unprotected
a species was becoming more and more rare in some
limited region, and was on the point of becoming extinct,
when a wandering tribe of savages, having perceived its
nutritious qualities, saved it from destruction by culti-
vating it. I am the more disposed to believe' that its
natural area was small that the species is unique ; that is
to say, that it constitutes what is called a single-typed,
genus. The genera which contain few species, and
especially the monotypes, have as a rule more restricted
areas than others. Palaeontology will perhaps one day
show whether there ever existed in America several species
of Zea, or similar Graminae, of which maize is the last
survivor. Kow, the genus Zea is not only a monotype,
but stands almost alone in its familv. A sino-le cjenus,
EuchlcBiia of Schrader, may be compared with it, of which
there is one species in Mexico and another in Guatemala ;
but it is a quite distinct genus, and there are no inter-
mediate forms between it and Zea.

Wittmack has made some curious researches in order
to discover which variety of maize probably represents
the form belonging to the epoch anterior to cultivation.
For this purpose he has compared ears and grains taken
from the mounds of North America with those from Peru.
If these monuments offered only one form of maize, the
result would be important, but several different varieties
have been found in the mounds and in Peru. This is not
very surprising ; these monuments are not very ancient.
The cemetery of Ancon in Peru, whence Wittmack
obtained his best specimens, is nearly contemporary with
18

o'JG ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

the discovery of America.^ Now, at that epoch the
number of varieties was ah'eady considerable, which
proves a much more ancient cultivation.

Experiments in sowing varieties of maize in unculti-
vated ground several years in succession would perhaps
show a reversion to some common form which might then
be considered as the original stock, but nothino; of this
kind has been attempted. The varieties have only been
observed to lack stability in spite of their great
diversity.

As to the haljitation of the unknown primitive form,
the following considerations may enable us to guess it.
Settled populations can only have been formed where
nutritious species existed naturally in soil easy of
cultivation. The potato, the sweet potato, and ma'ze
doubtless fulfilled these conditions in America, and as the
great populations of this part of the woild existed first in
the high grounds of Chili and Mexico, it is there probably
that wild maize existed ^Ye must not look for it in the
low-lvincj reirions such as Paraguav and the banks of the
Amazon, or the hot districts of Gujana, Panama, and
Mexico, since their inhabitants were formerly less nume-
rous. Besides, forests are unfavourable to annuals, and
maize does not thrive in the warm damp climates where
manioc is grown.^ On the other hand, its tiansmis>ion
from one tribe to another is easier to comprehend if we
suppose the point of departure in the centre, than if we
place it at one of the limits of the area over which the
.species was cultivated at the time of the Incas and the
Toltecs, or rather of the Mayas, ISIahuas, and Cliibchas,
who preceded these. The migrations of peoples have i
not always followed a fixed course from north to south,
or from south to north. They have taken ditferent
directions according to the epoch and the country.^ The

• Rocliobrune, Rec/iercTies Ethnographiqnes surles SepuUuresrcruriennes
cCAncon, from an extract by Wittmack in UhUvorm, Bot. Central-Blatt.,
1880, p. 1G33, where it may be seen tliat the borial-gr^und was used before
and after the discoveiy of America.

* Sa^ot, Cu^t. des Cereales de la Guyane Frang. (Journ. de la Soc.
Centr. d'hortic. de France, 1872, p. 91).

' De Naidaillac, in his work entitled Lea Premiers ITomm''s ef lea

PLAXTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 397

ancient Peruvians scarcely knew the Mexicans, and vice
versa, as the total difference of their beliefs and customs
shows. As they both early cultivated maize, we must
suppose an intermediate point of departure. New
Granada seems to me to fulfil these conditions. The
nation called Chibcha which occupied the table-land of
Bogota at the time of the Spanish conquest, and con-
sidered itself aboriginal, was an agricultural people. It
enjoyed a certain degree of civilization, as the monu-
ments recently investigated show. Perhaps this tribe
first possessed and cultivated maize. It marched with
Peru, then but little civilized, on the one hand, and with
the Mayas on the other, who occupied Central America
and Yucatan. These were often at war with the Nahuas,
predecessors of the Toltecs and the Aztecs in Mexico.
There is a tradition that Nahualt, chief of the Nahuas,
taught the cultivation of maize.^

I dare not hope that maize will be found wild, although
its habitation before it was cultivated was probably so
sniall that botanists have perhaps not yet come across it.
The species is so distinct from all others, and so striking,
that natives or unscientific colonists would have noticed
and spoken of it. The certainty as to its origin will
probably come rather from archaeological discoveries. If
a great number of monuments in all parts of America
are studied, if the hieroglyphical inscriptions of some of
these are deciphered, and if dates of migrations and
economical events are discovered, our hypothesis will be
justified, modified, or rejected.

Article II. — Seeds used for Different Purposes.

Poppy — Pa/paver soiiiniferwin, Linnseus.
The poppy is usually cultivated for the oil contained
in the seed, and sometimes, especially in Asia, for the sap.

Temps Prehisioriques, gives briefly the snm of our knowledge of these
migrations of the ancient peoples of America in general. See especially
vol. ii. chap. 9.

• De Naidaillac, ii. p. 69, who quotes Bancrol, The Xa'ive Races of the
Pacific States,

398 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

extracted by making incisions in the capsules, and from
which opium is obtained.

The variety which has been cultivated for centuries
escapes readily from cultivation, or becomes almost
naturalized in certain localities of the south of Europe.^
It cannot be said to exist in a really wild state, but
botanists are agreed in regarding it as a modification of
the poppy called Paqxiver setigerum, which is wild on
the shores of the Mediterranean, notably in Spain, Algeria,
Corsica, Sicily, Greece, and the island of Cyprus. It has
not been met with in Eastern Asia,^ consequently this is
really the original of the cultivated foi'm. Its cultivation
must have begun in Europe or in the north of Africa.
In support of this theory we find that the Swiss lake-
dwellers of the stone age cultivated a poppy which is
nearer to P. setigeruvi than to P. sornniferum. Heer^
has not been able to find any of the leaves, but the capsule
is surmounted by eight stigmas, as in P. setigerum, and
not by ten or twelve, as in the cultivated poppy. This
latter form, unknown in nature, seems therefore to have
been developed within historic times. P. setigerum is
still cultivated in the north of France, together with P.
sornniferum,, for the sake of its oil.*

The ancient Gieeks were well acquainted with the
cultivated poppy. Homer, Theophrastus, and Dioscorides
mention it. They were aware of the somniferous pro-
perties of the sap, and Dioscorides ^ mentions the variety
with white seeds. The Romans cultivated the poppy
before the republic, as we see by the anecdote of Tarquin
and tlie popj)y-heads. They mixed its seeds with their
Hour in making bread.

The Egyptians of Plin3^'s time '^ used the juice of the
poppy as a medicament, but we have no proof that tliis

' Willkomm and Laiige, Prodr. Fl. Hisp., iii. p. 872.

* Boissier, FL Orient.; Tcliihatcheff, Asie Mineurt: Ledcbour, Fl.
Ross., and others.

' Heer, Pjlanzen der Pfahlhauten, p. 32, fi2"s. 65, 66.

* De Lanessan, in his translation from Fliickigor and Hanbnrj, His-
toire des Drogues d'Orijine Vtiijetale, i. p. 129.

* Dioscorides, Hist. Plant., lib. iv. c. G5.
e Hiiu^', Hist. Plant., lib. xx. c. 18.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 399

plant was cultivated in Egypt in more ancient times.^
In the Middle Ages^ and in our own day it is one of the
principal objects of cultivation in that country, especially
for the manufacture of opium. Hebrew writings do not
mention the species. On the other hand, there are one
or two Sanskrit names, Piddington gives chosa, and
Adolphe Pictet khaskhasa, which recurs, he says, in the
Persian chasJichdsh, the Armenian chashchash,^ and in
Arabic. Another Persian name is kouknar.^ These
names, and others I could quote, very different from the
Tiiaikon (Mii/Kwv) of the Greeks, are an indication of an
ancient cultivation in Europe and Western Asia. If the
species was first cultivated in prehistoric time in Greece,
as appears probable, it may have spread eastward before
the Aryan invasion of India, but it is strange that there
should be no pi'oof of its extension into Palestine and
Egypt before the Roman epoch. It is also possible that
in JEurope the variety called Papaver setigerum, emj^loyed
by the Swiss lake-dwellers, was first cultivated, and that
the variety now grown came from Asia Minor, where the
species has been cultivated for at least three thousand
years. This theory is supported by the existence of the
Greek name 7)iaik6n, in Dorian niakon, in sev^eral Slav
languages, and in those of the peoples to the south of the
Caucasus, under the form mack.^

The cultivation of the poppy in India has been
recently extended, because of the importation of opium
into China ; but the Chinese will soon cease to vex the
English by buying this poison of them, for they are be-
ginning eagerly to produce it themselves. The poppy is
now grown over more than half of their territory.^ The
species is never wild in the east of Asia, and even as
regards China its cultivation is recent.'

* Unger, Die Tflanze als Errerungs und Betailbungsmittel, p. 47 ; Die
Pflavzen des Alien JSgypfens, i. p. 50.

* Ebn Baithar, German trans., i. p. 64.

' Ad. Pictet, Origines Indo-Europeennes, edit. 3, vol. i. p. 3G3.

* Ain:ilie, Mat. Med. Indica, i. p. 326.

* Nemnich, Polygl. Lexicon, p. 848.

* Martin, in Bull. Soc. d'Acclimatation, 1872, p. 200.

* Sir J. Hooker, Flora of Brit. Ind., i. p. 117; Bretschneider, Study
and Value, etc., 47.

4-00 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

The name opium given to the drug extracted from
the juice of the capsule is derived from the Greek. Dios-
corides wrote ojios (Ottoc) The Arabs converted it into
ojiiin} and spread it eastwards even to China.

Fliickiger and Hanbury ^ give a detailed and interest-
ing account of the extraction, trade, and use of opium
in all countries, particularly in China. Yet I imagine
my readers may like to read the following extracts from
Dr. Bretschneider's letters, dated from Pekin, Aug. 23,
1881, Jan. 28, and June 18, 1882. They give the
most certain information which can be derived from
accurately translated Chinese works.

" The author of the Pent-8ao-kang-mou,'w'ho wrote in
1552 and 1578, gives some details concerning the a-fou-
yong (that is ajionn, opiuii), a foreign drug produced by
a species of ying-sou with red flowers in the country of
Tien-fang (Arabia), and recently used as a medicament
in China. In the time of the preceding dynasty there had
been much talk of the a-foii-yong. The Chinese author
gives some details relative to the extraction of opium in
his native country, but he does not say that it is also pro-
duced in China, nor does he allude to the practice of
smoking it. In the Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian
Islands, by Crawfurd, p. 312, I find the following pas-
sage : ' The earliest account we have of the use of opium,
not only from the Archipelago, but also from India and
China, is by the faithful, intelligent Barbosa.^ He rates
it among the articles brought by the Moorish and Gentile
merchants of Western India, to exchange for the cargoes
of Chinese junks.' "

"It is dithcult to fix the exact date at which the
Chinese began to smoke opium and to cultivate the
poppy which produces it. As I have said, there is much
confusion on this head, and not only European authors,
but also the modern Chinese, apply the name ying-sou
to P. somniferum as well as to P. rhceas. P. soiiini-
feriLin is now extensively cultivated in all the provinces

1 Ebn Baithar, i. p. 64.

* Fluckigcr and Hanbuiy, Phnrwaro^rnphia, p. 40.

' Barbooa's wuik was publiishv d in liiti.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 401

of the Chinese empire, and also in Mantchuria and Mon-
li'olia. Williamson {Journeys in North China, Mant-
■■fuiria, Mongolia, 18()8, ii. p. 55) saw it cultivated eveiy-
where in Mantchuria. He was told that the cultivation
»f the poppy was twice as profitable as that of cereals.
Potanin, a Russian traveller, who visited Northern Mon-
:j;olia in 1876, saw immense plantations of the poppy in
the valley of Kiran (between lat. 47° and 48"). This
alarms the Chinese government, and still more the Eng-
lish, who dread the competition of native opium."

" You are probably aware that opium is eaten, not
smoked, in India and Persia. The practice of smoking
this drug appears to be a Cninese invention, and modern.
Nothing proves that the Chinese smoked opium before
the middle of the last century. The Jesuit missionaries
to China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries do
not mention it ; Father d'Incarville alone says in 1750
that the sale of opium is forbidden because it was used
by suicides. Two edicts forbidding tlie smoking of opium
date from before 1730, and another in 1790 speaks of the
progress made by the vice in question. Don Sinibaldo
di Mas, who in 1858 published a very good book on
China, wdiere he had lived many years as Spanish
ambassador, says that the Chinese took the practice
from the people of Assam, where the custom had long
existed."

So bad a habit, like the use of tobacco or absinth,
is sure to spread. It is becoming gradually introduced
into the countries which have fre(|uent relations with
China. It is to be hoped that it w^ill not attack so large
a proportion of the peoples of other countries as in Amoy,
where the proportion of opium-smokers are as fifteen to
twenty of the adult population.^

Arnotto, or Anatto — Bisca orellana, Linnseus,

The dye, called rocou in French, arnotto in Englisli,
is extracted from the pulp which encases the seed. The
inhabitants of the West India Islands, of the Isthmus of
Darien, and of Brazil, used it at the time of the discovery
of America to stain their bodies red, and the Mexicans

* Hughes, Trade Report, quoted by Fliickiger and Hanbury.

1.02 OUIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

in painting.^ The arnotto, a small tree of the order
Bixacese, grows wild in the West Indies,^ and over a
great part of the continent of America between the
tropics. Herbaria and floras abound in indications of
locality, but do not generally specify whether the species
is cultivated, wild, or naturalized. I note, however, that
it is said to be indigenous by Seeraann on the north-
west coast of Mexico and Panama, by Triana in New
Granada, by Meyer in Dutch Guiana, and by Piso and
Claussen in Brazil.^ With such a vast area, it is not
surprising that the species has many names in American
languages ; that of the Brazilians, urucu, is the origin of
rocovb.

It w^as not very necessary to plant this tree in order
to obtain its product ; nevertheless Piso relates that the
Brazilians, in the sixteenth century, were not content
with the wild plant, and in Jamaica, in the seventeenth
century, the plantations of Bixa were common. It was
one of the first species transported from America to the
south of Asia and to Africa. It has become so entirely
naturalized, that Roxburgh * believed it to be indigenous
in India.

Cotton — Gossyjpiiinn herhaceum, Linnaeus.

When, in ISoo, I sought the origin of the cultivated
cottons,^ there was still great uncertainty as to the dis-
tinction of the species. Since then two excellent works
have appeared in Italy, upon w^hich we can rely ; one by
Parlatore,^ formerly director of the botanical gardens at
Florence, the other by Todaro,' of Palermo. These two

' Sloane, Jamaica, ii. p. 53.

« Sloane, ibid.; Clo.s, Ann. Sc. Nat., 4t'h series, vol. viii. p. 260;
GvUehach, Fl. of Brit. W. Ind. Is., p. 20.

» Seemann, Bot. of Herald., pp. 79, 268 ; Triana and Planchon, Prodr.
Fl. Novo-Granat., p. 94; Meyer, Essequeho, p. 202; Piso, Hist. Xat.
Bradl, edit. 1648, p. 65 ; Claussen, in Clos, ^ihi supra.

* Koxburgh, Fl. Ind., ii. p. 581 ; Oliver, FL Trap. Africa, i. p. 114.

* Ge'ogr. Bot. Rats., p. 971.

* Pariatore, Le Specie del Cotoni, text in 4to, plates in folio, Florence,
18G6.

' Todaro, Relazione delta Coltura dei Cotoni in Italia, segnita da una
Monographia del Genere Gossypinm, text large 8vo, plates in folio, Konie
and Palermo, 1877-78 ; a work preceded by several others of less im-
portance, which were known to Pariatore.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 403

works are illustrated with magnificent coloured plates.
Nothino- better can be desired for the cultivated cottons.
On the other hand, our knowledge of the true species,
I mean of those which exist naturally in a wild state,
has not increased as much as it might. However, the
definition of species seems fairly accurate in the works
of Dr. Masters,^ whom I shall therefore follow. This
author agrees with Parlatore in admitting seven well-
known species and two doubtful, while Todaro counts
fifty-four, of which only two are doubtful, reckoning as
species forms with some distinguishing character, but
which originated and are preserved by cultivation.

The common names of the cottons give no assistance ;
they are even calculated to lead us completely astray as
to the origin of the species. A cotton called Siamese
comes from America ; another is called Brazilian or Ava
cotton, according to the fancy or the error of cultivators.

We will first consider Gossypium herhaceum, an
ancient species in Asiatic plantations, and now the com-
monest in Europe and in the United States. In the
hot countries whence it came, its stem lasts several years,
but out of the tropics it becomes annual from the effect
of the winter's cold. The flower is generally yellow, with
a red centre; the cotton yellow or white, according to
the variety. Parlatore examined in herbaria several
wild specimens, and cultivated others derived from wild
plants of the Indian Peninsula. He also admits it to be
indigenous in Burmah and in the Indian Archipelago,
from the specimens of collectors, who have not perhaps
been sufficiently careful to verify its wild character.

Masters regards as undoubtedly wild in Sindh a form
which he calls Gossypium Stocksii, which he says is
probably the wild condition of Gossypiitm herbaceuin,
and of other cottons cultivated in India for a long time.
Todaro, who is not given to uniting many forms in a
single species, nevertheless admits the identity of this
variety with the commcm G. herhaceum. The yellow
colour of the cotton is then the natural condition of the

' Masters, in Oliver, Fl. Trap. Afr., i. p. 210 ; and in Sir J. Hooker,
Fl. Brit. Ind.yi.ip.ZlG.

=b04! ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

species. The seed has not the short down which exists
between bhe longer hairs in the cultivated G. herbaceuTn.

Cultivation has pi'obably extended the area of the
species beyond the limits of the primitive habitation
This is, I imagine, the case in the Sunda Islands and the
Malay Peninsula, Avhere certain individuals appear more
or less wild. Kurz,^ in his Burmese flora, mentions
G. herbaceum, with yellow or white cotton, as cultivated
and also as wild in desert places and waste ground.

