PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS.816

Sweet Sop, Sugar Apple817—Anona squamosa, LinnÆus. (In British India, Custard Apple; but this is the name of Anona muricata in America.)

The original home of this and other cultivated AnonaceÆ 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 probabilities based upon sound methods lead to true assertions, I will transcribe what I then said,818 mentioning afterwards the more recent discoveries.

“Robert Brown proved in 1818 that all the species of the genus Anona, excepting Anona senegalensis, 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 attoa and atis, which are those of the same plant in Asia, and which belong to Eastern languages. Therefore, adds de Saint-Hilaire,819 the Portuguese transported A. squamosa from their Indian to their American possessions, etc.”

Having made in 1832 a review of the family of the AnonaceÆ,820 I noticed how Mr. Brown’s botanical argument was ever growing stronger; for in spite of the considerable increase in the number of described AnonaceÆ, no Anona, nor even any species of AnonaceÆ with united ovaries, had been found to be a native of Asia. I admitted821 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.822

Facts of different kinds have since confirmed this view.

“Anona squamosa has been found wild in Asia, apparently as a naturalized plant; in Africa, and especially in America, with all the conditions of an indigenous plant. In fact, according to Dr. Royle,823 the species has been naturalized in several parts of India; but he only saw it apparently growing wild on the side of the mountain 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. Iago, of the Cape Verde group, forming woods on the hills which overlook the valley of St. Domingo.824 Since A. squamosa is only known as a cultivated plant on the neighbouring continent;825 as it is not even indicated in Guinea by Thonning,826 nor in Congo,827 nor in Senegambia,828 nor in Abyssinia and Egypt, which proves a recent introduction into Africa; lastly, as the Cape Verde Isles have lost a great part of their 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 Sloane829 and Brown830 might have been disregarded, but they are confirmed by Macfadyen.831 Martius found the species wild in the virgin forests of Para.832 He even says, ‘Sylvescentem in nemoribus paraensibus inveni,’ whence it may be inferred that these trees alone formed a forest. Splitgerber833 found it in the forests of Surinam, but he says, ‘An spontanea?’ The number of localities in this part of America is significant. I need not remind my readers that no tree growing elsewhere than on the coast has been found truly indigenous at once in tropical Asia, Africa, and America.834 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 Rumphius835 show that Anona squamosa was a plant newly cultivated in most of the islands of the Malay Archipelago. Forster does not mention the cultivation of any Anonacea in the small islands of the Pacific.836 Rheede837 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 certainly cultivated in China and in Cochin-China,838 and in the Philippine Isles,839 but we do not know from what epoch. It is doubtful whether the Arabs cultivate it.840 It was cultivated in India in Roxburgh’s day;841 he 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 gunda-gatra842 was believed to be Sanskrit, but Dr. Royle843 having consulted Wilson, the famous author of the Sanskrit dictionary, touching the antiquity of this name, he replied that it was taken from the Sabda Chanrika, a comparatively modern compilation. The names of ata, ati, are found in Rheede and Rumphius.844 This is doubtless the foundation of Saint-Hilaire’s argument; but a nearly similar name is given to Anona squamosa in Mexico. This name is ate, ahate di Panucho, found in Hernandez845 with two similar and rather poor figures which may be attributed either to A. squamosa, as Dunal846 thinks, or to A. cherimolia, according to Martius.847 Oviedo uses the name anon.848 It is very possible that the name ata was introduced into Brazil from Mexico and the neighbouring countries. It may also, I confess, have come from the Portuguese colonies in the East Indies. Martius says, however, that the species was imported from the West India Islands.849 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,850 describes A. squamosa without speaking of its origin.“The sum total of the facts is altogether in favour of an American origin. The locality where the species usually appears wild is in the forests of Para. Its cultivation is ancient in America, since Oviedo is one of the first authors (1535) who has written about this country. No doubt its cultivation is of ancient date in Asia likewise, 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. Moreover, 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 different authors:—

1. The argument drawn from the fact that there is no Asiatic species of the genus Anona is stronger than ever. A. Asiatica, LinnÆus, was based upon errors (see my note in the GÉogr. Bot., p. 862). A. obtusifolia (Tussac, Fl. des Antilles, i. p. 191, pl. 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 (A. muricata) 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,851 and a larger number than formerly in America.

2. The authors of recent Asiatic floras do not hesitate to consider the AnonÆ, particularly A. squamosa, which is here and there found apparently wild, as naturalized in the neighbourhood of cultivated ground and of European settlements.8523. In the new African floras already quoted, A. squamosa and the others of which I shall speak presently are always mentioned as cultivated species.

4. McNab, the horticulturist, found A. squamosa in the dry plains of Jamaica,853 which confirms the assertions of previous authors. Eggers says854 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 cultivated.855 However, M. AndrÉ 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 wanting, which renders the matter doubtful. From the note on the ticket, it is a delicious fruit like that of A. squamosa. Warming856 mentions the species as cultivated at Lagoa Santa in Brazil. It appears, therefore, to be cultivated or naturalized 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—Anona muricata, LinnÆus.

This fruit-tree,857 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.858 It is sometimes naturalized on the continent of South America near dwellings.859 AndrÉ brought specimens from the district of Cauca in New Granada, but he does not say they were wild, and I see that Triana (Prodr. Fl. Granat.) only mentions it as cultivated.

Custard Apple in the West Indies, Bullock’s Heart in the East Indies—Anona reticulata, LinnÆus.

This Anona, figured in Descourtilz, Flore MÉdicale des Antilles, ii. pl. 82, and in the Botanical Magazine, pl. 2912, is wild in Cuba, Jamaica, St. Vincent, Guadeloupe, Santa Cruz, and Barbados,860 and also in the island of Tobago in the Bay of Panama,861 and in the province of Antioquia in New Granada.862 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 plantations in Southern Asia. According to Welwitsch, it has naturalized itself from cultivation in Angola, in Western Africa,863 and this has also taken place in British India.864

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 FeuillÉe (Obs., iii. pl. 17), while the flower is well represented in pl. 2011 of the Botanical Magazine, under the name of A. tripetala.