The herbaceous cotton is called kapase in Bengali,
kapas in Hindustani, which shows that the Sanskrit
word karpasd undoubtedly refers to this species.^ It
was early cultivated in Bactriana, wdiere the Greeks had
noticed it at the time of the expedition of Alexander.
Theophrastus speaks of it ^ in such a manner as to leave
no doubt. The tree-cotton of the Isle of Tylos, in the
Persian Gulf, of which he makes mention further on,^
was probably also G. herbaceum; for Tylos is not far
from India, and in such a hot climate the herbaceous
cotton becomes a shrub. The introduction of a cotton
plant into China took place only in the ninth or tenth
century of our era, which shows that probably the area
of G. herbaceum was originally limited to the south and
east of India. The knowledge and perhaps the cultiva-
tion of the Asiatic cotton was propagated in the Grseco-
Roman world after the expedition of Alexander, but
before the first centuries of the Christian era.^ If the
byssos of the Greeks was the cotton plant, as most
scholars think, it was cultivated at Elis, according to
Pausanias and Pliny ; ^ but Curtius and C. Ritter '^ con-
sider the word byssos as a general term for threads,
and that it was probably applied in this case to fine
linen. It is evident that the cotton was never, or very
rarely, cultivated by the ancients. It is so useful that
it would have become common if it had been introduced

* Kurz, Forest Flora of British Bvrmah, i. p. 129.

* Piddiiif^ton, Index. ^ Theophrastus, Husf. Plavt., lib. iv. cnp. 5.

* Ibid., lib. iv. cap. 9. ' Bretscluieider, Study and Valve, etc., p. 7.

* Pausanias, lib. v., cap. 5 ; lib. vi. cap. 26 ; Plinv, lib. xix. cap. 1.
Sqo Brandes, Baumu-olle, p. 96.

* C. Rittor, Die Geographische Verhreitung der Baumwolle, p. 25.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 405

into a single locality — in Greece, for instance. It was
afterwards propagated on the shores of the Mediterranean
by the Arabs, as we see from the name qutn or kutn}
which has passed into the modern languages of the south
of Europe as cotone, coton, algodon. Eben el Awan, of
Seville, who lived in the twelfth century, describes its
cultivation as it was practised in his time in Sicily,
Spain, and the East.^

Gossypium herhacewTn is the species most cultivated
in the United States.^ It was probably introduced
there from Europe. It was a new cultivation a hundred
years ago, for a bale of Nortli American cotton was
confiscated at Liverpool in 1774, on the plea that the
cotton-plant did not grow there.^ The sillcy cotton {sea
island) is another species, American, of which I shall
presently speak.

Tree-Cotton — Gossypium arhoreum, Linnpeus.

This species is taller and of longer duration than the
herbaceous cotton ; the lobes of the leaf are narrower,
the bracts less divided or entire. The flower is usually
pink, with a red centre. The cotton is always white.

Accordinof to Ano-lo-Indian botanists, this is not, as
it was supposed, an Indian species, and is even rarely
cultivated in India. It is a native of tropical Alrica.
It has been seen wild in Upper Guinea, in Abyssinia,
Sennaar, and Upper Egypt.'' So great a number of
collectors have brouolit it from these countries, that
there is no room for doubt; but cultivation has so diffused
and mixed this species with others that it has been
described under several names in works on Southern
Asia.

* It is impossible not to remark the resemblance between this name
and that of flax ia Arabic, kattan or kittan; it is au example of the con-
fusion which takes place in names where there is an aualogy between
the products.

* De Lasteyrie, Du Cotonnier, p. 290.

» Torrey and Asa Gray, Flora of JSlorth America, i. p. 230 j Darling-
ton, Agricultural Botany, p. 16.

* Schouw, Jsaturschilderungen, p. 152.

* Masters, in Oliver, Fl. Trop. Afr.,i. p. 211 ; Hooker, Fl. of Brit. Tnd.,
i. p. 3-i7; Schweinfurth and Ascherson, Aufzahlung, p. 265 (under the
name Gossypiiim nigrum) ; Parlatore, Specie dei Cotoni, p. 25.

406 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Parlatore attributed to G. arhoreum, some Asiatic
specimens of G. heihaceitm-, and a plant but little known
whicli Forskal found in Arabia. He suspected from this
that the ancients had known G. arboreum as well as G.
herhaceiiin. Now that the two species are better distin-
guished, and that the origin of both is known, this does
not seem probable. They knew the herbaceous cotton
through India and Persia, while the tree-cotton can only
have come to them through Egypt. Parlatore himself
has given a most interesting proof of this. Until his
work appeared in 18G6, it was not certain to what species
belonged some seeds of the cotton plant which Rosellini
found in a vase among the monuments of ancient Thebes.^
These seeds are in the Florence museum. Parlatore
examined them carefully, and declares them to belonc' to
Gossypiiwi arboreum.'^ Rosellini is certain he was not
imposed upon, as he was the first to open both the tomb
and the vase. No archaeologist has since seen or read
signs of the cotton plant in the ancient times of Egyptian
civilization. How is it that a plant so striking, remark-
al:)le for its flowers and seed, was not described nor pre-
served habitually in the tombs if it were cultivated ?
How is it that Herodotus, Dioscorides, and Theophrastus
made no mention of it when writing of Egypt ? The
cloths in which all the mummies are wrapt, and which
were formerly supposed to be cotton, are always linen
according to Thom])son and many other observers who
are familiar with the use of the microscope. Hence I
conclude that if the seeds found by Rosellini were really
ancient they were a rarity, an exception to the common
custom, perhaps the product of a tree cultivated in a
garden, or perhaps they came from Upper Egypt, a
country where we know the tree-cotton to be wild.
Pliny ^ does not say that cotton was cultivated in Lower
Egypt ; but here is a translation of his very remarkable
passage, which is often quoted. "The upper part of
Eg} |)t, towards Arabia, produces a shrub which some

' Eo?ellini, Monnmenii dell' Fijizia, p. 2j Hon. Civ., i. p. CO.
' Parlatore, Specie dei Cotoni, p. IG.
' Pliny, Hist. Plant., lib. xix. cap. 1.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 407

call gossijyion and others aylon, whence the name
xylina given to the threals obtained from it. It is low-
growing, and bears a fruit like that of the bearded
nut, and from the interior of this is taken a wool for
weaving. None is comparable to tins in softness and
whiteness." Pliny adds, "The cloth made from it is
used by preference for the dress of the Egyptian priests."
Perhaps the cotton destined to this purpose was sent
from Upper Egypt, or perhaps the author, who had
not seen the fabrication, and did not possess a micro-
scope, was mistaken in the nature of the sacerdotal
raiment, as were our contemporaries who handled the
grave-cloths of hundreds of mummies before suspecting
that they were not cotton. Among the Jews, the
priestly robes were commanded to be of linen, and it
is not likely that their custom was different to that
of the Egyptians.

Pollux,^ born in Egj-pt a century later than Pliny,
expresses himself clearly about the cotton plant, of which
the thread was used by his countrymen ; but he does not
say whence the shrub came, and we cannot tell whether
it was Gossypium arhoreuiii or G. herhaceuni. It does
not even a])pear whether tlie plant was cultivated in
Lower Egypt, or if the cotton came from the more
southern region. In spite of these doubts, it may be
suspected that a cotton plant, probably that of Upper
Egypt, had recently been introduced into the Delta. The
species which Prosper Alpin had seen cultivated in
Egypt in the sixteenth century was the tree-cotton. The
Arabs, and afterwards Europeans, preferred and trans-
ported into different countries the herbaceous cotton
rather than the tree-cotton, which yields a poorer product
and requires more heat.

Reoardinfj the two cottons of the old world, I have
made as little use as possible of arguments based upon
Greek names, such as livaaog, aivtov, suXov, OQwv, etc.,
or Sanskrit names, and their derivatives, as carbo.sa,
carpas, or Hebrew names, schesch, huz, which are doubt-
fully attributed to the cotton tree. This has been a

* Pollux, Onomasticon, quoted by C. Ritter, ubi supra, p. 26.

i08 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

fruitful subject of discussion,* but the clearer distinction
of species and the discovery of their origin greatly
diminishes tlie importance of these questions — to natu-
ralists, at least, who prefer facts to words. Moreover,
Reynier, and after him C. Ritter, arrived in their re-
searches at a conclusion which we must not forget: that
these same names were often applied by ancient peoples
to different plants and tissues — to linen and cotton, for
example. In this case as in others, modern botany
explains ancient words where words and the com-
mentaries of philologists may mislead.

Barbados Cotton — Gossypiwm harbadense, Linnaeus.

At the time of the discovery of America, the Spaniards
found the cultivation and use of cotton established from
the West India Islands to Peru, and from Mexico to
Brazil The fact is proved by all the historians of the
epoch. But it is still very difficult to tell what were the
species of these American cottons and in what countries
they were indigenous. The botanical distinction of the
American species or varieties is in the last degree con-
fused. Authors, even those who have seen large collec-
tions of growing cotton plants, are not agreed as to the
characters. They are also embarrassed by the difficulty
of deciding which of the specific names of Linn?eus should
be retained, for the oi'iginal definitions are insufficient.
The introduction of American seed into African and
Asiatic plantations has given rise to further complica-
tions, as botanists in Java, Calcutta, Bourbon, etc., have
often described American forms as species under different
names. Todaro admits ten American species ; Parlatore
reduced them to three, which answer, he says, to Gossij-
pium hirsiduin, 0. harbadense, and G. religiosum of
Linnpeus; lastly. Dr. Masters unites all the American
forms into a single species which he calls G. harbadense,
giving as the chief character that the seed bears only

* Reynior, l^conomie den Arahex et des Juifs., p. 363; Bertoloni, Nov.
Act. Acad. Bo7)on., ii. p. 213, and MisccU. Bot., 6 ; Viviani, in Bibl. Ifal.,
vol. l.xxxi. p. 91; C. Ritter, Gc'ogr. Verbreitxng der BaxmicoUe, in 4to. ;
Tar^oni, Cenni Storici, p. 93 j Braudig, Der Baumwolle in Alterthum,
in 8vo, 1880.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOE THEIR SEEDS. 409

long hairs, whereas the species of the old world have a
short down underneath the longer hairs.^ The flower is
>'ellow, with a red centre. The cotton is white or yellow.
Parlatore strove to include fifty or sixty of the cultivated
forms under one or other of the three heads he admits,
from the study of plants in gardens or herbaria. Dr.
Masters mentions but few synonyms, and it is possible
that certain forms with which he is not acquainted do
not come under the definition of his single species.

Where there is such confusion it would be the best
course for botanists to seek with care the Gossypia, which
are wild in America, to constitute the one or more species
solely upon these, leaving to the cultivated species their
strange and often absurd and misleading names. I state
this opinion because with regard to no other genus of
cultivated plants have I felt so strongly that natural
history should be based upon natural facts, and not upon
the artificial products of cultivation. If we start from
this point of view, which has the merit of being a truly
scientific method, we find unfortunately that our know-
ledo-e of the cottons indigenous in America is still in a
very elementary state. At most we can name only one
or two collectors who have found Gossypia really
identical with or very similar to certain cultivated forms.

We can seldom trust early botanists and travellers
on this head. The cotton plant grows sometimes in the
neighbourhood of plantations, and becomes more or less
naturalized, as the down on the seeds facilitates accidental
transport. The usual expression of early writers — such a
cotton plant gy^ows in such a country — often means a
cultivated plant. Linnaeus himself in the eighteenth
century often says of a cultivated species, " habitat,"
and he even says it sometimes without good ground.^
Hernandez, one of the most accurate among sixteenth-
century authors, is quoted as having described and
fio-ured a wild Gos»ypiiim in Mexico, but the text

> Masters, in Oliver, Flora of Trop. Africa, i. p. 322 ; and in Hooker,
Flora of Brit. India, i. p. 347.

* He savs, for instance, of Gossypivm herhacevm, which, is certainly of
the old world, as facts known bafoie his time show, " habitat in America."

410 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

suggests some doubts as to the wild condition of this
])lant/ which Parlatore believes to be G Mrsutiim,
Linnseus. Hemsley,^ in his catalogvie of Mexican plants,
merely says of a Gofisypium which he calls harhadense,
" wild and cultivated " He gives no proof of the former
condition. Macfadyen^ mentions three forms wild and
cultivated in Jamaica. He attributes specific names to
them, and adds that they possibly all may be included
in Linnaeus' G. hirsutmn. Grisebach^ admits that one
species, G. harhadense, is wild in the West Indies. As
to the specific distinctions, he declares himself unable to
establish them with certainty

With regard to New Gi-enada, Triana^ describes a
Gossypium which he calls G. harhadense, LinniBus, and
which he says is " cultivated and half wild along the
Rio Seco, in the province of Bogota, and in the valley of
the Cauca near Call;" and he adds a variety, hirsutum,
growing (he does not say whether spontaneously or no)
along the Rio Seco. I cannot discover any similar asser-
tion for Peru, Guiana, and Brazil;^ but the flora of Chili,
published by CI. Gay,' mentions a Gossypium, "almost
wild in the province of Copiapo," which the writer
attributes to the variety G. peruvianuin, Cavanilles.
Now, this author does not say the plant is wild, and
Parlatore classes it with G. religiosum, Linnfeus.

An important variety of cultivation is that of the
cotton with long silky down, called by Anglo-Americans
sea island, or long staple cotton, which Parlatore ranks
with G. harhadense, Linnseus. It is considered to be of
American origin, but no one has seen it wild.

In conclusion, if historical records are positive in all
that concerns the use of cotton in America from a time
far earlier than the arrival of Europeans, the natuial

' Nascitur in calidis humidisque cultis prcccipue locis (Hernandez,
Novce Ilispanice Thesaurus, -p. 308).

* Hcmsley, Biologia Centrali-Amc-rirana, i. p. 123.

* Macfadyen, Flora of Jamaica, p. 72.

* Giisebach, Flora of Brit. W. Ivdia Is., p. 86.

* Ti'iana and Planchon, Prodr. Fl. Novo-Granatensis, p. 170.

* The Malvaceae have not yet appeared in the Flora Brasiliensis,
7 CI. Gay, Flora Chilena, i. p. 312.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 411

wild habitation of the plant or plants which yield this
product is yet but little known. We become aware on
this occasion of the absence of floras of tropical America,
similar to those of the Dutch and English colonies of
Asia and Africa.

Mandubi, Pea-nut, Monkey-nut — Arachis hypogcea,
Linna3us.

INothing is more curious than the manner in which
tliis leguminous plant matures its fruits. It is cultivated
in all hot countries, either for the seed, or for the oil
contained in the cotyledons.^ Bentham has given, in
his Fiora of Brazil, in folio, vol. xv. pi. 23, complete
details of the plant, in wdiich may be seen how the
flower-stalk bends downwards and plunges the pod into
the earth to ripen.

The origin of the species was disputed for a century,
even by those botanists w^ho employ the best means to
discover it. It is w^orth wdiile to show how the truth
was arrived at, as it may serve as a guide in similar
cases. I will quote, therefore, w^hat I wrote in ISoo,^
giving in conclusion new proofs which allow no possi-
bility of further doubt.

" Linnreus^ said of the Arachis, 'it inhabits Surinam,
Brazil, and Peru.' As usual with him, he does not specify
whether the species was wild or cultivated in these
countries. In 1818, R. Brown ^ writes: 'It was pro-
bably introduced from China into the continent of India,
Ceylon, and into the Malay Archipelago, where, in spite
of its now general cultivation, it is thought not to be
indigenous, particularly from the names given to it. I
consider it not improbable that it was brought from
Africa into diflerent parts of equatorial America, although,
however, it is mentioned in some of the earliest waitings
on this continent, particularly on Peru and Brazil. Ac-
cording to Sprengel, it is mentioned by Theophrastus as

* The Oardener's Chronicle of Sept. 4, 1880, gives details about the
caltivation of this plant, the use of its seeds, and the extensive exporta-
tion of them from the west coast of Africa, Brazil, and India to Europe.

* A. de CandoUe, Gc'ogi-aphie Botanique Raitfonnee, p. 963.
' Linrsejs, Species Plantarum, p. 1040.

* R. Brown, Botany of Congo, p. 53.

'tl2 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

cultivated in Egypt, but it is not at all evident that tlie
Arachis is the plant to which Theopljrastus alludes in
the quoted passage. If it had been tbimerly cultivated
in Egypt it would probably still exist in that country,
whereas it does not occur in Forskal's catalogue nor in
Delile's more extended flora. There is nothing very
unlikel}^' continues Brown, ' in the hypothesis that the
Arachis is indigenous both in Africa and America ; but
if it is considered as existing originally in one of these
continents only, it is more probable that it was brought
from China through India to Africa, than that it took
the contrary direction.' My father in 1825, in the Pro-
dromus (ii. p. 474), returned to Linneeus' opinion, and
admitted without hesitation the American origin. Let
us reconsider the question" (I said in 1855) "with the
aid of the discoveries of modern science.

"Arachis hypogcea was the only species of this singular
genus known. Six other species, all Brazilian, have
since been discovered.^ Thus, applying the rule of pro-
bability of which Browm first made great use, we incline
dj priori to the idea of an American oiigin. We must
remember that Marcgraf ^ and Piso ^ descnbe and figure
the plant as used in Brazil, under the name mandubi,
wdiich seems to be indigenous. They quote Monardes, a
wa-iter of the end of the sixteenth century, as having
indicated it in Peru under a different name, anchic.
Joseph Acosta * merely mentions an American name,
mani, and speaks of it wath other species wdiich are not
of foreign origin in America. The Arachis w^as not
ancient in Guiana, in the West Indies, and in Mexico.
Aublet 5 mentions it as a cultivated plant, not in Guiana,
but in the Isle of France. Hernandez does not speak of
it. Sloane** had seen it only in a garden, grown from
seeds brought from Guinea. He says that the slave-
dealers feed the negroes wdth it on their passage from

' Benfham, in Trans. Linn. Soc, xviii. p. 159; Walpers, BepertoHum,
i. p. 727.

« Mnrcgraf and Piso, Brasil., p. 37, edit. 164S.

» Ibid., edit. 1658, p. 256.

♦ Acosta, Hi.<<f. Nat. Ind., French, trans., 159S, p. 1C5.

« Aublet, PI. Guyan, p. 765. « S!o:u.e, Jamaica, p. 184.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 413

Africa, which indicates a then very general cultivation
in Africa. Pison, in his second edition (1658, p. 256),
not in that of 161'8, oives a fio^ure of a similar fruit im-
ported from Africa into Brazil under the name Tnandohi,
very near to the name of the Arachis, miwndiibi. From
the three leaflets of the plant it would seem to be the
Voandzeia, so often cultivated ; but the fruit seems to
me to be longer than in this genus, and it has two or
three seeds instead of one or two. However this may
be, the distinction drawn by Piso between these tv o
subterranean seeds, the one Brazilian^ the other Africai ,
tends to show that the Arachis is Brazilian.