In 1855, I wrote as follows, touching the origin of the species:865 “The chirimoya is mentioned by Lamarck and Dunal as growing in Peru; but FeuillÉe, who was the first to speak of it,866 says that it is cultivated. Macfadyen867 says it abounds in the Port Royal 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; Martius in Brazil,868 where the seeds had been introduced from Peru. The species is cultivated in the Cape Verde Islands, and on the coast of Guinea,869 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.”870

My doubts are now lessened, thanks to a kind communication from M. Ed. AndrÉ. 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 naturalized.871 Grisebach asserts that it is wild from Peru to Mexico, but he gives no proof. AndrÉ 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 immemorial.872 However, Molina, who mentions several fruit trees in the ancient plantations of the country, does not speak of it.873

In conclusion, I consider it most probable that the species is indigenous in Ecuador, and perhaps in the neighbouring part of Peru.

Oranges and Lemons—Citrus, LinnÆus.

The different varieties of citrons, lemons, oranges, shaddocks, etc., cultivated in gardens have been the subject of remarkable works by several horticulturists, among which Gallesio and Risso874 hold the first 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,875 who was himself a collector in India, the work of Brandis876 is the best on the Citrus of this region, and he follows it in his flora. I shall do likewise in default of a monograph 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.877

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 important works of Pierre, now in course of publication, will give information on this head for Cochin-China. With regard to China, I will quote the following passage from Dr. Bretschneider,878 which is interesting from the special knowledge of the writer:—“Oranges, of which there are a great variety in China, are counted by 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-king, Rh-ya, and other ancient works.”

Men and birds disperse the seeds of AurantiaceÆ, whence results the extension of its area, and its naturalization in all the warm regions of the two worlds. It was observed879 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 fruit 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 illustrations of the fruit may be seen in Duhamel, TraitÉ des Arbres, edit. 2, vii. pl. 42, and in Tussac, Flore des Antilles, iii. pls. 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 naturalization, following frequent cultivation. Roxburgh says that the species was brought to Calcutta from Java,880 and Rumphius881 believed it to be a native of Southern China. Neither he nor modern botanists saw it wild in the Malay Archipelago.882 In China the species has a simple name, yu; but its written character883 appears too complicated 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.884 It is in the islands to the east of the Malay Archipelago that the clearest indications of a wild existence are found. Forster885 formerly said of this species, “very common in the Friendly Isles.” Seemann886 is yet 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 indigenous 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 first introduced the species into the West Indies.887

Citron, Lemon—Citrus medica, LinnÆus.

This tree, like the common orange, is glabrous in all its parts. Its fruit, longer than it is wide, is surmounted 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.888

Brandis and Sir Joseph Hooker distinguish four cultivated varieties:—

1. Citrus medica proper (citron in English, cedratier in French, cedro in Italian), with large, not spherical fruit, whose highly aromatic rind is covered with lumps, and of which the juice is neither abundant nor very acid. According to Brandis, it was called vijapÛra in Sanskrit.

2. Citrus medica Limonum (citronnier in French, lemon in English). Fruit of average size, not spherical, and abundant acid juice.

3. Citrus medica acida (C. acida, Roxburgh). Lime in English. Small flowers, fruit small and variable in shape, juice very acid. According to Brandis, the Sanskrit name was jambira.

4. Citrus medica 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 sweet lime.

The botanist Wight affirms that this last variety is wild in the Nilgherry Hills. Other forms, which answer more or less exactly to the three other varieties, have been found wild by several Anglo-Indian botanists889 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 different forms of prehistoric antiquity.

I doubt whether its area includes China or the Malay Archipelago. Loureiro mentions Citrus medica 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.890 Lastly, several of Rumphius’ illustrations show varieties cultivated in the Sunda Islands, but none of these are considered by the author as really wild and indigenous to the country. To indicate the locality, he sometimes used the expression “in hortis sylvestribus,” which might be translated shrubberies. Speaking of his Lemon sussu (vol. ii. pl. 25), which is a Citrus medica 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 flora of the Dutch Indies,891 does not hesitate to say that Citrus medica 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 Mesopotamia 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. Theophrastus892 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.893 It evidently applies to Citrus medica; 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,894 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,895 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 which was a cedar, or a Thuya, of the totally different family of ConiferÆ.

The Hebrews must have known the citron before the Romans, because of their frequent relations with 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 hadar 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 hadar 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 strange 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 persicum, at their feasts, one of the Greek names for the citron.

The varieties with very acid fruit, like Limonum and acida, 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, from 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 “lumias” which were cultivated near Palermo, and Tuscany had them also towards the same period.896

Orange—Citrus Aurantium, LinnÆus (excl. var. ?); Citrus Aurantium, Risso.

Oranges are distinguished from shaddocks (C. decumana) by the complete absence of down on the young shoots and leaves, by their smaller fruit, always spherical, and by a thinner rind. They differ from lemons and citrons in their pure white flowers; in the fruit, which 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 orange from more or less bitter fruits. This difference appeared to me of such slight importance from the botanical point of view, when I studied the question of origin in 1855, that I was inclined, with Risso, to consider these two sorts of orange as simple varieties. Modern Anglo-Indian authors do the same. They add a third variety, which 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 oranges yield 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 oranges grafted on bitter orange trees or lemon trees. The result has always been trees bearing sweet fruit; and the same has been observed for more than sixty years by all the gardeners of Finale. There is no instance of a bitter orange tree from seed of sweet oranges, nor of a sweet orange 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.”897

Macfadyen,898 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 say, “that the bitter orange was the original stock.” He asserts that in calcareous soil the sweet orange may be 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,899 while, according to Dr. Ernst, at Caracas they sometimes yield sour but not bitter fruit.900 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 degree of heredity, 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 succession, to explain their origin and the extent of their cultivation at different epochs.

Bitter Orange—Arancio forte in Italian, bigaradier in French, pomeranze in German. Citrus vulgaris, Risso; C. aurantium (var. bigaradia), Brandis and Hooker.

It was unknown to the Greeks and Romans, as well as the sweet orange. As they had had communication 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 orange—nagarunga, nagrunga.901 It is from this that the word orange came, for the Hindus turned it into narungee (pron. naroudji), according to Royle, nerunga according to Piddington; the Arabs into narunj, according to Gallesio, the Italians into naranzi, arangi, and in the mediÆval Latin it was arancium, arangium, afterwards aurantium.902 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 descriptive names given to the orange or to the tree, and had found seventeen, which 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 different to that of the sweet orange. Besides, the Arabs, who carried the orange tree with them towards the West, were first acquainted with the bitter orange, and gave it the name narunj,903 and their physicians from the tenth century prescribed the bitter juice of this fruit.904 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 year 1002, probably a result of the incursions of the Arabs. It was they who 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 1498.905 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 AurantiaceÆ, and its site is altogether arbitrary, since the imagination of the ancients was wonderfully fertile.

The early Anglo-Indian botanists, such as Roxburgh, Royle, Griffith, Wight, had not come across the bitter orange wild; but there is every probability that the eastern region of India was its original country. Wallich mentions Silhet,906 but without asserting that the species was wild in this locality. Later, Sir Joseph Hooker907 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). Citrus fusca, Loureiro,908 similar, he says, to pl. 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 Aurantium sinense, Gallesio.

Royle909 says that sweet oranges grow wild at Silhet and in the Nilgherry Hills, but his assertion is not accompanied with sufficient 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 British India; they only give it as cultivated. Kurz does not mention it in his forest flora of British Burmah. Further east, in Cochin-China, Loureiro910 describes a C. Aurantium, 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 remarkable a fruit tree. On this historical point Gallesio’s study of ancient authors has produced extremely interesting 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 apparently 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 melarancie assai, ma tutte dolci” (there are plenty of oranges, but all sweet.) Neither this writer nor subsequent travellers expressed surprise at the pleasant taste of the fruit. Hence Gallesio infers that the Portuguese were not the first to bring the sweet orange 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 already 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;911 but Targioni quotes from Valeriani a statute of Fermo, of the fourteenth century, referring to citrons, sweet oranges, etc.;912 and the information recently collected from early authors by Goeze,913 about the introduction into Spain and Portugal, agrees with this date. It therefore appears to me probable 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 expressions, Portugal and Lisbon oranges, are due to this circumstance.

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, therefore, be less ancient.

In the Malay Archipelago the sweet orange was believed to come from China.914 It was but little diffused in the Pacific Isles at the time of Cook’s voyages.915

We come back thus by all sorts of ways to the idea that the sweet variety of the orange came from China 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 nobilis, 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.916 Rumphius had seen it cultivated in all the Sunda Islands,917 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 (pl. 608).

According to Loureiro,918 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,919 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, LinnÆus.

There is a good illustration in the Botanical Magazine, pl. 4847, of this tree, belonging to the order GuttiferÆ, of which the fruit is considered one of the best in existence. 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,920 and, transported to Jamaica, it bears but poor fruit.921 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 Islands922 and of the Malay Peninsula.923 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—Mammea Americana, Jacquin.

This tree, of the order GuttiferÆ, requires, like the mangosteen, great heat. Although much cultivated in the West Indies and in the hottest parts of Venezuela,924 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.925 Jacquin mentions it also for the neighbouring continent, but I do not find this confirmed by modern authors. The best illustration is that in Tussac’s Flore des Antilles, iii. pl. 7, and this author gives a number of details respecting the use of the fruit.

Ochro, or Gombo—Hibiscus esculentus, LinnÆus.

The young fruits of this annual, of the order of MalvaceÆ, form one of the most delicate of tropical vegetables. 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. When I formerly926 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. However, as the modern flora of British India927 mentions it as “probably of 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,928 but I can discover no similar assertion on the part 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. Marcgraf929 had observed it in Brazilian plantations, and as he mentions a name from the Congo and Angola country, quillobo, which the Portuguese corrupted into quingombo, the African origin is hereby indicated.

Schweinfurth and Ascherson930 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 specimens in Africa, but it is not specified whether these plants were cultivated or wild at a distance from habitations. We should still be in doubt if FlÜckiger and Hanbury931 had not made a bibliographical discovery which settles the question. The Arabs call the fruit bamyah, or bÂmiat, and Abul-Abas-Elnabati, who visited Egypt long before the discovery of America, in 1216, has distinctly described the gombo then cultivated 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 according to Unger.932 The existence of one name in modern Indian languages, according to Piddington, confirms the idea of its propagation towards the East after the beginning of the Christian era.

Vine—Vitis vinifera, LinnÆus.

The vine grows wild in the temperate regions of Western Asia, Southern Europe, Algeria, and Marocco.933 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 Badakkhan to the north of the Hindu Koosh.934 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,” perhaps wild, or become wild (verwildert is the expressive German term).

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, 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 area 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 of 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,935 in a prehistoric settlement of Lake Varese,936 and in the lake-dwellings of Wangen, Switzerland, but in the latter instance at an uncertain depth.937 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 prehistoric,938 though later than the tertiary epoch of geologists.939

A Russian botanist, Kolenati,940 has made some very interesting 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 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 neighbourhood. 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 Regel’s more recent work on the genus Vitis;941 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,942 who has, in common with numerous authors, but in a more scientific manner, considered the historical, philological, and even mythological questions relating to the vine among ancient peoples, 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 they 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 thousand years.943 In the West the propagation of its culture by the Phoenicians, 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.944

It is known that several wild vines exist in the north of China, but I cannot agree with M. Regel in considering Vitis Amurensis, Ruprecht, the one most analogous to our vine, as identical in species. The seeds drawn in the Gartenflora, 1861, pl. 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—Zizyphus vulgaris, Lamarck.