" The antiquity and the generality of its cultivation
in Africa is, however, an argument of some force, which
compensates to a certain degree its antiquity in Brazil,
and the presence of six other Arachis in the same country.
I would admit its great value if the Arachis had been
known to the ancient Egyptians and to the Arabs ; but
the silence of Greek, Latin, and Arab authors, and the
absence of the species in Egypt in Forskal's time, lead
me to think that its cultivation in Guinea, Senegal,^ and
the east coast of Africa^ is not of very ancient date.
Neither has it the marks of a great antiquity in Asia.
No Sanskrit name for it is known,^ but only a Hindu-
stani one. Rumphius ^ says that it was imported from
Japan into several islands of the Indian Archipelago. It
would in that case have borne only foreign names, like
the Chinese name, for instance, which signifies only
' earth -bean.* At the end of the last century it was
generally cultivated in China and Cochin-China. Yet, in
spite of Rumphius's theory of an introduction into the
islands from China or Japan, I see that Thunberg does
not speak of it in his Japanese Flora. Now, Japan has
had dealings with China for sixteen centuries, and culti-
vated plants, natives of one of the two countries, were
commonly eai'ly introduced into the other. It is not
mentioned by Eorster among the plants employed in the

' Guillemin and Perrottet, Fl. Senegal. * Lonreiro, Fl. Cochin.

' Koxbiirgh, Fl.Ind., in. p. 280; Viddington, Index.
* Eumphius, He, h. Amb., v. p. 426

tli ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

small islands of the Pacific. All these facts point to an
American, I might even say a Brazilian, origin. None
of the authors I have consulted mentions having seen
the plant wild, either in the old or the new world.
Those who indicate it in Africa or Asia are careful to
say the plant is cultivated. Marcgraf does not say
so, writing of Brazil, but Piso sa3'S the species is
planted."

Seeds of Arachis have been found in the Peruvian
tombs at Ancon,^ which shows some antiquity of existence
in America, and supports the opinion I expressed in
1855. Dr. Bretschneider's study of Chinese works ^ over-
sets Brown's hypothesis. The Arachis is not mentioned
in the ancient works of this country, nor even in the
Pent-sao, published in the sixteenth century. He adds
that he believes the plant was only introduced in the
last century.

All the recent floras of Asia and Africa mention the
species as a cultivated one, and most authors believe it
to be of American origin. Benthamj after satisfying
himself that it had not been found wild in America or
elsewhere, adds that it is perhaps a form derived from
one of the six other species wild in Brazil, but he does
not say Avhich. This is probable enough, for a plant
provided with an efficacious and very peculiar manner
of germinating does not seem of a nature to become
extinct. It would have been found wild in Brazil in
the same condition as the cultivated plant, if the latter
were not a product of cultivation. Works on Guiana
and other parts of America mention the species as a
cultivated one ; Grisebach ^ says, moreover, that in
several of the West India islands it becomes naturalized
from cultivation.

A genus of which all the well-known species are thus
placed in a single region of America can scarcely have
a species common to both hemispheres ; it would be too

' Rochebrune, from the extract in the Botanisches Centralhlatt, 1880,
p. lt,3i.

* Study and Value of Chinei>e Botanical Works, p. 18.
» Grisebach, Fl. Brit. W. Ind. Is., p. 189.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 415

great an exception to the law of geographical botany.
But then how did the species (or cultivated variety) pass
from the American continent to the old world ? This
is hard to guess, but I am inclined to believe that the
first slave-ships carried it from Brazil to Guinea, and the
Portuguese from Brazil into the islands to the south of
Asia, in the end of the fifteenth century.

Coffee — Cofea arahica, Linnaeus.

This shrub, belonging to the family of the Rubiacere,
is wild in Abyssinia,^ in the Soudan,^ and on the coasts
of Guinea and Mozambique.^ Perhaps in these latter
localities, so far removed from the centre, it may be
naturalized from cultivation. No one has yet found it
in Arabia, but this may be explained by the difficulty
of penetrating into the interior of the country. If it
is discovered there it will be hard to prove it wild, for
the seeds, which soon lose their faculty of germinating,
often spring up round the plantations and naturalize the
species. This has occurred in Brazil and the West India
Islands,* where it is certain that the coffee p'aut was
never indigenous.

The use of coffee seems to be very ancient in Abys-
sinia Shehabeddin Ben, author of an Arab manuscript
of the fifteenth century (No. 944 of the Paris Library),
quoted in John Ellis's excellent work,^ says that cofiee
had been used in Abyssinia from time immemorial. Its
use, even as a drug, had not spread into the neighbouring
countries, for the crusaders did not know it, and the
celebrated physician Ebn Baithar, born at Malaga, who
had travelled over the north of Africa and Syria at the
beginning of the thirteenth century of the Christian
era, does not mention coffee.^ In 1596 Bellus sent to
de I'Ecluse some seeds from which the Egyptians ex-

' Richard, Tentamen Fl. Ahyss., i. p. 349 ; Oliver, Fl. Trop. Afr., iii.
p. 180.

^ Eitter, quoted in Flora, 1846, p. 704.

* Meyen, Geogr. Bot., English trans., p. 38i; Grisebach, Fl. of Brit^
W. Ind. Is., p. 338,

* H. Welter, Essai sur I'Hintoire du Cafe, 1 vol. in 8vo, Paris, 186S.

* Ellis, An Historical Account of Coffee, 1774.

* Ebn Baithar, Sondtheinier's trans., 2 vols. 8vo, 1842.

416 OBIGIX OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

tractcd the drink cav^} Nearly at the same time Prosper
Al})in bL'came acquainted with coffee in Egypt itself. He
speaks of the plant as the " arbor hon, cum fructu suo
hana." The name hon recurs also in early authors under
the forms hiinnu, huncho, hunca} The names cahue,
cahua, chaube,^ cave,* refer rather in Egypt and Syria to
the prepared drink, whence che French word cafe. The
name hiinnu, or something similar, is certainly the primi-
tive name of the plant which the Abyssinians still call
boun.^

If the use of coffee is more ancient in Abyssinia than
elsewhere, that is no proof that its cultivation is very
ancient. It is very possible that for centuries the berries
were sought in the forests, where they were doubtless very
common. According to the Arabian author quoted above,
it was a mufti of Aden, nearly his contemporary, who,
having seen coffee drunk in Persia, introduced the prac-
tice at Aden, whence it spread to Mocha, into Egypt, etc.
He says that the coffee plant grew in Arabia.*' Other
fables or traditions exist, according to which it was
always an Arabian priest or a monk who invented the
drink,'' but they all leave us in uncertainty as to the
date of the first cultivation of the plant. However this
may be, the use of coffee having been spread first in
the east, afterwards in the w^est, in spite of a number
of proliibitions and absurd conflicts,** its production
became important to the colonies. Boerhave tells us
that the r>urgermeister of Amsterdam, Nicholas Witsen,
director of tlie East India Company, urged the Governor
of Batavia, Van Htmrn, to import coffee berries from Arabia
to Batavia. This was done, and in 1090 Van Hoorn sent
some living ]ilants to Witsen. These were placed in the
Botanical Gardens of Amsterdam, founded by Witsen,
where they bore fruit. In ITl-i, the magistrates of the

' Bellus, Epist. ad Cluf;., p. 309. « P.auwolf, Clusius.

• liauwolf ; Bauhin, Hist., i. p. 422. * Bellus, ubi supra.

• Eichard, Tentamen Fl. Abyss., p. 350.

• An extract from the same author in Playfair, Hist, of Arabia
Felix, Bombay, 1859, does not mention this assertion.

^ Noiiv. Diet. d'Uist. Nat., iv. p. 552.

• Ellis, uhi supra; Nouv. Diet., ibid.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 417

town sent a flourishing plant covered with fruit to Louis
XIV., who placed it in his garden at Marly. Coffee
was also grown in the hothouses of the king's garden
in Paris. One of the professors of this establishment,
Antoine de Jussieu, had already published in 1713, in
the Memoires de VAcademie des Scievces, an interesting-
description of the plant from one which Pancras, director
of the Botanical Garden at Amsterdam, had sent to him.
The first coffee plants gi'own in America were intro-
duced into Surinam by the Dutch in 1718. The Governor
of Cayenne, de la Motte-Aigron, having been at Suri-
nam, obtained some plants in secret and multiplied them
in 17^5.^ The coffee plant was introduced into Mar-
tinique by de Clieu,^ a naval officer, in 1720, according
to Deleuze f in 1723, according to the Notices Statistiques
sur les Colonies Fran(;aises.^ Thence it was introduced
into the other French islands, into Guadaloupe, for in-
stance, in 1730.^ Sir Nicholas Lawes first grew it in
Jamaica.^ From ]718 the French East India Compau}^
had sent plants of Mocha coffee to Bourbon ;'' others say ^
that it was even in 1717 that a certain Dufougerais-
Grenier had coffee plants brought from Mocha into this
island. It is known how the cultivation of this shrub
has been extended in Java, Ceylon, the West Indies, and
Brazil. Nothing prevents it from spreading in nearly
all tropical countries, especially as the coffee plant thrives

' This detail is borrowed from Ellis, Diss. Caf., p. 16. In the Notices
Statistiques sur les Colonies Franqaises (ii. p. 46) I find : "About 1716 or
1721, fresh seeds of the coffee having been brought secretly from
Surinam, in spite of the precautions of the Dutch, the cultivation of
this colonial product became naturalized at Cayenne."

' The name of this sailor has been spelt in several ways — Declieux,
Duclieux, Desclieux. From the information supplied me at the tninis-
tere de la guerre, I learn that de Clieu was a gentleman, and a connec-
tion of the Comte de Maurepas. He was born in Normandy, went into
the navy in 1702, and retired in 1760, after a distinguished career. He
died in 1775. The official reports have not neglected to mention the
impoi-tant fact tliat he introduced the coffee plant into the French
colonies.

' Deleuze, Hist, du Museum, i. p. 20.

• Not. Stat. Col. Fravp., i. p. 30. * Ibid., i. p. 209.

• Martin, Stat. Col. Brit. Emp. ^ Nouv. Diet. Hist. Nat., iv. p. 135.

• Not. Stat. Col. Frang., ii. p. 84.

-lis OEIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

on sloping <;roun(l and in poor soils where other crops
cannot flourish. It corresponds in tropical agriculture to
the vino in Europe and tea in China.

Further details may be found in the volume published
by H. Welter ^ on the economical and commercial liistory
of coffee. The author adds an interesting chapter on
the various fair or very bad substitutes used for a com-
modity which it is impossible to overrate in its natural
condition.

Liberian Coffee — Coffea liberica, Hiern.^
Plants of this species have for some yeai's been sent
from the Botanical Gardens at Kew into the EnHish

O

colonies. It grows wild in Liberia, Angola, Golungo
Alto,^ and probably in several other parts of western
tropical Africa.

It is of stronger growth than the common coffee, and
tlie berries, which are larger, yield an excellent product.
The official reports of Kew Gardens by the learned
director, Sir Joseph Hooker, show the progress of this
introduction, which is very favourably received, especially
in Dominica.

Madia — Madia sativa, Molina.

The inhabitants of Chili before the discovery of
America cultivated this annual species of the Composite
family, for the sake of the oil contained in the seed.
Since the olive has been extensively planted, the madia
is despised by the Chilians, who only complain of the
plant as a weed which chokes their gardens.^ The
Europeans began to cultivate it with inditferent success,
owinor to its bad smell.

The madia is indigenous in Chili and also in Cali-
fornia.^ There are other examples of this disjunction of
habitation between the two countries.^

» H. Welter, Essai sur I'HUtoire dii Caf^, 1 vol. 8vo, Paris, 1868.

• In Hiern, Trans. Linn. .S'oc, 2nd geries, a'oI. i. p. 171, pi. 24. This
plate is reproduceJ in the Report of the Rojal Botanical Gardens at
Kew for 1876.

» Oliver, Fl. Trop. Afr., iii. p. 181.
« CI. Gay, Fl. Chilena, iv. p. 268.

• Asa Grav, in Watson, Bot. of California, i. p. 359,
« A. de C uKh.lle, GJoyr. Bot. Rais., p. 1017.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 419

Nutmeg — Mijristica fragrans, Houttiiyn.

The nutmeg, a little tree of the order Myristicem, is
wild in the Moluccas, principally in the Banda Islands.^
It has long been cultivated thi;re, to judge from the
considerable number of its varieties. Europeans have
received the nutmeg by the Asiatic trade since the
Middle Ages, but the Dutch long possessed the monopoly
of its cultivation. When the English owned the
Moluccas at the end of the last century, they carried
live nutmeg trees to Bencoolen and into Prince Edward's
Islands.^ It afterwards spread to Bourbon, Mauritius,
Madagascar, and into some of the colonies of tropical
America, but with indifferent success from a commercial
point of view.

Sesame — Sesamiim indicum, de Candolle ; S. indicuTn
and »S'. orientale, Linnaeus.

Sesame has long been cultivated in the hot reffions
of the old world for the sake of the oil extracted from
the seeds.

The order Pedalinece to wdiich this annual belongs
is composed of several genera distributed through the
tropical parts of Asia, Africa, and America. Each genus
has only a small number of species, Sesamum, in the
widest sense of the name,^ has ten, all African except
perhaps the cultivated species whose origin we are about
to seek. The latter forms alone the true genus Sesamum,
which is a section in Bentham and Hooker's work.
Botanical analogy points to an African origin, but the
area of a considerable number of plants is known to
extend from the south of Asia into Africa. Sesame has
two races, the one with black, the other with white seed,
and several varieties differing in the shape of the leaf.
The difference in the colour of the seeds is very ancient,
as in the case of the poppy.

The seeds of sesame often sow themselves outside
plantations, and more or less naturalize the species. This
has been observed in regions very remote one from the

* Rampliini?, Amhoin., ii. p. 17 ; Bluine, Rumphia, i. p. ISO.

* Roxburgh, Fl. Indica, iii. p. 845.

3 Bentham and Hooker, Genera PL, ii. p. 1059.

19

420 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

other; for instance, in India, the Sunda Isles, Egypt, and
even in the West India Islands, where its cultivation is
certainly of modern introduction.-^ This ;s perhaps the
reason that no author asserts he has found it in a wild
state except Blunie,^ a trustworthy observer, who men-
tions a variety with redder flowers than usual growing
in the mountains of Java. This is doubtless an indica-
tion of origin, but we need others to estaV>]ish a proof. I
shall seek them in the history of its cultivator The
country where this began should be the ancient 1 ahitation
of the species, or have had dealings with this ancient
habitation.

That its cultivation dates in Asia from a very earl}-
epoch is clear from the diversity of names. Sesame is
called in Sanskrit tila,^ in Malay icidjin, in Chinese 7)ioa
(Rumphius) or chi-ma (Bretschneider), in Japanese
koha} The name sesavi is common to Greek, Latin,
and Arabic, with trifling variations of letter. Hence it
might be inferred that its area was very extended, and
that the cultivation of the plant was begun independently
in several different countries. But we must not attribute
too much importance to such an argument. Chinese
works seem to show that sesame was not introduced into
China before the Christian era. The first certain mention
of it occurs in a book of the fifth or sixth century,
entitled Tsi-min-yao-chou} Before this there is confu-
sion between the name of this plant and that of flax, of
which the seed also yields an oil, and which is not very
ancient in China.''

Theophrastus and Dioscorides say that the Egyptians
cultivated a plant called sesame for the oil contained in
its seed, and Pliny adds that it came from India.' He

> Pickering, Chronol. History of Plants, p. 223; E-amplnus, Herb.
Amh.,v. p. 20i; Mique], Flora Indo-Batava,n. p. 7i'^0 ; Sclnvoinfurth and
Ascherson, Aufiahlung, p. 273 ; Grisebach, Fl. Brit, W. Ind. Is., p. 458.

^ Blume, Bijdragen, p. 778.

» Roxburgh, FL Ind., edit. 1832, vol. iii. p. 100; PidJington, Indeo).

* Thunberg, Fl. Jap., p. 254.

» Bretschneider, letter of Aug. 23, 1801.

• Ibid., On Study, etc., p. 16.

' Theophrastus, lib. viii. cap. 1, 5 ; Dioscorides, lib. ii. cap. 121 ;
Pliny, Hist., lib. xviii. cap. 10.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 421

also speaks of a sesame wild in Egypt from which oil
was extracted, but this was probably the castor-oil plant.^
It is not proved that the ancient Egyptians before the
time of Theophrastus cultivated sesame. No drawing or
seeds have been found in the monuments. A drawing
from the tomb of Rameses III. show the custom of mixing
small seeds with flour in making pastry, and in modern
times this is done with sesame seeds, but others are also
used, and it is not possible to recognize in the drawing
those of the sesame in particular.^ If the Egyptians had
known the species at the time of the Exodus, eleven
hundred years before Theophrastus, there would probably
have been some mention of it in the Hebrew books,
because of the various uses of the seed and especially of
the oil. Yet commentators have found no trace of it in
the Old Testament. The name semsem or simshn is
clearly Semitic, but only of the more recent epoch of the
Talmud,^ and of the agricultural treatise of Alawwam,^
compiled after the Christian era began. It was perhaps
a Semitic people who introduced the plant and the name
semsem (whence the sesara of the Greeks) into Egypt
after the epoch of the great monuments and of the
Exodus. They may have received it with the name from
Babylonia, where Herodotus says^ that sesame was
cultivated.

An ancient cultivation in the Euphrates valley agrees
with the existence of a Sanskrit name, tila, the tilu of
the Brahmans (Rheede, Malabar, i., ix., pp 105-107), a
word of which there are traces in several modern
languages of India, particularly in Ceylon.*^ Thus we are
carried back to India in accordance with the orio-in of
which Pliny speaks, but it is possible that India itself
may have received the species from the Sunda Isles before
the arrival of the Aryan conquerors. Rumphius gives

' Pliny, Eist, lib. xv. cap. 7.

* Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of Ancient Egyptians, vol. ii. ;
Unser, Pflanzen des Alten JUgyptens, p. 45.

^ Reynier, Econ. Piih. des Arabes et des JvJfs, p. 431 ; Low, Aramaeische
rfl'nzennaw.en, p. 376.

* E. Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, iii. p. 75.

* Herodotus, lib. i. cap. 193. • Thwaites, Enum. , p. 209.

4;22 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

three names for the sesame in these islands, very different
one from the other, and from the Sanskrit word, which
supports the theory of a more ancient existence in the
archipelago than on the continent.

In conclusion, from the fact that the sesame is wild in
Java, and from historical and philological arguments,
the plant seems to have had its origin in the Sunda Isles.
It was introduced into India and the Euphrates valley
two or three thousand j^ears ago, and into Egypt at a less
remote epoch, from 1000 to 500 B.C. It was transported
from the Guinea coast to Brazil by the Portuguese,^ but
it is unknown how long it has been cultivated in the rest
of Africa.