According to Pliny,945 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,946 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.947

The result of the search for the origin of the jujube tree as a wild plant bears out Pliny’s assertion, in spite 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 mountainous places.” He had seen the thornless variety in gardens. Bretschneider948 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.949 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.

Brandis950 gives seven different names for the jujube tree (or for its varieties) in modern Indian languages, but no Sanskrit name is known. The species was therefore probably introduced into India from China, at no very distant epoch, and it must have escaped from cultivation 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, Zizyphus lotus. At least, such is the opinion of the critic and modern botanist, Lenz.951 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 zizyphus (fruit zizyphum) of Pliny, which does not occur in earlier authors, and seems to be rather of an Oriental than of a Latin character. Heldreich952 does not admit that the jujube tree is wild in Greece, and others say “naturalized, half-wild,” which confirms the hypothesis of a 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.953 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 introduced 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 beginning of our era, and that the latter carried it into Barbary and Spain, where it became partially naturalized by the effect of cultivation.

Lotus Jujube—Zizyphus 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 Herod and Herodotos954 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 Theophrastus955 asserts, however, that there were some species of lotus without stones, which would imply cultivation. They were planted in gardens, as is still done in modern Egypt,956 but it does not seem to have been a common custom even among the ancients.

For the rest, widely different opinions have been held touching the lotus of the lotus-eaters,957 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, Terracina, and the neighbourhood of Palermo.958 In isolated Italian localities it has probably escaped from cultivation.

Indian Jujube959—Zizyphus jujube, Lamarck; ber among the Hindus and Anglo-Indians, masson in the Mauritius.

This jujube is cultivated further south than the common 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. pl. 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 Egypt as far as Marocco, and even to Senegal, Guinea, and Angola.960 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.961 The 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 outside gardens.962 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, and Kurz has often seen it in the dry forests of that country, near Ava and Prome.963 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.964 In the seventeenth century Rheede965 described this tree as wild on the Malabar coast, and botanists 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.966

It had been recently introduced into the eastern islands of the Amboyna group when Rumphius was living there,967 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 Egypt 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.968

Cashew—Anacardium occidentale, LinnÆus.

The most erroneous assertions about the origin of this species were formerly made,969 and in spite of what I said on the subject in 1855,970 I find them occasionally reproduced.

The French name Pommier d’acajou (mahogany apple tree) is as absurd as it is possible to be. It is a tree belonging to the order of TerebintaceÆ or AnacardiaceÆ, very different from the RosaceÆ and the MeliaceÆ, to which the apple and the mahogany belong. The edible part is more like a pear than an apple, and botanically speaking is not a fruit, but the receptacle or support of the fruit, which resembles a large bean. The two names, French and English, are both derived from a name given to it by the natives of Brazil, acaju, acajaiba, quoted by early travellers.971 The species is certainly wild in the forests of tropical America, and indeed occupies a wide area in that region; it is found, for example, in Brazil, Guiana, the Isthmus of Panama, and the West Indies.972 Dr. Ernst973 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.974 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 difference 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.975 Moreover, Rumphius, who is always accurate, spoke of an ancient introduction by the Portuguese into the Malay Archipelago from America. The Malay name he gives, cadju, is American; that used at Amboyna means Portugal fruit, that of Macassar was taken from the resemblance of the fruit to that of the jambosa. Rumphius says that the species was not widely diffused in the islands. Garcia ab Orto did not find it at Goa in 1550, but Acosta afterwards 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. Rheede, it is true, says it is abundant (provenit ubique) on the coast of Malabar, but he only quotes one name which seems to be Indian, kapa 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.976

It is yet more doubtful that the tree is indigenous in Africa, indeed it is easy to disprove the assertion. Loureiro977 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.978 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 cultivated there.979 A tree which occupies such a large area in America, and which has become naturalized in several districts of India within the last two centuries, would exist over a great extent of tropical Africa if it were indigenous in that quarter of the globe.

Mango—Mangifera indica, LinnÆus.

Belonging to the same order as the Cashew, this tree nevertheless produces a true fruit, something the colour of the apricot.980

It is impossible to doubt that it is a native of the south of Asia or of the Malay Archipelago, when we see the multitude of varieties cultivated in these countries, the number of ancient common names, in particular a Sanskrit name,981 its abundance in the gardens of Bengal, of the Dekkan Peninsula, and of Ceylon, even in Rheede’s time. Its cultivation was less diffused in the direction of China, for Loureiro only mentions its existence in Cochin-China. According to Rumphius,982 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. The name common in the Philippine Isles, manga,983 shows a foreign origin, for it is the Malay and Spanish name. The common name in Ceylon is ambe, akin to the Sanskrit amra, whence the Persian and Arab amb,984 the modern Indian names, and perhaps the Malay, mangka, manga, manpelaan, indicated by Rumphius. There are, however, other names used in the Sunda Islands, in the Moluccas, and in Cochin-China. The variety of these names argues an ancient introduction into the East Indian Archipelago, in spite of the opinion of Rumphius.

The Mangifera which this author had seen wild in Java, and Mangifera sylvatiea 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.985 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 British India, the species is probably rare or only naturalized in the Indian Peninsula. The size of the stone is too great to allow of its being transported by birds, 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 Sanskrit 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 tropical Africa, and even in Mauritius and the Seychelles, where it has become to some extent naturalized in the woods.986

In the new world it was first introduced into Brazil, for the seeds were brought thence to Barbados in the middle of the last century.987 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 wonderfully. When the coffee plantations were abandoned, at the time of the emancipation of the slaves, the mango, whose stones the negroes scattered everywhere, formed forests in every part of the islands, and these are now valued both for their shade and as a form of food.988 It was not cultivated in Cayenne in the time of Aublet, at the end of the eighteenth century, 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.989

Tahiti Apple—Spondias dulcis, Forster.

This tree belongs to the family of the AnacardiaceÆ, and is indigenous in the Society, Friendly, and Fiji Islands.990 The natives consumed quantities of the fruit at the time of Cook’s voyage. It is like a large plum, of the colour of an apple, and contains a stone covered with long hooked bristles.991 The flavour, according to travellers, 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,992 and in the West Indies. It was introduced 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, LinnÆus.

Our common strawberry is one of the most widely diffused 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 Isles993 to the mountain ranges in the south; in Madeira, Spain, Sicily, and in Greece.994 It is also found in Asia, from Armenia and the north of Syria995 to Dahuria. The strawberries of the Himalayas and of Japan,996 which several authors have attributed to this species, do not perhaps belong to it,997 and this makes me doubt the assertion of a missionary998 that it is found in China. It is wild in Iceland,999 in the north-east of the United States,1000 round Fort Cumberland, and on the north-west coast,1001 perhaps even in the Sierra-Nevada of California.1002 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 PrimitiÆ FlorÆ 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.1003

The Greeks and Romans did not cultivate the strawberry. Its cultivation was probably introduced in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. Champier, in the sixteenth century, speaks of it as a novelty in the north of France,1004 but it already existed in the south, and in England.1005

Transported into gardens in the colonies, the strawberry has become naturalized in a few cool localities far from dwellings. This is the case in Jamaica,1006 in Mauritius,1007 and in Bourbon, where some plants had been placed by 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 red with the juice, mixed with volcanic dust.1008 It is probable 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 de 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 Fruitier du MusÉum by Decaisne. These authors have overcome great difficulties in distinguishing the varieties and hybrids which are multiplied in gardens from the true species, and in defining these by well-marked characters. Some strawberries whose 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.

Virginian 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,1009 was introduced into English gardens in 1629.1010 It was much cultivated in France in the last century, but its hybrids with other species are now more esteemed.

Chili Strawberry—Fragaria Chiloensis, Duchesne.

A species common in Southern Chili, at Conception, Valdivia, and Chiloe,1011 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 flavour have produced by different crossings, especially with F. virginiana, the highly prized varieties Ananas, Victoria, Trollope, Rubis, etc.

Bird-Cherry—Prunus avium, LinnÆus; SÜsskirschbaum in German.

I use the word cherry because it is customary, and has no inconvenience when speaking of cultivated species or varieties, but the study of allied wild species confirms the opinion of LinnÆus, 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, LinnÆus, tall, with no suckers from the roots, leaves downy on the under side, the fruit sweet; 2. Prunus cerasus, LinnÆus, 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;1012 in Europe in the south of Russia proper, and generally from the south of Sweden to the mountainous parts of Greece, Italy, and Spain.1013 It even exists in Algeria.1014

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 place.1015 It cannot be doubted that it was thus naturalized, from cultivation, in the north of India,1016 in many of the plains of the south of Europe, in Madeira,1017 and here and there in the United States;1018 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 migrations of nations, perhaps before there were men in Europe. Its area must have extended in this region as the glaciers diminished.

The common names in ancient languages have been the subject of a learned article by Adolphe Pictet,1019 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 nomenclature. It is far more important to know whether archÆology can tell us anything about the presence of the bird-cherry in Europe in prehistoric times. Heer gives an illustration of the stones of Prunus avium, in his paper on the lake-dwellings of Western Switzerland.1020 From what he was kind enough to write to me, April 14, 1881, these stones were found in the peat formed above the ancient deposits of the age of stone. De Mortillet1021 found similar cherry-stones in the lake-dwellings of Bourget belonging to an epoch not very remote, more recent than the stone age. Dr. Gross sent me some from the locality, also comparatively recent, of Corcelette on Lake NeuchÂtel, and Strobel and Pigorini discovered some in the “terramare” of Parma.1022 All these are settlements posterior to the stone age, and perhaps belonging 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—Prunus cerasus, LinnÆus; Cerasus vulgaris, Miller; Baumweichsel, Sauerkirschen, in German.

The Montmorency and griotte cherries, and several other kinds known to horticulturists, are derived from this species.1023

Hohenacker1024 saw Prunus cerasus at Lenkoran, near the Caspian Sea, and Koch1025 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.1026 Grisebach1027 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 Pontus, though they received or brought back several specimens of P. avium.1028

In the north of India, P. cerasus exists only as a cultivated plant.1029 The 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 Steven1030 only saw it cultivated; and Rehmann1031 gives only the allied species, P. chamÆcerasus, 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 only knows it as a cultivated species.1032 In Dalmatia,1033 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 Italy1034 and in the centre of France,1035 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 passages1036 in Theophrastus, Pliny, and other ancient authors appear to apply to P. cerasus.1037 The most important, that of Theophrastus, belongs to Prunus avium, because of the height of the tree, a character which distinguishes it from P. cerasus. Kerasos being the name for the bird-cherry in Theophrastus, as now kerasaia among the modern Greeks, I notice a linguistic proof of the antiquity of P. cerasus. The Albanians, descendants of the Pelasgians, call the latter vyssine, an ancient name which reappears in the German Wechsel, and the Italian visciolo.1038 As the Albanians have also the name kerasie 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)—

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.1039 Comes calls them Prunus cerasus.

Any archÆological discovery would be more convincing. The stones of the two species present a difference 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 prehistoric 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-archÆological stratum.1040

From all these data, somewhat contradictory and sufficiently vague, I am inclined to admit that Prunus 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 transcribed from authors, even modern ones, who attribute, after Pliny, the introduction of the cherry into Italy to this rich Roman, in the year 65 B.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 Prunus 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 Prunus 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 fine 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 differ but little in character, and, what is very rare, their two ancient habitations, which are most clearly proved, 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 P. cerasus is, therefore, perhaps derived from the other in prehistoric times. I come thus, by a different road, to an idea suggested by Caruel;1041 only, instead of saying that it would perhaps be better to unite them 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.