Castor-oil Plant — Ricinus communis, Linn sens.

The most modern works and those in highest repute
consider the south of Asia to be the oriirinal home of this
Eiiphorhiacea ; sometimes they indicate certain varieties
in Africa or America without distinguishing the wild
from the cultivated plant. . I have reason to believe that
the true origin is to be found in tropical Afiica, in
accordance with the opinion of Ball.^

The difficulties with which the question is attended
arise from the antiquity of cultivation in different
countries, from the facility with which the ]ilant sows
itself and becomes naturalized on rubbish-heaps and in
waste ground, lastly from the diversity of its forms, which
have often been described as species. This latter point
need not detain us, for Dr. J. Mliller's careful monograph ^
proves the existence of sixteen varieties, scarcely heredi-
tary, which pass one into the other by many transitions,
and constitute, therefore, but one species.

The number of varieties is the sign of a very ancient
cultivation. The}'' differ more or less as to capsules,
seeds, inflorescence, etc. Moreover, they are small trees
in hot countries, but they do not endure frost, and
become annuals north of the Alps and in similar regions.
They are in such cases planted in gardens for ornament,

' Piso, Brazil, edit. 1658, p 211.

' Biiill, Florae Maroccanoi Spicileijium, p. 60-1.

• JUullei", Argov., in D.C., Prodromus, vol. xv. part 2, p. 1017.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 423

while in the tropics, and even in Italy, they are grown
for the sake of the oil contained in the seed. This oil,
which is more or less purgative, is used for lamps in
Bengal and elsewhere.

In no country has the species been found wild with
such certainty as in Abyssinia, Sennaar, and the Kordofan.
The expressions ot authors and collectors are distinct on
this head. The castor-oil plant is common in rocky
places in the valley of Chire, near Goumalo, says Quartin
Dillon ; it is wild in those parts of Upper Sennaar which
are flooded during the rains, says Hartmann.^ I have
a specimen from Kotschy, No. 243, gathered on the
northern slope of Mount Kohn, in the Kordofan. The
indications of travellers in Mozambique and on the coast
of Guinea are not so clear, but it is possible that the
natural area of the species covers a great part of tropical
Africa. As it is a useful species, and one very conspicuous
and easily propagated, the negroes must have early
diffused it. However, as we draw near the Mediterranean,
it is no longer said to be indigenous. In Egypt, Schwein-
furth and Ascherson ^ say the species is only cultivated
and naturalized. Probably in Algeria, Sardinia, and
Morocco, and even in the Canaries, where it is principally
found in the sand on the sea-shore, it has been naturalized
for centuries. I believe this to be the case with speci-
mens brought from Djedda, in Arabia, by Schimper,
which were gathered near a cistern. Yet Forskal^
gathered the caster-oil plant in the mountains of Arabia
Felix, which may signify a wild station. Boissier*
indicates it in Beluchistan and the south of Persia,
but as " subspontaneous," as in Syria, Anatolia, and
Greece.

Rheede ^ speaks of the plant as cultivated in Malabar
and growing in the sand, but modern Anglo-Indian
authors do not allow that it is wild. Some make no

• Ricliarcl, Tentamen Fl. Abyss., ii. p. 250; Schweinfurth, Plantas
KiloticcB a Hartmann, etc., p. 13.

- Schweinfurth and Ascherson, Aufzlihliivg, p. 262.

• Forskal, Fl. Arahica, p. 71. * Boissier, Fl. Orient, iv. p. 1143

• Rheede, Malabar, ii. p. 57, t. 32.

424! OIUGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

mention of the species. A few speak of the facility with
which the species becomes naturalized from cultiva-
tion. Loiireiro had seen it in Cochin-China and in
China " cultivated and uncultivated," which perhaps
means escaped from cultivation. Lastly, for the Sunda
Islands, Rumphius ^ is as usual one of the most
interesting authorities. The castor-oil plant, he says,
grows especially in Java, where it forms immense fields
and produces a great quantity of oil At Amboyna, it is
planted here and there, near dwellings and in fields,
rather for medicinal purposes. The wild species grows
in deserted gardens {in desertis hortis) ; it is doubtless
sprung from the cultivated plant (sine duhio degeneratio
domestica). In Japan the castfjr-oil plant grows among
shrubs and on the slopes of Mount Wuntzen, but
Franchet and Savatier add,^ " probably introduced."
Lastly, Dr. Bretschneider mentions the species in his
work of 1870, p. 20; but what he says here, and in
a letter of 1881, does not argue an ancient cultivation
in China.

The species is cultivated in tropical America. It
becomes easily naturalized in clearings, on rubbish-heaps,
etc. ; but no botanist has found it in the conditions of
a really indigenous plant. Its introduction must have
taken place soon after the discovery of America, for a
common name, lamourou, exists in the West India
Islands; and Piso gives another in Brazil, nliamhu-
giiacu, Jigiievo inferno in Portuguese. I have received
the largest number of specimens from Bahia ; none are
accompanied by the assertion that it is really indigenous.

In Egypt and Western Asia the culture of the species
dates from so remote an epoch that it has given rise to
mistakes as to its origin. The ancient Egyptians practised
it extensively, according to Herodotus, Pliny, l)iodorus,
etc. There can be no mistake as to the species, as its
seeds have been found in the tombs.^ The Egyptian
name was kiJci. Theophrastus and Dioscorides mention

' Unmphins, Hei-h. Amh., vol. iv. p. 93.

* Franchet and Savatier, Emim. Japan., i. p. 424.

' linger, PJlanzen des Alien JEgyptens, p. 61.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 425

it, and it is retained in modern Greek/ while the Arabs
have a totally different name, kerua, kerroa, charua.^

Roxburgh and Piddington quote a Sanskrit name,
eranda, erunda, which has left descendants in the modern
languages of India. Botanists do not say from what
epoch of Sanskrit this name dates ; as the species belongs
to hot climates, the Ar3-ans cannot have known it before
their arrival in India, that is at a less ancient epoch than
the Egyptian monuments.

The extreme rapidity of the growth of the castor-oil
plant has suggested ditferent names in Asiatic language,
and that of Wanderbaum in German. The same circum-
stance, and the analogy with the Egyptian name kiki,
have caused it to be supposed that the kikajon of the
Old Testament,^ the growth, it is said, of a single night,
was this plant,

I pass a number of common names more or less
absurd, as ])alm.a CJiristi, girasole, in some parts of
Italy, etc., but it is worth while to note the origin of the
name castor oil, as a proof of the English habit of accept-
ing names without examination, and sometimes of dis-
torting them. It appeai-s that in the last century this
plant was largely cultivated in Jamaica, where it was
once called agno casto by the Portuguese and the
Spaniards, being confounded with Vitcx agnus castus, a
totally different plant. From casto the English planters
and London traders made castor}

Walnut — Juglans regia, Linnpeus.

Some years ago the walnut tree was known to be
wild in Armenia, in the district to the south of the
Caucasus and of the Caspian Sea, in the mountains of
the north and north-east of India, and in Burmah.^

* Theopbrastus, Hist., lib. i. cap. 19; Dioscorides, lib. iv. cap. 171 ;
Fraap, Sijn. Fl. Class., p. 92.

* Nemuich, Polyglott. Lexicon ; Forskal, Fl. Mjypt., p. 75.

3 Jonah iv. 6. Pickering, Chron. Hist. Plants, p. 225, writes TcyTcwyn.

* Fliickiger and Hanbury, Pharmacographia, p. 511.

* A. de CaudoUe, Prodr., xvi. part 2, p. 136; Tchihatcheff, Asie
Mineure, i. p. 172 ; Ledebour, FL Rons., i. p. 507 ; Roxburgh, FL Ind., iii.
p. 630; Boissier, FL Orient., iv. p. 1160; Brandis, Forest Flora of N.W.
India, p. 498; Kurz, Forest Flora of Brit. B^lrmah, p. 390.

423 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

C. Kocli ^ denied that it was indigenous in Armenia and
to the south of the Caucasus, but this has been proved
by several travellers. It has since been discovered wild
in Japan,^ which renders it probable that the species
exists also in the north of China, as Loureiro and Buno-e
said,^ but without particularizing its wild character.
Heidreich* has recently placed it beyond a doubt that
the walnut is abundant in a wild state in the mountains
of Greece, which agrees with passages in Theoplirastus ^
which had been overlooked. Lastly, Heuftel saw it, also
wild, in the mountains of Banat.'' Its modern natural
area extends, then, from eastern temperate Europe to
Japan, It once existed in Europe further to the west,
for leaves of the walnut have been found in the quater-
nary tufa in Provence.^ Many species of Juglans existed
in our hemisphere in the tertiary and quaternary epochs ;
there are now ten, at most, distributed throughout North
America and temperate Asia.

The use of the walnut and the planting of the tree
may have begun in several of the countries where the
species was found, and cultivation extended gradually and
slightly its artiticial area. The walnut is not one of
those trees which sows itself and is easily naturalized.
The nature of its fruit is perhaps against this; and,
moreover, it needs a climate where the frosts are not
severe and the heat moderate. It scarcely passes the
northern limit of the vine, and does not extend nearly so
fai" south.

The Greeks, accustomed to olive oil, neglected the
walnut until they received from Persia a better variety,
called haruon basUikon,^ or Fersikom? The Romans

' C. Koch, Bendrologie, i. p. 584.

* Franchet and Savatier, Enum. Plant. Jap., i. 453.

' Lonreiro, Fl. Cochin., p. 702; Bunge, Enum., p. 62.

* Heldreich, Verhandl. Bot. Vereins Brandenb., 1879, p. 147.

* Theof)lirastus, Hist. Plant., lib. iii. cap. 3, 6. These passasces, ami
ofhers of ancient writers, are quoted aud interpreted by Heldreich better
iliau by Helm and other schohirs.

« ifeu 'ol, Abhandl. Zool. Bot. Oes. in Wien, 1853, p. 194.

* De S iporta, '33rd Sess. dii Congres Scient. de France.

* Dio orides, lib. i. cap. 176.

» 1 1 ny, Hist. Plant., lib. xv. cap. 22.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 427

I cultivated the walnut from the time of their kings ; they
considered it of Persian origin.^ They had an old custom
of throwing nuts in the celebration of weddings.

Archaeology confirms these details. The only nuts
which have hitherto been found under the lake-dwellings
of Switzerland, Savoy, or Italy are confined to a single
locality near Parma, called Fontinellato, in a stratum of
the iron age.^ Now, this metal, very rare at the time
of the Trojan war, cannot have come into general use
among the agricultural population of Ital}^ until the fifth
or sixth century before Christ, an epoch at which even
bronze was perhaps still unlinown to the north of the
Alps. In the station at Lagozza, walnuts have been
found in a much higher stratum, and not ancient.^
Evidently the walnuts of Italy, Switzerland, and France
are not descended from the fossil plants of the quater-
nary tufa of which I spoke just now.

It is impossible to say at what period the walnut was
first planted in India. It must have been early, for
there is a Sanskrit name, ahschoda, aldioda, or akhota.
Chinese authors say that the walnut was introduced
among them from Tliibet, under the Han dynasty, by
Chang-kien, about the year 140-150 B.C.* This was per-
haps a perfected variety. Moreover, it seems probable,
from the actual records of botanists, that the wild walnut
is rare in the north of China, and is perhaps wanting in
the east. The date of its cultivation in Japan is un-
known.

The walnut tree and walnuts had an infinite number
of names among ancient peoples, which have exercised the
science and imagination of philologists,^ but the origin of
the species is so clear that we need not stay to consider
them.

Areca — Areca Catechu, Linnaeus.

' Pliny, Hist. Plant., lib. xy. cap. 22.

• HeQi; I flmzen der PfaMhauten,Tp.Z\.

' Sordelli, 8uUe piante della torbiera, etc., p. 39.

♦ Bretschneider, Study and Value, etc., p. 16; and letter of Aug. 23.
18S1.

* Ad. Pictet, Origines Indo-Europ., flit. 2, vol. L p. 2E9 ; Helm, Cul.
turpjlanzen und Haust.hiere, edit. 3, p. oil.

4)28 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

The areca palm is mucTi cultivated in the countries
where it is a custom to chew betel, that is to say through-
out Southern Asia. The nut, or rather the ahnond which
forms the piincipal part of the seed contained in the fruit,
is valued for its aromatic taste ; chopped, mixed with
lime, and enveloped in a leaf of the pepper-betel, it forms
an agreeable stimulant, which produces a flow of saliva
and blackens the teeth to the satisfaction of the natives.

The author of the principal work on the order Palm-
acefB, de Martins,^ says of the origin of this species,
" Its country is uncertain (non constat) ; probably the
Sunda Isles." We may find it possible to affirm some-
thing positive by referring to more modern authors.

On the continent of India, in Ceylon and Coch in-China,
the species is always indicated as cultivated.^ So in
the Sunda Isles, the Moluccas, etc., to the south of Asia.
Blume,^ in his work entitled Rwrnphia, saj's that the
" habitat " of the species is the ftlalay Peninsula, Siam,
and the neighbouring islands. Yet he does not appear
to have seen the indigenous plants of which he speaks
Dr. Bretschneider ^ believes that the species is a native
of the Malay Archipelago, principally of Sumatra, for he
says those islands and the Philippines are the only places
where it is found wild. The first of these facts is not
confirmed by Miquel, nor the second by Blanco,^ who
lived in the Philippines. Blume's opinion appears the
most probable, but we must still say with Martius,
" The country is not proved." The existence of a num-
ber of Malay names, ijinang, jaiiibe, etc., and of a San-
skrit name, gouvaka, as well as very numerous varieties,
show the antiquity of cultivation. The Chinese received
it. Ill B.C., from the soutli, with the Malay name, j^in-lavg.

' Martius, Hist. Nat, Pahnarum, in folio, vol. iii. p. 170 (published
without date, but before 1851).

* Iloxbur<rh, FL hid., iii. p. fil6; Brandis, Forest Fl. of India, p. 551;
Kurz, Fored Fl. of Brit. Burmal(, p. 537 ; Thwaites, Enum. Ze'jlan., p. 327 ;
Loureiro, FL Cochin-Ch., p. 695.

* Blume, Rumpliia, ii. p. 67; Miquel, Fl. Indo-Bafava., iii. p. 9;
vppl. de Sinnatra, p. 253.

* Bretschneider, Sti'dij and Vnhie, etc., p. 28.
' Blanco, Fl. di FiHfinas, edit. 2.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 429

The Telinga name, areh, is the origin Oi" the botanical
name Areca.

Elseis — Elceis guineensis, Jacquin.

Travellers who visited the coast of Guinea in the first
half of the sixteenth century^ ali'eady noticed this palm,
from which the negroes extracted oil by pressing the
fleshy part of the fruit. The tree is indigenous on all
that coast.^ It is also planted, and the exportation of
palm-oil is the object of an extensive trade. As it is
also found wild in Brazil and perhaps in Guiana,^ a doubt
arose as to the true origin. It seems the more likely to
be American that the only other species which with this
one constitutes the genus Elcais belongs to New Granada.*
Kobert Brown, however, and tlie authors who have
studied the family of palms, are unanimous in their belief
that Elceis guineensis was introduced into America by
the negroes and slave-traders in the traffic between the
Guinea coast and the coast of America. Many facts
confirm this opinion. The first botanists who visited
Brazil, Piso and Marcgraf and others, do not mention the
Elseis. It is only found on the littoral, from Rio di
Janeiro to the mouth of the Amazon, never in the interior.
It is often cultivated, or has the appearance of a species
escaped from the plantations. Sloane,^ who explored
Jamaica in the seventeenth century, relates that this
tree was introduced in his time into a plantation which
he names, from the coast of Guinea. It has since become
naturalized in some of the West India Islands."

Cocoa-nut Palm— C'ocos mucifera, Linnaeus.

The cocoa-nut palm is perhaps, of all tropical trees, the
one which yields the greatest variety of products. Its

* Da Most", in Ratnusio, i. p. 10 1-, quoted by R. Browa.

* Bfjwn, Bnf. of Congo, p. 55.

» Mxrtius, Rist. Nat. Falmarum, ii. p. 62 ; Drude, in Fl. Brasil, ,fasc.
85, p. 457. 1 find no author who asserts that this palm is wild in Guiana,
as iVIartius affirms it to be in Brazil.

* EUeis melanocarpa, Gaertner. The frait also contains oil, but it
docs not appear that the species is cultivated, as the number of oleaginous
jjlauts is considerable in all countries.

* Sliiane, Nat. Hist, of Jamaica, ii. p. 113.

« Grisebach, Flora of Brit. W. Ind. Is., p. 522.

430 OEIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

wood and fibres are utilized in various "vvaj^s. The sap
extracted from the inner part of the inflorescence yields a
much-prized alcoholic drink. The shell of the nut forms
a vessel, the milk of the half-ripe fruit is a pleasant drink,
and the nut itself contains a great deal of oil. It is not
surprising that so valuable a tree has been a good deal
planted and transported. Besides, its dispersion is aided
by natural causes. The woody shell and fibrous enA^elope
of the nut enable it to float in salt water without injury
to the germ. Hence the possibility of its transportation
to great distances by currents and its naturalization on
coasts where the temperature is favourable. Unfortu-
nately, this tree requires a warm, damp climate, such as
exists only in the tropics, or in exceptional localities just
without them. Nor does it thrive at a distance from
the sea.

The cocoa-nut abounds on the littoral of the warm
regions of Asia, of the islands to the south of this con-
tinent, and in analogous regions of Africa and America ;
but it may be asserted that it dates in Bi-azil, the West
Indies, and the west coast of Africa from an introduction
wliich took place about three centuries ago. Piso and
Marcgraf ^ seem to admit that the species is foreign to
Brazil without sajnng so positively. De Martins,^ who
has published a very important work on the Palmaceag,
and has travelled through the provinces of Bahia, Per-
nambuco, and others, where the cocoa-nut abounds, does
not say that it is wild. It was introduced into Guiana
by missionaries.^ Sloane ^ says it is an exotic in the
West Indies. An old author of the sixteenth century,
Martyr, whom he quotes, speaks of its introduction. This
probably took place a few years after the discovery of
America, for Joseph Acosta^ saw the cocoa-nut i)alm
at Porto Pico in the sixteenth century. De Martius
says that the Portuguese introduced it on the coast of
Guinea. Many travellers do not even mention it in this

' Piso, BmsiL, p. 65 ; Marcgraf, p. 138.