Pliny1042 speaks of the immense quantity of plums known in his time: ingens turba prunorum. Horticulturists now number more than three hundred. Some botanists have tried to attribute these to distinct wild species, but they have not always 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 cultivated forms, and I think that labour useless when dealing with the question of geographical origin, for the differences 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 years that botanists have given really comparative characters for the three species or varieties which exist in nature.1043 They may be summed up as follows:—

Prunus domestica, LinnÆus. Tree or tall shrub, without thorns; young branches glabrous; flowers appearing with the leaves, their peduncles usually downy; fruit pendulous, ovoid and of a sweet flavour.

Prunus insititia, LinnÆus. Tree or tall shrub, without thorns; young shoots covered with a velvet down; flowers appearing with the leaves, with peduncles covered with a fine down, or glabrous; fruit pendulous, round or slightly elliptical, of a sweet flavour.

Prunus spinosa, LinnÆus. 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. Therefore, unless we interpret by hypothesis what may have happened before all observation, it seems to me impossible 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 which have not been modified by cultivation, and hitherto this has not been done. At most the fusion of the two 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.1044

Common Plum—Prunus domestica, LinnÆus; Zwetchen in German.

Several botanists1045 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 mentioned 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 which is uncertain, 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 from the days of Pliny. It is supposed that this was the species referred to by Dioscorides1046 under the name of Syrian coccumelea, growing at Damascus. Karl Koch relates that the merchants trading on the borders of China told him that the species was common in the forests 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 Amur, it is very probable that the species seen in China are different to ours. This appears also to be the result of Bretschneider’s statements.1047

It is very doubtful if Prunus domestica is indigenous 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.” Fraas1048 affirms that it is not wild in Greece, and this is confirmed as far as Attica is concerned by Heldreich.1049 Steven1050 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.1051 Neither has Prunus domestica been found among the remains of the lake-dwellings of Italy, Switzerland, and Savoy, where, however, stones of Prunus insititia and spinosa have been discovered. From these facts, and the small number of words attributable to this species in Greek authors, it may be 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, LinnÆus;1052 Pflauenbaum and Haferschlehen in German.

This kind of plum grows wild in the south of Europe.1053 It has also been found in Cilicia, Armenia, to the south of the Caucasus, and in the province of Talysch near the Caspian Sea.1054 It is especially in Turkey in Europe and to the south of the Caucasus that it appears to be truly wild. In Italy and in Spain it is perhaps less so, although trustworthy authors who have seen the plant growing 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 agrees with archÆological and historical data. The ancient Greeks distinguished the Coccumelea of their country from those of Syria,1055 whence it is inferred that the former were Prunus insititia. This seems the more likely that the modern Greeks call it coromeleia.1056 The Albanians say corombile,1057 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 which each nation may have given to one or another species, perhaps also to some cultivated variety, without any rule. The names which have been much commented upon in learned works generally, appear to me to apply to any plum or plum tree without having any very defined meaning.

No stones of P. insititia have yet been found in the terra-mare of Italy, but Heer has described and given illustrations of some which were found in the lake-dwellings of Robenhausen.1058 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 armeniaca, LinnÆus; Armenica vulgaris, Lamarck.

The Greeks and Romans received the apricot about the beginning of the Christian era. Unknown in the time of Theophrastus, Dioscorides1059 mentions it under the name of mailon armeniacon. He says that the Latins called it praikokion. It is, in fact, one of the fruits mentioned briefly by Pliny,1060 under the name of prÆcocium, so called from the precocity of the species.1061 Its Armenian origin is indicated by the Greek name, but 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, GÜldenstÄdt, 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.1062 Boissier1063 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 other hand, Tchihatcheff1064 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:1065 “Native country 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,1066 said he found it wild near Orgou and Outch Hisar in Anatolia: but this assertion has not been verified by a botanist. The supposed wild apricot of the ruins of Baalbek, described by EusÈbe de Salle1067 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. Spach1068 asserts that it is indigenous in Persia, but he gives no proof. Boissier and Buhse1069 do not mention it in their list of the plants of Transcaucasia and Persia. It is useless to seek its origin in Africa. The apricots which Reynier1070 says he saw, “almost wild,” in Upper Egypt must have sprung from stones grown in cultivated ground, as is seen in Algeria.1071 Schweinfurth and Ascherson,1072 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 introduction at Rome took place thirty years before he wrote.

Carrying our researches eastward, we find that Anglo-Indian botanists1073 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. Messrs. Schlagintweit brought specimens from the northwest provinces of India, and from Thibet, which Westmael verified,1074 but he was kind enough to write to me that he cannot affirm that it was wild, since the collector’s label gives no information on that head.

Roxburgh,1075 who did not neglect the question of origin, says, speaking of the apricot, “native of China as well as the west of Asia.” I read in Dr. Bretschneider’s curious little work,1076 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 (Prunus armeniaca). The character (a Chinese sign printed on p. 10) does not exist as indicating a fruit, either in the Shu-king, or in the Shi-king, 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-king is attributed to the Emperor YÜ, who lived in 2205-2198 B.C. Decaisne,1077 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 grows 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 that of the wild tree.”1078 Decaisne adds, in the letter he was good enough to write to me, “In shape and surface the stones are exactly like those of our small apricots; 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.1079 Perhaps the cold of the winter is too great. 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. However, if we wish to adopt this hypothesis, we must also admit that the culture of the apricot spread very late towards the West.1080 For no Sanskrit or Hebrew name is known, but only a Hindu name, zard alu, and a Persian name, mischmisch, which has passed into Arabic.1081 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 north-west of India towards the GrÆco-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.1082 It was then, perhaps, that the apricot was introduced in Western Asia, and that it was cultivated and became naturalized here and there in the north-west of India, and at the foot of the Caucasus, by the scattering of the stones beyond the limits of the plantations.

Almond—Amygdalus communis, LinnÆus; Pruni species, Baillon; Prunus Amygdalus, Hooker. The almond grows apparently wild or half wild in the warm, dry regions of the Mediterranean basin and of western temperate Asia. As the nuts from cultivated trees naturalize the species very easily, we must have recourse to various indications to discern its ancient home.

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 the north of China was the Persica Davidiana.1083 Dr. Bretschneider,1084 in his classical work, tells us that he has never seen the almond cultivated in China, and that the compilation entitled Pent-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 botanists1085 say that the almond is cultivated in the cool parts of India, but some add that it does not thrive, and that many almonds are brought from Persia.1086 No Sanskrit name is known, nor even any in the languages derived from Sanskrit. Evidently the north-west of India is not the original home 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 tree quite wild. Boissier1087 has seen specimens gathered in rocky ground in Mesopotamia, Aderbijan, Turkestan, Kurdistan, and in the forests of the Anti-Lebanon. Karl Koch1088 has not found it wild to the south of the Caucasus, nor Tchihatcheff in Asia Minor. Cosson1089 found natural woods of almond trees near Saida in Algeria. It is also regarded as wild on the coasts of Sicily and of Greece;1090 but there, and still more in the localities in which it occurs in Italy, Spain, and France, it is probable, and almost certain, that it springs from the casual dispersal of the nuts from cultivation.

The antiquity of its existence in Western Asia is proved by Hebrew names for the almond tree—schaked, luz or lus (which recurs in the Arabic louz), and schekedim for the nut.1091 The Persians have another name, badam, but I do not know how old this is. Theophrastus and Dioscorides1092 mention the almond by an entirely different 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.1093 Pliny1094 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 introduced into Italy from the Greek islands. Almonds have not been found in the terra-mare of the neighbourhood of Parma, even in the upper layers.

The late introduction of the species into Italy, and the absence of naturalization in Sardinia and Spain,1095 incline me to doubt whether it is really indigenous in the north of Africa and Sicily. In the latter countries it was more probably naturalized some centuries ago. In confirmation of this hypothesis, I note that the Berber name of the almond, talouzet,1096 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, it may be regarded as indigenous from prehistoric time. I do not say primitive, for everything was preceded by something else. I remark finally that the difference between bitter and sweet almonds was known to the Greeks and even to the Hebrews.

Peach—Amygdalus persica, LinnÆus; Persica vulgaris, Miller; Prunus persica, Bentham and Hooker.

I will quote the article in which I formerly1097 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 persica, malum persicum, indicate whence they had it. I need not dwell upon those well-known facts.1098 Several kinds of peach are now cultivated in the north of India,1099 but, what is remarkable, no Sanskrit name is known;1100 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.1101 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.1102 These varieties are very numerous;1103 and in particular the singular variety with compressed or flattened fruit,1104 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.1105

“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. Perhaps 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 peoples, who all radiated from the upper part of the Euphrates valley or 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 importation would have taken place between the epoch of the Sanskrit emigrations and the relations of the Persians with the Greeks. The cultivation of the peach, once established in Persia, would have easily spread on the one side towards the west; on the other, through Cabul 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,1106 and that the Japanese give the Chinese name Tao1107 to the peach. M. Stanislas Julien was kind enough to read to me in French some passages of the Japanese encyclopÆdia (bk. lxxxvi. 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 encyclopÆdia 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 different 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 peach has been found wild in different parts of Asia; but it is always a question whether it is indigenous 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.1108 Apparently wild peach trees have often been found in the neighbourhood of the Caucasus. Pallas1109 saw several on the banks of the Terek, where the inhabitants give it a name which he calls Persian, scheptata.1110 Its 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 the Crimea, to the south of the Caucasus, and in Persia; but Marshall, Bieberstein, Meyer, and Hohenacker do not give the wild peach in the neighbourhood of the Caucasus. Early travellers, Gmelin, Guldenstadt, and Georgi, quoted by Ledebour, mentioned it. C. Koch1111 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 BrugniÈre and Olivier brought from Ispahan, which were sown in Paris and yielded a good velvety peach, were not, as Bosc1112 asserted, taken from a peach tree wild in Persia, but from one growing in a garden at Ispahan.1113 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. Royle1114 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. Bunge1115 only found cultivated trees in the north of China. This country has hardly been explored, and Chinese legends seem sometimes to indicate wild peaches. Thus the Chou-y-ki, according to the author previously quoted, says, ‘Whosoever eats of the peaches of Mount Kouoliou shall obtain eternal life.’ For Japan, Thunberg1116 says, Crescit ubique vulgaris, prÆcipue juxta Nagasaki. In omni horto colitur ob elegantiam florum. 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. “I have said nothing hitherto of the distinction to be 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 distinction between the downy and smooth-skinned fruits (peaches proper and nectarines), on which it is proposed to found two species (Persica vulgaris, Mill, and P. levis, D. C.), exists in Japan1117 and in Europe, as in most of the intermediate countries.1118 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 elsewhere; for there are as in Europe oval peaches, and also the peaches of which I spoke just now, which are quite flattened, in which the top of the stone is not even covered with flesh.1119 The colour also varies greatly.1120 In Europe the most distinct varieties, nectarines and peaches, freestones and clingstones, existed three centuries ago, for J. Bauhin enumerates them very clearly;1121 and before him Dalechamp, in 1587, also gave the principal ones.1122 At that time nectarines were called Nucipersica, 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,1123 who confounds in his compilation peaches, plums, the Laurus Persea,1124 and perhaps other trees, says nothing which can apply to such a fruit. Sometimes people have thought they recognized it in the tuberes of which he speaks. It was a tree imported from Syria in the time of Augustus. There were both red and white tuberes. Others (tuberes? or mala?) of the neighbourhood of Verona were downy. Some graceful verses of Petronus, quoted by Dalechamp,1125 clearly prove that the tuberes of the Romans in Nero’s time were a smooth-skinned fruit; but this might be the jujube (Zizyphus), Diospyros, or some CratÆgus, just as well as the smooth-skinned peach. Each author in the time of the Renaissance had his opinion on this point, or criticized that of the others.1126 Perhaps there were two or three species of tuberes, as Pliny says, and one of them which was grafted on plum trees was the nectarine (?)1127 but I doubt whether this question can ever be cleared up.1128