' Martius, Hist. Nat. Pabnarv.m, 6 vols, in folio; see vol. ii. p. 125.
' Aublet, Guyane, suppl., p. 102. •* Sloane, Jamaica, ii. p. 9.

* J. Acosta, Hist. Nat. des Indes, French trans., 1598, p. 178.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 431

region, where it is apparently of no great importance.
Mure common in Madagascar and on the east coast, it
is not, however, named in several works on the plants of
Zanzibar, the Seychelles, Mauritius, etc., perhaps because
it is considered as cultivated in these parts.

Evidently the species is not of African origin, nor of
the eastern part of tropical America. Eliminating these
countries, there remain western tropical America, the
islands of the Pacific, the Indian Archipelago, and the
south of Asia, where the tree abounds with every appear-
ance of being more or less wild and long established.

The navigators Dampier and Vancouver^ found it
at the beginning of the seventeenth century, forming
woods in the islands near Panama, not on the mainland,
and in the isle of Cocos, situated at three hundred miles
from the continent in the Pacific. At that time these
islands were uninhabited. Later the cocoa-nut palm was
1'ound on the westein coast from Mexico to Peru, but
usually authors do not say that it was wild, excepting
Seemann,^ however, who saw this palm both wild and
cultivated on the Isthmus of Panama. According to
Hernandez,^ in the sixteenth century the Mexicans called
it coyolli, a word which does not seem to be native.

Oviedo,'* writing in 1.52G, in the first years of the con-
quest of Mexico, says that the cocoa-nut palm was abun-
dant on the coast of the Pacific in the province of the
Cacique Chiman, and he clearly describes the species.
This does not prove the tree to be wild. In southern
Asia, especially in the islands, the cocoa-nut is both wild
and cultivated. The smaller the islands, and the lower
and the more subject to the influence of the sea air, the
more the cocoa-nut predominates and attracts the atten-
tion of travellers. Some take their name from the tree,
amono- others two islands close to the Andamans and one
near Sumatra.

* Vafer, Voyarie He Dampier, edit. 1705, p. 186 ; Vancouver, French
edit., p. 325, quoted by de Martius, Hid. Nut. Pubnarum, i. p. 188.

^ Seeinaim, Bof. of Herald., p. 204.

* Hernandez, Thesaurus Mexic, p. 71. He atttibutes the same name,
n, 75, to the cocoa-nut palm of the Philippine Islands.

* Oviedo, Ramusio's trans., iii. p. 53.

432 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

The cocoa-nut occurring with every appearance of an
ancient wild condition at once in Asia and western
America, the question of origin is obscure. Excellent
authors have solved it differently. De Martins believes
it to have been transported by currents from the islands
situated to the west of Central America, into those of the
Asiatic Archipelago. I formerly inclined to the same
hypothesis,^ since admitted without question by Grise-
bach ; ^ but the botanists of the seventeenth century often
regarded the species as Asiatic, and Seemann,^ after a
careful examination, says he cannot come to a decision.
I will give the reasons for and against each hypothesis.

In favour of an American origin, it may be said —

1. The eleven other species of the genus Cocos are
American, and all those which de Martins knew well
are Brazilian.* Drude,^ who has studied the Palmaceee,
has written a paper to show that each genus of this
family is proper to the ancient or to the new world,
excepting the genus Elreis, and even here he suspects a
transport of the E. guineensis from America into Africa,
which is not at all probable. (See above, p. 429.) The
force of this aro-ument is somewhat diminished by the
circumstance that Cocos micifera is a tree which grows
on the littoral and in damp places, while the other species
live under different conditions, frequently far from the^
sea and from rivers. Maritime plants, and those which
grow in marshes or damp places, have commonly a more
vast habitation than others of the same genus.

2. The trade winds of the Pacific, to the south and j^et
more to the north of the equator, drive floating bodies
fi'om America to Asia, a direction contrary to that of the
general currents.^ It is known, moreover, from the un-

* A. de CaTidolle, Giogr. Bof. Raisonnee, p. 976.
' Grisebach, Vejetation der Erde, pp. 11, 313.

* Soemann, Flora Vitiensis, p. 275.

* Tlie cocoa-nut called Maldive belonirs to thf sroTiua Lodoicea.
Coro mamillaris, Blanco, of the Philippines is a variety of the culti.
vated Cocos nucifera.

* Drude, in Bot. Zeitung, 1876, p. 831 ; and Flora Brasiliensis,iaso. 85,
p. 405.

* Stieler, Hand Atlas, edit. 1S67, map 3.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 433

expected arrival of bottles containing papers on different
coasts, tliat chance has much to do with these transports.
The arguments in favour of an Asiatic, or contrary to
an American origin, are the following : —

1. A current between the third and fifth parallels,
north latitude, flows from the islands of the Indian
Archipelago to Panama.^ To the north and south of this
are currents which take the opposite direction, but they
start from regions too cold for the cocoa-nut, and do not
touch Central America, where it is supposed to have been
lone: indigenous.

2. The inhabitants of the islands of Asia were far
bolder navi^-ators than the American Indians. It is verv
possible that canoes from the Asiatic Islands, containing
a provision of cocoa-nuts, were thrown by tempests or
false manoeuvres on to the islands or the west coast of
America. The converse is highly improbable.

3. The area for three centuries has been much vaster
in Asia than in America, and the difi'erence was yet more
considerable before that epoch, for we know that the
cocoa-nut has not long existed in the east of tropical
America.

4. The inhabitants of the islands of Asia possess an
immense number of varieties of this tree, which points to
a very ancient cultivation. Blume, in his Rumphia,
enumerates eighteen varieties in Java and the adjacent
islands, and thirty-nine in the Philippines. Nothing
similar has been observed in America.

5. The uses of the cocoa-nut are more varied and more
habitual in Asia. The natives of America hardly utilize
it except for the contents of the nut, from which they do
not extract the oil.

6. The common names, very numerous and original in
Asia, as we shall pi-esently see, are rare, and often of
European origin in America.

7. It is not probable that the ancient Mexicans and
inhabitants of Central America would have neglected to
spread the cocoa-nut in several directions, had it existed
among them from a very remote epoch. The trifling

' Stieler, ibid., map 9.

■iSi ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

hrcacUh of the Isthmus of Panama would have facilitated
the transport from one coast to the other, and tlie species
would soon have been established in the West Indies, at
Guiana, etc., as it has become naturalized in Jamaica,
Antigua,^ and elsewhere, since the discovery of America.

8. If the cocoa-nut in America dated from a geological
epoch more ancient than the pleiocene or even eocene
deposits in Europe, it would probably have been found on
both coasts, and the islands to the east and west equally.

9. We cannot lind any ancient date of the existence
of the cocoa-nut in America, but its presence in Asia three
or four thousand years ago is proved by several Sanskrit
names. Piddington in his index only quotes one, narikela.
It is the most certain, since it recurs in modern Indian
languages. Scholars count ten of these, which, according
to their meaning, seem to apply to the species or its
fruit.^ Karikela has passed with modifications into
Arabic and Persian.^ It is even found at Otahiti in the
form ari or liaari,^ together with a Malay name.

10. The Malays have a name widely diffused in the
archipelago — kcddpa, kldpa, klSpo. At Sumatra and
Nicobar we find the name iijior, nieor ; in the Philippines,
iiiog ; at Bali, niiiJi, njo ; at Tahiti, niuh; and in other
islands, nu, nidju, ni ; even at Madagascar, luua-niu.^ The
Chinese have ye, or ye-tsw (the tree is ye). With the
principal Sanskrit name this constitutes four different
roots, which show an ancient existence in Asia. How-
ever, the uniformity of nomenclature in the archipelago
as far as Tahiti and Madagascar indicates a transport by
human agency since the existence of known languages.

The Chinese name means head of the king of Yue,
referrinfj to an absurd leirend of which Dr. Bretschneider
speaks. '' This savant tells us that the first mention of
the cocoa-nut occurs in a poem of the second century before

* Grisebach, Flora of Brit. W. Indies, p. 552.

* Euijeiie Fouruicr lias indicated to me, for instance, drdapala (with
hard i\mi), x>nlalcecara (with hairy irait), jalakajka (water-holder), etc.

' Elume, Rum2)hia, iii. p. 82.

* Forster, De Flantis Esculcntis, p. 48 j Nadeaud, Enum. des Planfes
de Taiti, p. 41.

* Blniiie, ubi snpra.^ Bretschneider, Study and Value, etc., p. 24.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 435

Christ, but the most unmistakable descriptions are in
works later than the ninth century of our era. It is true
that the ancient writers scarcely knew the south of
China, the only part of the empire where the cocoa-nut
palm can live.

In spite of the Sanskrit names, the existence of the
cocoa-nut in Ceylon, where it is well established on the
coast, dates from an almost historical epoch. Near Point
de Galle, Seemann tells us may be seen carved upon a
rock the figure of a native prince, Kotah Raya, to whom
is attributed the discovery of the uses of the cocoa-nut,
unknown before him ; and the earliest chronicle of Ceylon,
the Marawansa, does not mention this tree, although it
carefully reports the fruits imported by different princes.
It is also noteworthy that the ancient Greeks and Egyp-
tians only knew the cocoa-nut at a late epoch as an Indian
curiosity. Apollonius of Tyana saw this palm in Hin-
dustan, at the beginning of the Christian era.-^

From these facts the most ancient habitation in Asia
would be in the archipelago, rather than on the continent
or in Ceylon ; and in America in the islands west of
Panama. What are we to think of this varied and
contradictory evidence ? I formerly thought that the
arguments in favour of Western America were the
strongest. Now, with more information and greater
experience in similar questions, I incline to the idea of an
origin in the Indian Archipelago. The extension towards
China, Ceylon, and India dates from not more than three
thousand or four thousand years ago, but the transport
by sea to the coasts of America and Africa took place
perhaps in a more remote epoch, although posterior to
those epochs when the geographical and physical
conditions were different to those of our day.

' Seemann, Fl. Vitiensis, p. 276; Pickering, Chronol. Arraiigementy
p. 42S.

PART III.

Sumniary and Conclusion.

CHAPTER I.

GENERAL TABLE 07 SPECIES, WITH THEIR ORIGIN AND
THE EPOCH OF THEIR EARLIEST CULTIVATION.

The following table includes a few species of which a
detailed account has not been given, because their origin
is well known, and they are of little importance.

Explanation of the signs used in the table: (1)
annual, (2) biennial, if perennial, 5 small shrub, g shrub,
5 small tree, 5 tree. The letters indicate the certain
or probable date of earliest cultivation. For the species
of the old world : A, a species cultivated for more than
four thousand years (according to ancient historians, the
monuments of ancient Egypt, Chinese works, and botanical
and philological indications) ; B, cultivated for more than
two thousand years (indicated in Theophrastus, found
among lacustrine remains, or presenting various signs, such
as possessing Hebrew or Sanskrit names); C, cultivated for
less than two thousand years (mentioned by Dioscorides
and not by Theophrastus, seen in the frescoes at Pompeii,
introduced at a known date, etc.). For American species :
D, cultivation very ancient in America (from its wide
area and number of varieties); E, species cultivated
before the discovery of America, without showing signs
of a great antiquity of culture ; F, species only cultivated
since the discovery of Ameiica.

GENERAL TABLE OF SPECIES.

437

SPECIES NATIVE TO THE OLD WORLD.
Cultivated for the Subterkanean Parts.

Name and duration.

Radish — Rnphanns sativus (1).
Horse-Radish — Cochlearia Armora-

cia, "if.
Turnip — iirassica Rapa (2).
Rape — Brassica Napns (2).
Carrot — Caucus Carota (2).

Parsnip— Pastinaca sativa (2).
Tuberous Chervil — Chaerophyllum

bulbosum (2).
Skirret— Sium Sisarum, If.

Madder — Rubia tinctornm, ^T

Salsify— Tragopogon porrifolium (2)
Scorzonera— Scorzonera hispanica.

Rampion — Campanula Rapunculus
(2).

i Vegetable
Root.
Garlic — Allium sativum, If.

Onion — Allium Cepa (2).
"Welsh Onion — Allium fistulosum, if.
Shallot — Allium ascalonicum, Tjl.
Rocambole — Allium Scorodoprasum
Chives — Allium Schseuoprasum, If.

Tare — Colocasia antiquoram, f.

Date.

B.
C.

A.
A.
B.

C.
C.

C.

B.

c.(?)

C.
0.
B.

B.
B.

A.

C.

c.
c.

C.(?)
B.

Origin.

Temperate Asia.*

Eastern temperate Europe.

Europe, western Siberia (?).
Europe, western Siberia (?).
Europe, western temperate

Asia (?).
Ceutraland southern Europe.
Central Europe, Caucasus.

Altaic Siberia, northern

Persia.
Western temperate Asia,

south-east of Europe.
South-east of Europe, Algeria.
South-west of Europe, south

of the Caucasus.
Temperate and southern

Europe.
Canaries, Mediterranean

basin, western temperate

Asia.
A result of cultivation.
Desert of the Kirghis, in

western temperate Asia.
Persia, Afghanistan, Belu-

chistan, Palestine (?).
Siberia (from the land of

the Kirghis to Baikal).
Modification of A. ce^a (?),

unknown wild.
Temperate Europe.

Temperate and northern
Europe, Siberia, Khams-
chatka. North America
(Lake Huron).

India, Malay Archipelago,
Polynesia.

* Dr. Bretsohneider writes to me from Pekin, Dec. 22, 1882, that
the species is mentioned in the Rijd, a work of the year 1100 B.C. I do
not know if we must suppose the original habitat to be China or
western Asia.

438

ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Name and duration.

Date.

Origin.

Ape— Alocasia macrorrhiza, If.

(?)

Ceylon, Malay Archipelago,
Polynesia.

Konjak — Amorphopliallas Konjak, If.

(?)

Japan (?).

/Dioscorea sativa, if.

li. (?)

Southern Asia Pespeciallv
Malabar (?), Ceylon (r),
(Java (?)].

Ta — Dioscorea Batatas, If.

B. (P)

China (?).

Diosccii'ea japonica, Tf.

(?)

Japan (?).

Dioscorea alata, y.

(?)

East of the Asiatic Archipe-
lago.

Cultivated foe thj» Stems or Leaves.

1. Vege^2bles.
A.

Cabbage — Brassica oleracea (1),

CMnese Cabbage — Brassica chinensis

(-)•
Water-Cress — Nasturtiam officinale,

Garden-Cress — Lepidium sativum (1) .
Sea Kale — Crambe maritiina. If.
Furslaue — Portulaca oleracea (1).

New Zealand Spinach — Tetragonia

e.xpansa (1).
Garden Celerv — Apium graveolens

(2).

Chervil — Anthriscus cerefolium (1) .
Parsley — Pefa-oselinum sativum (2).

Alexanders— Smyrnium Olus-atrnm

(-)■
Corn Salad — Valerianella olitoria (1)

Artichoke — CynaraCardun-l . .

cuius (2), If. \ ^f;>;

Lettuce — Latuca Scariola (1), (2).

Wild Chicory — Cichorium Intybns,

Endive —Cichorium Endivia (1).

Spinach — Spinacia oleracea (1).
Urach — Atriplex hortensis (1).

(?)

B.
C.
A.

C.
B.

C.

C.

C.

C.
C.

C.
B.

C.

C.

C.
C.

Europe.

China (?), Japan (?),

Europe, northern Asia.

Fersia (?).

Western temperate Europe.

From the westcii Ilima-
laypg to southern Kussia
and Greece.

New Zealand and New Hol-
land.

Temperato and southern
Europe, northern Airica,
vrestern Asia.

South-east of Eussia-, west-
ern temperate Asia.

Southern Europe, Algeria,
Lebanon.

Southern Europe, Algeria
western temperate Asia.

Sardinia, Sicily.

Southern Europe, northerr
Africa, Canaries, Madeira.

Derived from the caidocm.

Southern Europe, northern
Africa, western Asia.

Europe, northern Africa,
western temperate Asia.

Mediterranean basin, Cau-
casus, Turkestan.

Persia (?).

Northern Europe andSiberia

GENERAL TABLE OF SPECIES.

439

Name and duration.

Amarantli — Amarantus gangeticus

(1).
Sorrel — Eamex acetosa, if (1).

Patience Dock — Eumex patientia, If.
Asparagus — Asparagus officinalis, if.

Leek — Alliam ampeloprasum, If.

Date.

(?)

(?)

(?)
B.

B.

Origin.

Tropical Africa, India (?).

Europe, northern Asia,
mountains of India.

Turkey in Europe, Persia.

Europe, western temperate
Asia.

Mediterranean basin.

2. Fodder.

Lucem — Medioago sativa, If.
Sainfoin — Onobrychis sativa, ^.

French Honeysuckle — Hedrsarum

coronarium, If.
Purple Clover — Trifoliumpratense,'|r.

Alsike Clover — Trifolium bybridum

(!)•
Italian Clover — Trifolium incarna-

tum (1).
Egyptian Clover — Trifolium alex-

andrinum (1).
Ervilla — Ervum Ervilia (1).
Vetch. — Vicia sativa (I).

Flat-podded Pea — Lathyrus Cicera

(1).
Chickling Vetch — Lathyrus sativus

(1).
Oehrus — Lathyms ochrus (1).
Fenugreek — Trigouella IcEnum-

grEecum (1).
Bird's-Foot — Omithopus sativus (1).

Nonsuch — Medicago lupulina (1), (2).

Com Spurry — Spergula arvensis (1).
Guinea Grass — Panicum maximum,'^,

B.
C.

C.

c.
c.
c.
c.

B.
B.

B.

B.

B.
B.

B. (?)
C.

B.(?)

C. (r)

Western temperate Asia.

Temperate Europe, south of
the Caucasus.

Centre and vpest of the Medi-
terranean basin.

Europe, Alireria, western
teniperate Asia.

Temperate Em'ojae.

Southern Europe.

Syria, Anatolia.

Mediterranean basin.
Europe, Algeria, south of the

Caucasus.
From Spain and Algeria to

Greece.
South of the Caucasus.

Italy, Spain.

Noith-east of India and

vrestern temperate Asia.
Portugal, south of Spain,

Algeria.
Europe, nortli of Africa (?),

temperate Asia.
Europe.
Tropical Africa.

3. Various Uses.

Tea — Thca sinensis, 5- ■^•

Flax anciently cultivated— Linnm A.

angustifolinm, If (2), (1).
Flax now cultivated — Liuum usita. A. (?)

tissimum (I).
Jute— Corchorus capsularis (1). C. (?)

Assam, China, Mantschuria.
Mediterranean basin.

Western Asia (?), derived

from the preceding (?).
Java, Ceylon.

i40

OKIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Name and duration.

Jute — Corchorus oHtorius (1).
Sumach. — Rlius coriaria, 5>

Ehat — Celastrns edalis, 5.
Indigo — Indigofera tinctoria, 5.
Silvi-r Indigo— ludigof era argentea 5-

Henna — Lawsonia alba, S-

Blue Gum — Eucalyptus globnlua, §.
Cinnamon — Ciunamonum zejlani-

c-uin, 5.
China Grass — Boelimeria nivea, If, 5.
Hemp — Cannabis sativa (1).
White Mulberry — Moras alba, 5-
B^ack Mulberry — Morus nigra, 5
Sugar-Cane — Saccharum officina-

rum, '^.

Date.

C. (?)

c.

(n

B.

(?)

A.
C.

c.

(?)

A.

A.(?)

B.(?)

B.

Origin.

North-west of India, Ceylon.
Mediterranean basin, ivest-

ern temperate Asia.
Abyssinia, Arabia (?).
India (?).
Abyssinia, Nubia, Kordofan,

Senaar, India (?).
Western tropical Asia,

Nubia (?).
New Holland.
Ceylon, India.

China, Japan.
Dahuria, Siberia.
India, Mongolia.
Armenia, northern Persia.
Cochin-China (?), south,
west of China.

Cultivated foe thk Flowers oe thkie Envelopes.

Clove — Carophyllus aromatic us, 5-
Hop — Humulus lupulus, if.

Carthamine — Carthamus tinctorius

SafProa — Crocus sativus, f.

(?)
C.

A.

A.

Moluccas.

Europe, western temperate

Asia, Siberia.
Arabia (?).

Soutbern Italy, Greece, Asia
Miuor.

Cultivated ro
Shaddock — Citins decumana, §,

Citron, Lemon— Citrus medica, 5.
Bitter Orange — Citrus Aurantium

Bigaradia, 5-
Sweet Orange — Citrus Aurantium

sineuse, 5-
Mandarin— Citrus nobilis, 5.
Mangosteen — Garciuia mango-

stana, 5.
Ochro — Hibiscus esculentus (1).
Vine— Vitis viuifcra, *.

Common Jujube - Zizvplius vulgaris,

5-

Lotua Jujube — Zizyphus lotus, 5.

R THE Feuits.
B

B.
B.

C.

(?)

(?)

C.
A.

B.

(?)

Pacific Islands, to the east of

Java.
India.
East of India.

China and Cochin-China.

China and Cochin-China.

Sunda Islands, Malay Penin-
sula.

Tropical Africa.

Western temperate Asia,
Mediterranean basin.

China.

Egypt to Marocoa

GENERAL TABLE OF SPECIES.

441

Name and duration.

Date.

Origin.

Indian Jujube — Zizyphus Jujuba, 5-

A.(?)

Burmah, India.

Mango — iJangifera indica, 5-

A. (?)

India.

Tahiti Apple— Spondias dulcis, 5.

(?)

Society, Friendly, and Fiji
Isles.

Raspberry — Rubus idoeus, 5-

C.

Temperate Europe and Asia.

Strawberry — Fragaria vesca, "y.

C.

Temperate Europe and west-
ern Asia, east of North
America.

Bird-Cherry — Prunus avium, §.

B.

Western temperate Asia,
temperate Europe.

Common Cherry — Prunus cerasus, 5-

B.

From the Caspian to west-
ern Anatolia.

PluTTi — Prunus domestica, 5-

B.

Anatolia, south of the Cau-
casus, north of Persia.

Plum — Prunus insititia, 5-

(?)

Southern Europe, Armenia,
south of the Caucasus,
Talysch.

Apricot — Prunus Armeniaca, 5.

A.

China.

Almond — Amygdalus commuuis, 5-

A.

Mediterranean basin, west-
ern temperate Asia,

Peach — Amygdalus Persica, 5-

A.

China.

Common Pear — Pyrus communis, 5-

A.

Temperate Europe and Asia.

Chinese Pear — Pyrus sinensis, 5-

(?)

Mongolia, Mantschuria.

Apple — Pyrus Mai us, 5-

A.

Europe, Anatolia, south of
the Caucasus.

Quince — Cydonia vulgaris, 5-

A.

North of Persia, south of the
Caucasus, Anatolia.

Loquat — Eriobotrya japonica, 5-

(?)

Japan.

Pomegranate — Punica granatum, §.

A.

Persia, Afghanistan, Belu-
chistan.

Rose Apple — Jambosa vulgaris, 5-

B.

Malay Archipelago, Cochin-
China, Burmah, north-east
of India.

Malay Apple — Jambosa malaccensis,

5-
Bottle Gourd — Cucurbita lagenaria

(1).
Spanish Gourd — C. maxima (1).

B.

Malay Archipelago, Malacca.

C.

India, Moluccas, Abyssinia.

C. (?)

Guinea.

Melon — Cucumis Melo (1).

c.

India, Beluchistan, Guinea.

Water-Melon— Citrullus vulgaris (1).

A.

Tropical Africa.

Cucumber— Cucumis sativus (1).

A.

India.

"West Indian Gherkin — Cucunds An-

0. (?)

Tropical Africa (?).

guria (1).

White Gourd-Melon — Benincasa liis-

(?)

Japan, Java.

pida (1).

Towel Gourd — Luf a cylindrica (1) .

C.

India.

Angular Luffa — Lnffa acutangula (1) .

c.

India, Malay Archipelago.

SnakeGourd— Trichosanthesanguin.i

c.

India (?).

CI).

442

ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Name and duration.

Date.

Orisin.

Gooseberry — Eibes grossularia, 5-

C.

Temperate Europe, north of
Africa, Caucasus, western
Himalayas.

Eed Currant — llibes rubrum, 5-

C.

Nortiiern and temperate
Europe, Siberia, Caucasus,
HimalaJ^'^s, north-east of
the United States.

Black Currant — Eibes nigrum, 5-

C.

Northern and central
Europe, Armenia, Siberia,

•

Mantschuiia, western
Himalayas.

Kaki — Diospyros Kalvi, 5-

(?)

Japan, northern China.

Date Plum — Diospyros lotos, 5-

(?)

China, India, Afghanistan,
Persia, Armenia, Anatolia.

Olive— Olea europea, 5-

A.

Syria, southei-n Anatolia and
neighbouring islands.

Aubergine — Solanum melongena (1).

A.

India.

Fig— l<'icQS Carica, 5.

A.

Centre and south of the
Mediterranean basin, from
Syria to the Canaries.

Bread Fruit — Artocarpus iticisa, 5-

(?)

Sunda Isles.

Jack-Fruit — Artocarpus integrilolia,
Date-Palm — Phoenix dactylifera, 5-

B.(?)

India.

A.

Western Asia and Africa,

from the Euphrates to the

Canaries.

Banana — Musa sapientum, 5-

A.

Southern Asia.

Oil Palm — EJDeis guincensis, §.

(?)

Guinea.

Cultivated roR the Seeds.
1. Nutritive.

LitcH — Nephelium Litchi, 5-

Longan— Ncpheb'ura lonpana, 5-
Eambutan — Nephelium lappaceum, 5
Pistachio — Pistacia vera, 3-
Bean — Faba vulgaris (I).
Lentil— Ervum lens (1).

Chick-Pea— CicT arietinum (1).

Lupin— Lu;)inns albus (1).

Egyptian Lupin — Lupinus tcrmis

(n.

Field-Pea — Pi.<um arvense (1).

(?)

(?)

(?)
C.
A.
A.

A.

B.

A.

C.(?)

SontViern China, Cochin-

China.
India, Pegu.
India, Pegu.
Syria.

South of the Caspian (?).
Western temperate Asia,

Greece, Italy.
South of the Caucasus and

of the Caspian.
Sicily, Macedonia, south of

the Caucasus.
From Corsica to Syria.

Italy.

GENERAL TABLE OF SPECIES.

44-3

Name and duration.

Date.

Garden-Pea — Pisutn sativum (1).

Soy — Drl'cho'? poja (1).
Pigeon-Pea — Cajann.s indicns, 5-
Carob — Ceratonia siliqua, §.

Moth — Phaseolns aconitifolius (1).

Three-lobed Kidney Bean — Phaseolns
trilobus, If (1).

Green Gram— Phaseolns Mun^o (1).

Wall — Phaseolns Lablab, "^ (1).

Lubia — Phaseolns Lnbia (1).

Bambarra Ground Nut— Voandzeia
suhterranea (1).

Buckwheat — Fagopyrum escnlen-
tum (1).

Tartary Buckwheat — Fagopyrum
tartaricum (1).

Notch-seeded Bnckwh eat— Fagopy-
rum emargiuatum (1).

Kiery — Amarantus frumentaceus

(1).
Chestnut — Castanea vulgaris, 5-

Wheat — Triticum vulgare

varieties (?), (1).
Spelt — Triticutn spelta (1).

and

One-grained Wheat — Triticum mono-
coccum (1).

B.

A.
C.

A.(?)

C.
B.

B.f?)
B.
C.

(?)
C.

c.

(?)
(?)
(?)

A.
A.

(?)

Oricin.

Hordeum dis-

vulgare

Two-rowed Barley

tichon (1).
Common Barley — Hordeum

(!)•
Six-rowed Barley — Hordeum hexas-

tichou (1).
Rye — Secale cereals (1).
Common Oats — Avena sativa (1).
Eastern Oats — Avena orientalis (1).
Common Millet — Panicum miliaceum

(1).
Italian Millet — Panicum italicum (1) .

Sorghum — Holcus sorghum (1).
20

(?)
A.

B.
B.

C.(?)
A.

A.

A.

From the south of the
Caucasus to Persia (?)
northern India (?).

Cochin-China, Japan, Java.

Equatorial Africa.

Southern coast of Anatolia,
Syria, Cyrenaica (?).

Inflia.

India, tropical Africa.

India.

India.

Western Asia (?).

Intertropical Africa.

Mantschuria, central Siberia.

Tartary, Siberia to Dahuria.

Western China, eastern

Himalayas. •
India.

From Portugal to the Cas-
pian Sea, eastern Algeria.
Varieties : Japan, North
America.

Region of the Euphrates.

Derived from the preced-
ing (?).

Servia, Greece, Anatolia
(if the identity with the
Triticum hcEoticum be ad-
mitted).

Western temperate Asia.

Derived from the preceding

(?)•
Derived from the preceding

(?)•
Eastern temperate Enrope(?).

Eastern temperate Europe( ?).
Western Asia (?).
Egypt, Arabia.

China, Japan, Indian Archi.

pel ago (?)
Tropical Africa (?).

444

ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Name and duration.

Date.

Origin.

Sweet Sorghum — Holcus sacchara-

(?)

Tropical Africa (?).

tus (1).

Coracan — Eleusine ccracana (1).

B.

lu'lia.

Eice— Oryza sativa (1).

A.

IuJ:a, southern China (?).

2. Various Uses.

Poppy — Papaver Bomniferum (1).

B.

Derived from P. sefiferum of
the Mediterranean basin.

White Mustard — Sinapis alba (1).

B.

Temperate and southern

Black Mustard— Sinapis nigra (1).

B.

Europe, north of Africa,
■western temperate Asia.

Gold of Pleasure— Camelina sativa

B.(?)

Temperate Europe, Cau.

(!)•

casus, Siberia.

Herbaceous Cotton— Gossypium her-

B.

India.

baceum, 5 (!)•

Tree Cotton — Gossypium arboreum , 5-

B.(?)

Upper Egypt.

Arabian Coffee— Coffea arabica, 5.

C.

Tropical Africa, Mozam-
bique, Abyssinia, Guinea.

liberian Coffee — Coffea liberica, 5-

C.

Guinea Angola.

Sesame — Sesamum indicum (1).

A.

Sunda Isles.

Nutmeg — Myristica fragrans, 5-

B.

Moluccas.

Castor-Oil Plant — Riciuus com-

A.

Abyssinia, Sennaar, Kordo.

munis, 3-

fan.

Walnut — Juglans regia, §.

(?)

Eastern temperate Europe,
temperate Asia.

Black Pepper— Piper nigrum, g.

B.

India.

Long Pepper— Piper longum, 5-

B.

India.

Medicinal Pepper — Piper officina-
lis, 5.
Betel Pepper— Piper Betle, 5.

B.

Malay Archipelago.

B.

Malay Archipelago.

Areca Nut— Areca Catechu, 5.

B.

Malay Archipelago.

Cocoa Nut— Cocos nucifera, 5-

(?)

Malay Archipelago (?), Poly,
nesia (?).

SPECIES OF AMERICAN ORIGIN.
Cultivated foe the Uxbeeground Parts.

Arracaclia — Arracacha esculenta, T

(l).
Jerusalem Artichoke — Helianthns

tuberosus, 7f.
Potato — Solanuin tuberosum, ^.
Sweet Potato — Convolvulus batatas,

T-

Manioc — Manihot utilissimn, §.
Arrowroot — Maranta aruudiuacea, "y:.

E.

E.(?)

E.
D.

E.

(?)

New Granada (?).

North America (Indiana) .

Chili, Pern (?).

Tropical America (where ?).

East of tropical Brazil.
Tropical (continental ?)
America.

GENERAL TABLE OF SPECIES.

44i

Cultivated tor the Stems or Leaves.

Kame and duration.

Date.

Origin.

Mate — Ilex paraguariensis, 5-

D.

Paragnay and western

Coca— Erytliroxy Ion Coca, 5-

D.

East of Pern and Bolivia.

Quinine — Cinchona Calisaya, 5.

F.

Bolivia, southern Peni.

Crown Bark — Cinchona officinalis, 5.

F.

Ecuador (province of Loxa).

Red Cinchona Bark — Cinchona suc-

F.

Ecuador (province of

cirubra, 5-

Caenca).

Nicotiana Tabacum (1).

D.

Ecuador and neighbouring

Tobacco —

countries.

(Xicotiana rustica (1).

E.

Mexico (?), Texas (?), Cali.
fornia {?).

American Aloe— Agave amerlcana, 5.

E.

Mexico.

Cultivated for the Fruits.

Sweet Sop — Anona squamosa, 5.
Sour Sop — Anona muricata, 5-
Custard Apple — Anona reticulata, 5-

Chirimoya — Anona Cherimolia, 5-
Mammee Apple — Mammea aoieri-

cana, §.
Cashew Nut — Anacardium occiden-

tale, 5.
Virginian Strawberry — Fragaria vir-

giniana, If.
Chili Strawberry — Fragaria chiloen-

tsis, ■^.
Guava — Psidium guayava, 5-
Pumpkin and Squash — Cucurbita

Pepo and Melopepo (1).
Prickly Pear — Opuntia ficus in.

dica, 5.
Chocho — Seohinm edule (1).
Star-Apple — ChrysophyllumCainito,

. 5-
Caimito — Lucnma Caimito, 5-
Marmalade Plum — Luctuna mam-

mosa, 5-
Sapcdilla — Sapota achras, 5-

Persimmon — D iospyros virginiana,

5-
Annual Capsicum — Capsicum annuum

(1).
Shrubby Capsicum— Capsicum frutes
ceiiB, 5-

(?)
(?)
(?)

E.

(?)

(?)

F.

F.

E.
E.

E.

E.
E.

E.
E.

E.

F.

E.

E.

West India Isles.
West India Isles.
West India Isles, New

Granada.
Ecuador, Peru (?).
West India Isles.

Tropical America.

Temperate North America.

Chili.

Continental f ropical America.
Temperate North America.

Mexico.

Mexico (?), Central America.
West India Isles, Panama.

Peru.

Valley of the Orinoco.

Campeachy, Isthmus of

Panama, Yeneznela.
Eastern States of America.

BrazU (?).

From tbe east of Pern to
Bahia,

UQ

ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

Kame and duration.

Date.

Origin.

Tomato— Lycopersicum escnlentum

E.

Peru.

(!)•

Avocado Pear— Persia gratissitna, §.

E.

Mexico.

Papaw — Papaya vulgaris, 5-

E.

West IndieSjCentral America.

Fiii3-Apple — Anauassa sativa, '7/1.

E.

Mexico, Central America,
Panama, Neiv Granada,
Guiana (?), Baliia (?),

Cultivated for the Seeds.
1. Nutritious.

Caoao — Theobroma Cacao, 5-

Sugar Bean-Phaseolus lunatns, ■^.
Quinoa — Chenopodium qainoa (ij.

Maize — Zea mays (1).

D.

E,

E.

D.

Amazon and Orinoco Valley,
Panama (?), Yucatan (.?).

Brazil.

New Granada, Pern (?),
Chili (?).

New Granada (?).

2. Various Uses.

Arnotto — Bixa orellana.

Barbados Cotton — Gossypium barba-

dense, §.
Earth Nuts^Arachis liypogaea (1).
Madia — Madia sativa (i).

D.

(?)

E.
E.

Tropical America,

New Granada (?), Mexico (T),

West Indies.
Brazil (?).
Chili, California.

Cryptogam cultivated tor the Whole Plant.
Mushroom— Agaricus campestris,^. [ C. | Northern hemisphere.

Species of Unknown or entirely Uncertain Origin.

Common Haricot— Phaseolus vulgaris (1).
Musk Gourd— Cucurbita moschata (1).
Fig-leaved Gourd— Cucurbita ficifolia, f.

CHAPTER n.

GENFEAL OESEEVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS.

Article I. — Regions where Cultivated Plants originated,

Ix tlie beginning- of the nineteenth century, the origin
of most of our cultivated species was unlcnown. Linnreus
made no efforts to discover it, and subsequent authors
merely copied the vague or erroneous expressions by
which he indicated their habitations. Alexander von
Humboldt expressed the true state of the science in 1807,
when he said, " The origin, the first home of the plants
most useful to man, and which have accompanied him
from the remotest epochs, is a secret as impenetrable as
the dwelling of all our domestic animals. . . . We do
not know Avhat region produced spontaneously wheat,
barley, oats, and rye. The plants which constitute the
natural riches of all the inhabitants of the tropics, the
banana, the papaw, the manioc, and maize, have never
been found in a wild state. The potato presents the
same phenomenon." ^

At the present day, if a few cultivated species have
not yet been seen in a wild state, this is not the case with
the immense majority. We know at least, most fre-
quently, from what country they first came. This was
already the result of my work of 1855, which modern
more extensive research has confirmed in almost all
points. This research has been applied to 247 species,^

' Essai sur la Geograpl\ie des Plantes, p. 28.

' Counting two or three forms which are perhaps rather very distinct
races.

448 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

cultivated on a large scale by agvicultiirists, or in
kitchen gardens and orchards. I might have added a
few rarely cultivated or but little known, or of which
the cultivation has been abandoned ; but the statistical
results would be essentially the same.

Out of the 247 species which I have studied, the old
world has furnished 199, America 45, and three are still
uncertain.

No species was common to the tropical and austral
regions of the two hemispheres before cultivation.
Allium schcEiioprasuTn, the hop (Hunndus lupulus),
the strawberry (Fragaria visca), the currant (Ribes
riibruin), the chestnut [Castanea vulgaris), and the
mushroom {Agaricus campestris), were common to the
northern regions of the old and new worlds. I have
reckoned them among the species of the old world, since
their principal habitation is there, and there they were
first cultivated.

A great number of species originated at once in
Europe and Western Asia, in Europe and Siberia, in the
Mediterranean basin and Western Asia, in India and
the Asiatic archipelago, in the West Indies and Mexico,
in these two regions and Columbia, in Peru and Brazil,
or in Peru and Columbia, etc., etc. They may be counted
in the table. This is a proof of the impossibility of sub-
dividing the continents and of classing the islands in
well-detined natural regions. Whatever be the method
of division, there will always be species common to two,
three, four, or more regions, and others confined to a
sm.all portion of a single country. The same facts may
be observed in the case of uncultivated species.

A noteworthy fact is the absence in some countries
of indigenous cultivated plants. For instance, we have
none from the arctic or antarctic regions, where, it is
true, the floras consist of but few species. The United
States, in spite of their vast territory, which will soon
support hvuidreds of millions of inhabitants, only yields,
as nutritious plants worth cultivating, the Jerusalem
artichoke and the gourds. Zizaiia cequatica, which
the natives gathered wild, is a grass too inferior to

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS. 449

our cereals and to rice to make it worth the trouble of
planting it. They had a few bulbs and edible berries,
but they have not tried to cultivate them, having early
received the maize, which was worth far more.

Patagonia and the Cape have not furnished a single
species. Australia and New Zealand have furnished one
tree. Eucalyptus globulus, and a vegetable, not very
nutritious, the Tctragonia. Their floras were entirely
wanting in graminse similar to the cereals, in leguminous
plants with edible seeds, in Cruciferse with fleshy roots.^
In the moist tropical region of Australia, rice and
Alocasia niacrorltiza have been found wild, or perhaps
naturalized, but the greater part of the country suflers
too much from drought to allow these species to become
widely diffused.

In general, the austral regions had very few annuals,
and among their restricted number none ofiered evident
advantages. Now annual species are the easiest to cul-
tivate. They have pla,yed a great part in the ancient
aoriculture of other countries.

In short, the original distribution of cultivated species
was very unequal It had no proportion with the needs
of man or the extent of territory.

Article 11. — Number and Nature of Caltivated Species at

Different Epochs.

The species marked A in the table on pp. 437-446
must be regarded as of very ancient cultivation. They
are forty-four in number. Some of the species marked
B are probably as ancient, though it is impossible to
prove it. The five American species marked D are prob-
ably cultivated as early as those in the category C, or
the most ancient in the category B.

As might be supposed, the species A are especially
plants provided with roots, seeds, and fruits proper ibr
the food of man. Afterwards come a few species having

* Soe the list of the Ti<5eful planta of Australia by Sir J. Hooker,
Flora Tasmania, p. ex. ; and Benthain, Flora Australiensis, vii. p. 156.

4-50 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

fruits agreeable to the taste, or textile, tinctorial, oil-
producing plants, or yielding stimulating drinks by
infusion or fermentation. There are among these only
two green vegetables, and no fodder. The orders which
predominate are the Cruciferse, Leguminoste, and Gra-
minacese.

The number of annuals is twenty-two out of the
forty-four, or fifty per cent. Out of five American species
marked D, two are annuals. In the category A, there
are two biennials, and D has none. Among all the
Phanerogams the annuals are not more than fifty per
cent., and the biennials one or at most two per cent. It
is clear that at the beginning of civilization plants which
yield an immediate return are most prized. _ They ofter,
moreover, this advantage, that their cultivation is easily
diffused or increased, either because of the abundance of
seed, or the same species may be grown in summer in the
north, and in winter or all the year round in the tropics.

Herbaceous perennial plants are rare in categories A
and D. They are only from two to four per cent.,
unless we include Brassica oleracea, and the variety of
flax which is usually perennial {L. angustl folium), culti-
vated by the Swiss lake-dwellers. In nature herbaceous
perennials constitute about forty per cent, of the Phane-
rogams.-^

A and D include twenty ligneous species out of forty-
nine, that is about forty-one per cent. They are in the
proportion of forty-three per cent, of the Phanerogams.

Thus the earliest husbandmen employed chiefly
annuals or biennials, rather fewer woody species, and far
fewer herbaceous perennials. These differences are due
to the relative facility of cultivation, and the proportion
of the evidently useful species in each division.

The species of the old world marked B have been in
cultivation for more than two thousand years, but per-
haps some of them belong to category A. The American

* The proportions which I give for the Phaneroorams collectively are
based upon an approximative calculation, made with the aid of the first
two hundred pa'.ces of Steudel's Nomenclator. They are jastitied by
the comparison with several floras.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS. 451

species marked E were cultivated befoi'o the discoveries
of Culumbus, pei-haps for more than two thousand years.
Many other species marked (?) in the table date probably
from an ancient epoch, but as they chiefly exist in
countries without a literature and without archaeological
records w^e do not know their history. It is useless to
insist upon such doubtful categories; on the other hand,
the plants which we know to have been first cultivated
in the old world less than two thousand years ago, and in
America since its discovery, may be compared with plants
of ancient cultivation.

These species of modern cultivition number sixty-one
in the old world, marked C, and six in America, marked
F ; sixty-seven in all.

Classed according to their duration, they number
thirty-seven per cent, annuals, seven to eight per cent,
biennials, thirty-three per cent, herbaceous perennials,
and twenty-two to twenty-three percent, woody species.
The proportion of annuals or biennials is also here
larger than in the whole number of plants, but it is not
so large as among species of very ancient cultivation.
The proportions of perennials and w^oody species are less
than in the whole vegetable kingdom, but they are higher
than among the species A, of very ancient cultivation.

The plants cultivated for less than two thousand
years are chiefly artificial fodders, which the ancients
scarcely knew ; then bulbs, vegetables, medicinal plants
(Cinchonas); plants wdth edible fruits, or nutritious seeds
(buckwheats) or aromatic seeds (cofiee).

Men have not discovered and cultivated "svithin the last
two thousand years a single species which can rival maize,
rice, the sweet potato, the potato, the bread-fruit, the date
cereals, millets, sorghums, the banana, soy. These date
from three, four, or five thousand years, perhaps even in
some cases six thousand years. The species first culti-
vated during the Grpeco-Roman civilization and later
nearly all answer to more varied or more refined needs.
A great dispersion of the ancient species from one country
to another took place, and at the same time a selection of
the best varieties developed in each species. The introduc-

i52 OEIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

fcions within the last two thousand years took place in a
very irregular and intermittent manner. I cannot quote
a single species cultivated for the first time after that date
by the Chinese, the great cultivators of ancient times.
The peoples of Southern and Western Asia innovated in
a certain degree by cultivating the buckwheats, several
cucurbitacere, a few alliums, etc. In Europe, the Romans
and several peoples in the Middle Ages introduced the
cultivation of a few vegetables and fruits, and that of
several fodders. In Africa a few species were then first
cultivated separately. After the voyages of Vasco di
Gama and of Columbus a rapid diffusion took place of
the species already cultivated in either hemisphere.
These transports continued during three centuries with-
out any introduction of new species into cultivation.
In the two or three hundred years which preceded the
discovery of America, and the two hundred which fol-
lowed, the number of cultivated species remained almost
stationary. The American strawberries, Diospyros vir-
giniana, sea-kale, and Tetragonia expansa introduced in
the eighteenth century, have but little importance. We
must come to the middle of the present century to find
new cultures of any value from the utilitarian point of
view, such as Eticalyptiis glohidiis of Australia and the
Cinchonas of South America.

The mode of introduction of the latter species shows
the great change which has taken place in the means of
transport. Previously the cultivation of a plant began
in the country where it existed, whereas the Australian
Eucalyptus was first planted and sown in Algeria, and
the Cinchonas of America in the south of Asia. Up to
our own day botanical or private gardens had only
diffused species already cultivated somewhere ; now they
introduce absolutely new cultures. The royal garden at
Kew is distinguished in this respect, and other botanical
gardens and acclimatization societies in England and else-
Avhere are making similar attempts. It is probable that
tropical countries will greatly profit by this in the course
of a century. Others will also find their advantage from
the growing facility in the transport of commodities.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS. 458

When a species lias been once cultivated, it is rarely,
perhaps nev^er completely, abandoned. It continues to
be here and there cultivated in backward countries, or
those whose climate is especially favourable. I have
]iassed over some of these species which are nearly
abandoned, such as dyer's woad (Fsatis tindoria), maWow
{Malva sylvestris), a vegetable used by the Romans, and
certain medicinal plants formerly much used, such as
fennel, cummin, etc., but it is certain that they are still
grown in some places.

The competition of species causes the cultivation of
some to diminish, of others to increase ; besides, vegetable
dyes and medicinal plants are rivalled by the discoveries
of chemists. Woad, madder, indigo, mint, and several
sim))lea must give way before the invasion of chemical
products. It is possible that men may succeed in making
oil, sugar, and flour, as honey, butter, and jellies are
already made, without employing organic substances.
Nothing, for instance, would more completely change
ao-ricultural conditions than the manufacture of flour
from its known inorganic elements. In the actual state
of science, there are still products wdiich will be more and
more required of the vegetable kingdom ; these are tex-
tile substances, tan, indiarubber, gutta-percha, and certain
spices. As the forests where these are found are gradu-
ally destroyed, and these substances are at the same time
more in demand, there wall be the greater inducement to
cultivate certain species.

These usually belong to tropical countries. It is in
these regions also, particularly in South America, that
fruit trees will be more cultivated — those of the order
Anonacese for instance, of which the natives and botanists
ah-eady recognize the value. Probably the number of
plants suitable for fodder, and of forest trees which can
live in hot dry countries, will be increased. The addi-
tions will not be numerous in temperate climates, nor
especially in cold regions.

From these data and reflections it is probable that at
the end of the nineteenth century men will cultivate on
a large scale and for use about three hundred species.

154 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

This is a small proportion of the one hundred and twenty
or one hundred and forty thousand in the vegetable
kingdom ; but in the animal world the proportion of
creatures subject to the will of man is far smaller.
There are not perhaps more than two hundred species of
domestic animals — that is, reared for our use, — and the
animal kingdom reckons millions of species. In the
•"rreat class of molluscs the oyster alone is cultivated, and
in that of the Articulata, which counts ten times more
species than the vegetable kingdom, we can only name
the bee and two or three silk-producing insects. Doubt-
less the number of species of animals and vegetables
which may be reared or cultivated for pleasure or
curiosity is very large : witness menageries and zoolo-
gical and botanical gardens, but I am only speaking here
of useful plants and animals, in general and customar}^
employment.

A7'ticle III. — Cultivated Plants known or not known in a

Wild State.

Science has succeeded in discovering the geogTaphical
origin of nearly all cultivated species ; but there is less
progress in the knowledge of species in a natural state —
that is wild, far from cultivation and dwellings. There
are species which have not been discovered in this
condition, and others whose specific identity and truly
wild condition are doubtful.

In the following enumeration I have classed the
species according to the degree of certainty as to the
wild character, and the nature of the doubts where such
exist.^

1. Spontaneous species, that is wild, seen by several
botanists far from dwellings and cultivation, with every
appearance of indigenous plants, and under a form identical
with cue of the • cultivated varieties. These are the

' The. species in italics are of very ancient cultivation (V or T)\
those marked with an asterisk have been less than two thoubaad years
in cultivation (C or F).

I

GENEEAL OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLL^SIONS. 455

species which are not enumerated below; they are 1G9
in number.

Among these 169 species, 81 belong to the categories
A and D, of very ancient cultivation, 56 have been in
cultivation less than two thousand years, C, and the
others are of modern or unknown date.

2. Seen and gathered in the same conditions, but by
a single botanist in a single locality. Three species.

Cucurbita niaxima,i^a6a vulga ris, Kicotiana Tabacum.

3. Seen and mentioned but not gathered in the same
conditions by one or two authors and botanists, more or
less ancient, who may have been mistaken. Two species.

Carthamus tincforius, Triticmn vidgare.

4. Gathered wild by botanists in several localities
under a form slightly different to those which are culti-
vated, but which most authors have no hesitation in
classing with the species. Four species.

Olea eurojxea, Oryza sativa, Solanum tuberosum,
Vitis viiiifera.

5. Wild, gathered by botanists in several localities
under forms considered by some botanists as constituting
different sjDecies, while others treat them as varieties
Fifteen species.

Allium ampeloprasum porrum, Cichorium Endivia,
var., Ci'ocus sativus, var., *Cucumis melo, Cucurbita
Pepo, Helianthus tuberosus, Latuca scariola sativa,
Linum usitatissimum annuum, Lycopersicum esculen-
tium, Papaver somniferum, Pyrus nivalis var., *Eibes
grossularia, Solanum Melcngena, *Spinacia oleracea var.,
Triticura monococcum.

6. Subspontaneous, that is half-wild, similiar to one
or other of the cultivated forms, but possibly plants
escaped from cultivation, judging from the locality.
Twenty-four species.

Agava americana, Amarantus gangeticus, Amygdalus
IJersica, Areca catechu, *Avena orientalis, Avena sativa,
*Cajanus indicus, Cicer arietinum, Citrus decumana,
Cucurbita moschata, Dioscorea japonica, Ervum Ervilia,
Ervwin lens, Fagopyrum emarginatum, Gossypium bar-
badense, Holcus saccharatus, Holcus sorghumi, Indigofera

&

456 OniGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

tinctoria, Lepidura sativum, Maranta arundinacea, Nico-
tiana I'ustica, Panicum ndllaceuni, Raphanus sativus,
Spcrgula arvensis.

7. Subspontaneous like the preceding, but different
enough from the cultivated varieties to lead the majority
of authors to regard them as distinct species. Three
species.

*Allium ascalonicum (variety of A. cepa ?), Allium
scorodoprasum (variety of A. sativum ?), Secale ceroale
(variety of one of the perennial species of Secale ?).

8. Not discovered in a wild state nor even half-wild,
derived perhaps from cultivated species at the beginning
of agriculture, but too ditfercnt not to be commonly
regarded as distinct species. Three species.

Bordeum hexastichon (derived from H. disfichon ?),
Hovdeum vulgare (derived from H. distiehon?), Triticum
spelta (derived from T. vulgare ?)

9. Not discovered in a wild state nor even half-wild,
but originating in countries which are not completely
explored, and belonging perhaps to little-known wild
species of these countries. Six sj)ecies.

Arachis hypogea, Carophyllus aromaticus, Convohmlus
batatas, *Dolichos lubia, Manihot utilissima, Phaseolus
vulgaris.

10. Not found in a wild state, nor even half-wild,
but originating in countries which are not sufficiently
explored, or in similar countries which cannot be defined,
more different than the latter from known wild species.
Eighteen species.

Amorphophallus konjak, Arracacha esculenta, Bras-
sica chinensis, Capsicum annuum, Chenopodium quinoa,^
Citrus nobilis, Cucurbita ficifolia, Dioscorea alata, Dios-
c.); ex Batatas, Dioscorea sativa, Eleusine coracana, Lucuma
mummosa, Nephelium Litchi, *Pisum sativum, Saccharum
officinarum, Sechium edule, *Tricosantlies anguina, Zca
ma]/s.

Total 247 species.

' Since this list was printed, I have been informed tliat the qninoa
is wild in Chili. Some of the figures need modification in consequence
of I his error.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS. 457

These figures show that there are 193 species known
to be wild, 27 doubtful, as half- wild, and 27 not found
wild.

I believe that these last will be found some time or
other, if not under one of the cultivated forms, at least in
an allied form called species or variety according to the
author. To attain this result tropical countries will
have to be more thoroughly explored, collectors must
be more attentive to localities, and more -floras must be
published of counti'ies now little known, and good mono-
graphs of certain genera based upon the characters which
vary least in cultivati<jn.

A few species having their origin in countries fairly
well explored, and which it is impossilde to confound
with others because each is unique in its genus, have not
been found wild, or only once, which leads us to suppose
that they are extinct in nature, or rapidly becoming so.
I allude to maize and the bean (see pp. 387 and 316). I
mention also in Article IV. other plants which appear
to be becoming extinct in the last lew thousand yeais.
These last belong to genera which contain many species,
which renders the hypothesis less probable ;^ but, on the
other hand, they are rarely seen at a distance from culti-
vated ground, and they hardly ever become naturalized,
that is wild, which shows a certain feebleness or a
tendency to become the prey of animals and parasites.

The G7 species cultivated for less than two thousand
j^ears (C, F) are all found wild, except the species marked
with an asterisk, which have not been found or which
are subject to doubts. This is a proportion of eighty-
three per cent.

AVhat is more remarkable is that the great majority
of species cultivated for more than four thousand years
(A), or in America for three thousand or four thousand
years (D), still exist wild in a form identical with some
one of the cultivated varieties. Their number is thirty-
one out of forty-nine, or sixty-three per cent. In cate-
gories 9 and 10 there are only two of these species of

' For reasons which I cannot here express, monotypical genera are
for the most part iu process of extinction.

4:58 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

very ancient cultivation, or four per cent., and tiiese are
two species which probably exist no longer as wild plants.
I believed, a i^riori, that a great number of the
species cultivated for more than four thousand years
would have altered from their original condition to such
a degree that they could no longer be recognized among
wild plants. It appears, on the contrary, that the forms
anterior to cultivation have commonly remained side by
side with those which cultivators employed and propa-
gated from century to century. This may be explained
in two ways : 1. The period of four thousand j^ears
is short compared to the duration of most of the specific
forms in phanerogamous plants. 2. The cultivated
species receive, outside of cultivated ground, continual
I'einforcements from the seeds which man, birds, and
different natural agents disperse and transport in a
thousand ways. Naturalizations produced in this manner
often confound the wild plants with the cultivated ones,
and the more easily that they fertilize each other since
they belong to the same species. This fact is clearly
demonstrated in the case of a plant of the old world
cultivated in America, in gardens, and which, later,
becomes naturalized on a large scale in the open country
or the woods, like the cardoon at Buenos Ay res, and the
orano-es in several American countries. Cultivation
widens areas, and supplements the deficits which the
natural reproduction of the species may present. There
are, however, a few exceptions, which are worth men-
tioning in a separate article.

Article. IV. — Cultivated Plants which are Extinct, or
becoming Extinct in a "Wild State.

These species to which I allude present three remark-
able characters : —

1. They have not been found wild, or only once or
twice, and often doubtfully, although the regions whence
they come have been visited by several botanists.

2. They have not the faculty of sowing themselves,
and propngating indefinitely outside cultivated ground.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS. 459

In other terms, in such cases they do not pass out of the
condition of adventitious plants.

3. It cannot be supposed that they are derived within
historic times from certain allied species.

These three characters are found united in the follow-
ing species: — Bean (Faha vulgaris), chick-pea {Cicer
arietinum), ervilla (Ervum Ervilia), lentil {Ervum lens),
tobacco {Nicotiana tabaciun), wheat (Triticum vul-
gare), maize {Zea mays). The sweet potato (Convol-
vulus batatas) should be added if the kindred species
were better known to be distinct, and the carthamine
{Carthamus tinctonus) if the interior of Arabia had been
explored, and we had not found a mention of the plant
in an Arabian author.

All these species, and probably others of little-known
countries or genera, appear to be extitict or on their way
to become so. Supposing they ceased to be cultivated,
they would disappear, whereas the majority of culti-
vated plants have become somewhere naturalized, and
would persist in a wild state.

The seven species mentioned just now, excepting
tobacco, have seeds full of fecula, which are the food of
birds, rodents, and dilferent insects, and have not the
power of passing entire through their alimentary canal.
This is probably the sole or principal cause of their
inferiority in the struggle for existence.

Thus my researches into cultivated plants show that
certain species are extinct or becoming extinct since the
historical epoch, and that not in small islands but on
vast continents without any great modifications of
climate. This is an important result for the history of
all organic beings in all epochs.

Article V. — Concluding Remarks.

1. Cultivated plants do not belong to any particular
category, for they belong to fifty- one difterent families.
They are, however, all phanerogamous except the mush-
room {Agaricus campestris).

IGO ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

2. The characters which have most varied in cultiva-
tion are, beoinninc: with the most variable : a. The size,
form, and colour of the fleshy parts, whatever organ they
belong to (root, bulb, tubercle, fruit, or seed), and the
abundance of fecula, sugar, and other substances which
are contained in these parts ; h. The number of seeds,
which is often in inverse ratio to the development of the
fleshy parts of the plant ; c. The form, size, or pubes-
cence of the floral organs which persist round the fruits
or seeds ; d. The rapidity of the phenomena of vegeta-
tion— whence often results the quality of ligneous or
herbaceous plants, and of perennial, biennial, or annual.

The stems, leaves, and flowers vary little in plants
cultivated for those organs. The last formations of
each yearly or biennial growth vary most ; in other
terms, the results of vegetation vary more than the
organs which cause vegetation.

3. I have not observed the slightest indication of an
adaptation to cold. When the cultivation of a species
advances towards the north (maize, flax, tobacco, etc.), it
is explained by the production of early varieties, which
can ripen before the cold season, or by the custom of
cultivating in the north, in summer, the species which in
the south are sown in winter. The study of the northern
limits of wild species had formerly led me to the same
conclusion, for they have not changed within historic
times although the seeds are carried frequently and
continually to the north of each limit. Periods of more
than four or five thousand years, or changements of form
and duration, are needed apparently to produce a modifi-
cation in a plant which will allow it to support a greater
degree of cold.

4. The classification of varieties made by agricul-
turists and gardeners are generally based on those
characters wdiich vary most (form, size, colour, taste of
the fleshy parts, beard in the ears of corn, etc.). Botanists
are mistaken when they follow this example ; they
should consult those more fixed characters of the organs
for the sake of which the species are not cultivated.

5. A non-cultivated species being a group of more or

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS. 4G1

less similar forms, among which subordinate groups may
often be distinguished (races, varieties, sub-varieties), it
may have happened that two or more of these slightly
diti'ering forms may have been introduced into cultiva-
tion. This must have been the case especially when the
habitation of a species is extensive, and yet more when
it is disjunctive. The first case is probably that of the
cabbage (Brassica), of flax, bird-cherry {Primus aviurn),
the common pear, etc. The second is probably that of
the gourd, the melon, and trefoil haricot, which existed
previous to cultivation both in India and Africa.

6. No distinctive character is kno^^^^ between a
naturalized plant which arose several generations back
from a cultivated plant, and a wild plant sprung from
plants which have always been wild. In any case, in the
transition from cultivated plant to wild plant, the par-
ticular features which are propagated by grafting are not
preserved by seedlings. For instance, the olive tree which
has became wild is the oleaster, the pear bears smaller
fruits, the Spanish chestnut yields a common fruit. For
the rest, the forms naturalized from cultivated species
have not yet been sufficiently observed from generation
to o'eneration. M. Sac^ot has done this for the vine.
It would be interesting to compare in the same manner
with their cultivated forms Citrus, Persica, and the
cardoon, naturalized in America, far from their original
home, as also the Agave and the prickly pear, wild in
America, with their naturalized varieties in the old world.
We should know exactly what persists after a temporary
state of cultivation.

7. A species may have had, previous to cultivation, a
restricted habitation, and subsequently occupy an im-
mense area as a cultivated and sometimes a naturalized
plant.

8. In the history of cultivated plants, I have noticed
no trace of communication between the peoples of the old
and new worlds before the discovery of America by
Columbus. The Scandinavians, who had pushed their
excursions as far as the north of the United States, and
the Basques of the Middle Ages, who followed whales

462 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.

perhaps as far as America, do not .seem to have trans-
ported a sin^'le cultivated species. Neither has the Gulf
Stream produced any effect. Between America and
Asia two transports of useful plants perhaps took place,
the one by man (the Batata, or sweet potato) the other
by the agency of man or of the sea (the cocoa-nut palm).

INDEX.

Abi, 285

Agava amerioana, 153
Alexanders, 91
Alexandrine clover, 107
Alligator pear, 292
Allium Ampeloprasnm, 101

Ascalonicam, G8

Cepa, 66

fistulosum, 68

sativum, 63

Schaenoprasum, 72

Scored oprasum, 71

Almond, 218
Alocasia macrorliiza, 75
Aloe, American, 153
Amarantus frumentaceus, 352

gangeticus, 100

American Aloe, 153

indigoes, 137

Amorphophallus Koujak, 76

Rivieri, 76

Amygdalus communis, 218

Persica, 221

Anacardium occidentale, 198
Ananassa sativa, 311
Aiidropogon saccliaratus, 382

Sorghum, 380

Angular Luffa, 371
Angurian cucumber, 267
Annual capsicum, 289
Anona Cherimolia, 174

muricata, 168, 173

reticulata, 174

squamosa, 168

Antbriscus Oerefio lum, 90

Ape, 75

Apium graveolens, 90

Apple, 2:>3

, custard, 168, 174

, Malay, 241

, mammee, 189

, pine, 311

, star, 285

, sugar, 168

, Tahiti, 203

Apricot, 215
Arab tea, 134
Arachis hypogaea, 411
Areca catechu, 427
Armeniaca vulgaris, 215
Arnotto, 401
Arracaclia esculenta, 40
Arrowroot, 81
Artichoke, 92

, Jerusalem, 42

Artocaipus incisa, 298

integrifolia, 299

Arum esculentum, 73

macrorhizon, 75

Aubergine, 287
Avena orientalis, 373

sativa, 373

strigosa, 375

Avocado pear, 292

B

Bambarra ground-nut, 847
Banana, 304
Barbados cotton, 408
Barleys, 367

4C4

INDEX,

Balatas erlnlis, 53
JJaiata maiinuosa, 57
Bean, broad, .'5 IB

, kid lie V, 338

Beetroot, 'iS
]3eiiiiic:is;i, 268
Beta vulgaris, 58
Bird. cherry, 205
Bird's foot, 113
Bitter orange, I'JB
Bixa Orellana, 401
Black currant, 278
Brassica camp(>stris, 36

NajDUs, 3(3

oleracea, 36, 83

Eapa, 36

Bread-fruit, 298
Broad bean, 316
Bronielia Ananas, 311
Buckwheat, common, 348

, notch-seeded, 351

, Tartary, 353

Bullace, 2U
Bullock's heart, 174,

Cabbage, 83
Cacao, 313
Caimito, 285
Calabash, 215
Cannabis saliva, 118
Capsicum annuum, 289

!■ frutescens, 2LI0

Cardoon, 92

Carica Pafiaya, 273

Carob, 334.

Carthaniine, 164

Caryophyllus aromaticus, 161

Cashew, 198

Cassis, 278

Ca.stanea vulgari:^, 353

Castor-oil plant, 422

Catha eduLs, 13A

Celery, 89

Cerasus vulgaris, 207

Ceratonia Siliqua, 334i

Chayote, 273

Chenopodium Qninoa, 351

CheiTy, bird, 205

, sour, 207

Chervil, 90
Chestnut, 353
Chickling vetch, 110
Chick-pea, 323

Chicoriiim Endivia, 97

Intylius, 96

Cliicoiy, 96

China grass, 1 16

CIn'nese pear, 233

Chirimoya, 174

Chives, 72

Choclio, 273

Chrysophyllum Caimito, 285

Cinnamon, 11-6

Cinnamonum zeylanicum, 146

Citron, 178

CitruUus vulgaris, 262

Citrus Aurantium, 188

decutnana, 177

medica, 178

nobilis, 188

Clove, 161

Clover, crimson, 106

, Egyptian, 107

, purjile, 105

Coca, 135

Cochlearia Armoracia, 33

Cocoa-nut palm, 429

Cocos nucifera, 429

Coffee, 415

CoH'ea arabica, 418

liberica, 418

Colocasia, 73

Convolvolus Batatas, 53
manirnosa, 57

Corchorus capsularis, 130

olitorius, 130

Com salad, 91
Com spurry, 114
Cotton, Barbados, 408

, herbaceous, 452

, tree, 408

Cress, garden, 166
Crocus sativum, 86
Cucumber, 264
Cucumis Anguria, 267

Melo, 258

sativas, 26 1

Cucurbita citrullus, 262

ficifolia, 257

Lagenaria, 245

maxima, 249

tl

INDEX.

4G5

Cucnrbita Melopepo, pcpo, 2.j3

moschata, 257

Currant, black, 278

, red, 277

Custard apple, 168
Cydonia vulgaris, 236
Cynara Cai'dunculus, 92

Cytisas Cajan, 332

Scolymus, 92

D

Date-palm, 301
Dioscorea, 76
Doliclios Labial), 3-46

Lubia, 347

Soja, 330

Dyer's iudigo, 136

E<j:yptiaTi clover, 107
— lupin, 327

wheat, 259

EUcis ^ineensis, 429
Elousine Coracana, 38-1
Ktidive, 97
Ervilla, 107
Ervum Ervilla, 107

lens, 321

Erythroxylon Coca, 135
Eugenia Jamljos, 240
malaccensis, 241

Faba vulgaris, 316
Fagopyruin emarginatum, 351

esculentum, 348

tatariciini, 350

Fenugreek, 112

Ficus Carica, 295

Field-pea, 327

Fig, 295

Fig-leaved pumpkin, 257

Fig, Indian, 274

Flat-podded pea, 109

Flax, 119

Fragaria chiloensis, 205

vesca, 203

• virgiuiana, 205

French honeysuckle, 104

G

Garcinia Mangostana, 118
Garden cress, !36

pea, 328

Garlic, 63
Glycine soya, 330

subterranea, 347

Gombo, 189
Gooseberry, 276
Gossypium arboreum, 408

barbadense, 408

herbaceum, 402

Gonrd, 245, 249

, snake, 273

, towel, 269

Grass, China, 146
Grass, guinea, 115
Green gram, 346
Guava, 241

Haricot bean, 338

Iledysarium coronarinm, 104

Helianthus tuberosus, 42

Hemp, 148

Henna, 138

Hibiscus esculentus, 189

Holcus saccharatus, 382

Sorghum, 380

Hop, 162

llordeum distichon, 367

hesastichon, 369

■ vulgare, 3fiS

Horse-radish, 33
Hamulus Lupulus, 162

Ilex paragnarionsis, 135
Indian fig, 274
Indigo, American, 137

, dyer's, 136

, silver, 137

Indigofera argentea, 137

cerulea, 137

tiuctoria, 136

Ipomea mammosa, 57

466

i^;dex.

Jack-fruit, 209

Janibosa Malaoconsis, 241

vulgaris, 240

Jatropha iiianihot, 59
Jerusalem artichoke, 42
Juiiflans regia, 425
Jujube, common, 194

, Indian, 197

, Louis, 196

juLe, lao

Kidney bean, 338

, moth, 344

■ , tbrce-lobed, 345

Kiery, 352
Klujt, 131.
Konjak, 76

Lablab, 347
Lagenaria vulgaris, 245
Lamb's lettuce, 91
Latlivrus Cicora, 109

. Ocbrus, 110

sativus. 111

Lattuca scariola, 95
Lavvsonia alba, 138
Leek, 101
Lemon, 178
Lens esctilenta, 221
Lentil, 321
Lepidam sativum, 86
Lettuce, 95

, lamb's, 91

Linum usitatissiraum, 119

Litchi, 314

Longan, 315

Lotos jujube, 196

Lubia, 347

Lucern, 102

Lucuma Ca'imlto, 285

mammosa, 286

Lupin, 325
Lupinus albus, 325

termis, 327

Lycopersicum esculentnra, 290

M

Madder, 41
Madia sativa, 418
Maize, 387
Malay upple, 241
Mammee, 199

americann, 189

Sapota, 286

Mandarin, 188
Mandubi, 411
Mangifera indica, 200
Mango, 200
Mangosteen, 188
Manioc, 59

Maniliot utilissima, 59
Maranta arundinacea, 81
Marmalade plum, 286
Mate, 135

Medicago sativa, 102
Melon, 258

, pum])kin, 256

, water, 202

, wliito gourd, 2G8

Millet, common, 276

, Italian, 278

Mrmordica cylindrica, 269
Monkey-nut, 411
Moras alba, 149

nigra, 152

Mulberry, 149
Mung, 346
Musk pumpkin, 356
MyrJstica fragrans, 419

N

Nepbelinm lappaceum, 315

litchi, 314

longana, 315

New Zealand spinach, 89
Nicotiana tabacum, 139
Nutmeg, 419

Oats, 372
Ochro, 189
Ochriis, 111
Oil -palm, 429
Olea eurojiea, 279

INDEX.

4C7

Olive, 279
Onion, 66

, spring or VVelsVi, 6S

Onobrycbis sativa, lOi
Opnntia ficus ludica, 271
Orange, 181

, bitter, 185

, sweet, 183

Ornithopus sativns, 113
Orjza sativa, 385

Palm, cocoa-nnt, 429

oil, 429

Panicum italicum, 378

maximum, 115

miliaceum, 376

Papava somniferam, 397

Papaw, 293

Papaya vulgaris, 293

Parslev, 90

Pea, 327

, field, 327

, garden, 323

nut, 411

, piorcou, 382

Peach, 221
Pear, 229

, avocado, 272

, Chinese, 233

, pricklr, 27^1

, sand, 233

, snowy, 232

Pepper, red, 288
Persea gratissima, 293
Persica vulgaris, 221
Petroselinani sativum, 90
Phaseolus aconitifolius, 315

lunatas, 341]

Mungo, 346

Ttilgaris, 338

FhcDnix dactylifera, 301
Pigeon-pea, 333
Pine-apple, 311
Pistachio nut, 316
Pistacia vera, 316
Pisum arvense, 327

Ochrus, 111

sativum, 323

Plum, 211

21

Polygonum emarginaium, 351

fagopyrnm, 348

tataricam, 353

Pomegranate, 327
Poppy, 397

Portulaca oleracea, 87
Potato, 45

, sweet, 83

Prickly pear, 274
Prunus Amygdalus. 213

Armeniaca, 215

avium, 205

Gerasus, 207

domestica, 212

insititia, 214

Persica, 221

Psidium gnayava, 211
Pumpkin, fig-leaved, 257

, musk or melon, 256

Punica Granatum, 237

Purslane, S7

Pyrus communis, 229

malus, 233

nivalis, 233

—— sinensis, 233

Q

Quince, 236
Qainoa, 351

Q

Eadish, 29

, horse, 33

Kambutan, 315
Eaphanus sativus, 29
Ehus Goriaria, 133
Kibes Grossularis, 276

nigrum, 278

rubrum, 277

Uva-crispa, 276

Kice, 385

Eicinus communis, 422
Kocambole, 72
Eose-apple, 240
Eubia tinctorum, 41
Eye, 370

468

INDEX.

S

Sacchai-atum officinale, 154
Saffron. IbG
Sainfoin, 104

, Spanish, 104

Salsifr, 44

Sapod'illa, 286

Sapota achias, 288

Scandix ceiefoliiim, 90

Scorzonera bispanica, 44

Secale cereale, 370

Sechinm edule, 272

Sesame, 419

Sesamum inJicam, 419

Setaiia Italica, 380

Shaddock, 177

Shallot, 68

Siara Sisarum, 39

Skirret, 39

Smyrnium Olus-atrum, 91

Snake gourd, 272

Solanum Commorsonii, 46

immite, 49

maglia, 49

tuberosum, 45

verrucosus, 49

Sorghum saccharatus, 382

vulgaris, 380

Sour sop, 173

Soy, 330

Spanish sainfoin, 104

Spelt, 362

Spergula arvensis, 114

Spinach, 98

, New Zealand, 87

Spinacia oleracea, 98
Spondias dulcis, 202
Spurry, corn, 114
Strawberry, 203

, Chili, 205

, Virginian, 205

Sugar apple, 168

cane, 154

Sumach, 133
Sweet potato, 83
sop, IGS

Tahiti apple, 202

Tare, 108

Tea, 117

Tetragonia exi>ansa, 89

Thea sinensis, 117

Theobroma Cacao, 313

Tobacco, 139

Towel gourd, 269

Trigonella Foennm-griBCum, 112

Trifolium Alexaudrinum, 107

incaniatuin, 146

pratense, 105

Triticum oestivum, 354

compositum, 359

dicoccum, 365

durum, 360

hybemum, 354

moncoccaui, 365

polonicum, 361

spelta, 262

vulgare, 354

Turnip, 36

Valerianella nlitoria, 89
Vetch, chickling, 110

, common, 108

Vicia ervilla, 107

sativa, 108

Vine, 191

Vitis vinifera, 191

Voandzeia subterranea, 3 17

W

"Walnut, 245
Wheats, 354

Yams, 76

Z

Zea Mays, 387
Zizvphus jujube, 197

Lotus, 196

vulgaris, 191

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PATHOLOGV OF THE MIND. Being tlie Third Edition of
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RESPONSIBILITY IN MENTAL DISEASE. (International
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MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN: Origin of Human Faculty.
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ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75.

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