“Even admitting that the Nucipersica was only introduced 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 intermixture of all the principal kinds of peach. It seems that its different qualities were produced everywhere from a primitive species, which was 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 1855, on other considerations in support of the theory that the nectarine is derived from the common peach; but Darwin has given such a large number of cases in which a branch of nectarine has unexpectedly appeared upon a peach tree, that it is useless to insist longer upon this point, and I will only add that the nectarine has every appearance of an artificial 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 multiplied from seed in America, and have produced fleshy 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.1129 On some trees the fruit is magnificent.1130 At Juan Fernandez, says Bertero,1131 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 these 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,1132 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 Candolle 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,1133 or as cultivated and becoming naturalized and apparently wild in the north-west of India.1134 Boissier1135 mentions specimens gathered in Ghilan and to the south of the Caucasus, but he says nothing as to their wild nature; and Karl Koch,1136 after travelling through this district, says, speaking of the peach, “Country unknown, perhaps Persia. Boissier saw trees growing in the gorges on Mount Hymettus, 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 cultivation, or whether it is naturalized. But it certainly was first cultivated in China; it was spoken of there two thousand years before 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 Decaisne1137 regards as species, but which other botanists are inclined to call varieties. The one is the common peach; the second the nectarine, which we know to be derived; the third is the flattened peach (P. platycarpa, Decaisne) cultivated in China; and the two last are indigenous in China (P. simonii, Decaisne, and P. Davidii, CarriÈre). 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 representations of the peach tree in the paintings on the walls of the richer houses in Pompeii.1138

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. Darwin1139 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) Crossed fertilization, which 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. Decaisne1140 pointed out differences between the almond and peach in the size and length of the leaves independently of the fruit. He calls Knight’s theory a “strange hypothesis.”

Geographical botany opposes his hypothesis, 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 different 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 communis, LinnÆus.

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,1141 perhaps even in Kashmir,1142 but this is very doubtful. Some authors hold that its area extends as far as China. This opinion 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 are covered with a fine silky down, convinced me of the specific difference of the two trees.1143

Our wild pear does not differ much from some of the cultivated varieties. Its fruit is sour, spotted, and narrowing towards the stalk, or nearly spherical on the same tree.1144 With many other cultivated species, it is hard to distinguish the individuals of wild origin from those which the chance transport of seeds has produced at a distance from dwellings. In the present case it is not difficult. Pear trees are often found in woods, and they attain to a considerable height, with all the conditions of fertility of an indigenous plant.1145 Let us examine, however, whether in the wide area they occupy a less ancient existence may be suspected in some countries than in others.

No Sanskrit name for the pear is known, whence it may be concluded that its cultivation is of no long standing 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,1146 but this is explained by the fact that the pear does not flourish in the hot countries in which these tongues were spoken.

Homer, Theophrastus, and Dioscorides mention the pear tree under the names ochnai, apios, or achras. The Latins called it pyrus or pirus,1147 and cultivated a great number of varieties, at least in Pliny’s time. The mural paintings at Pompeii frequently represent the tree with its fruit.1148

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.1149 None have been found in the lake-dwellings of Bourget in Savoy. In those of Lombardy, Professor Raggazzoni1150 found a pear cut lengthways, 25 mm. by 16. This was at Bardello, Lago di Varese. The wild pears figured in Duhamel, TraitÉ des Arbres, edit. 2, are 30 to 33 by 30 to 32 mm.; and those of Laristan, figured in the Jardin Fruitier du MusÉum under the name P. balansÆ, 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 lengthways, 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, considering 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 pyrus recur in the Keltic languages; peir in Erse, per in Kymric and Armorican.1151 I leave philologists to conjecture the Aryan origin of some of these names, and of the German Birn; I merely note their number and diversity as an indication of the 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 wanderings 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,1152 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 considered 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.1153 It seems that they may be ranked, as Decaisne says, either with P. communis 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—Pyrus nivalis, Jacquin.

This variety of pear is cultivated in Austria, in the north of Italy, and in several departments of the east and centre of France. It was named Pyrus nivalis by Jacquin1154 from the German name Schneebirne, given to it because the Austrian peasants eat the fruit when the snow is on the ground. It is called in France Poirier sauger, because the under side of the leaves is covered with a white down which makes them like the sage (Fr. sauge). Decaisne1155 considered all the varieties of P. nivalis to be derived from P. kotschyana, Boissier,1156 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.1157 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 species. It may be presumed that they did, however, since they made cider.1158

Sandy Pear, Chinese Pear—Pyrus sinensis, Lindley.1159

I have already mentioned this species, which is nearly allied to the common pear. It is wild in Mongolia and Mantchuria,1160 and cultivated in China and Japan. 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 Malus, LinnÆus.

The apple tree grows wild throughout Europe (excepting in the extreme north), in Anatolia, the south of the Caucasus, and the Persian province of Ghilan.1161 Near Trebizond, the botanist Bourgeau saw quite a small forest of them.1162 In the mountains of the north-west of India it is “apparently wild,” as Sir Joseph Hooker writes in his Flora of British India. No author mentions it as growing in Siberia, in Mongolia, or in Japan.1163

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.1164 In France accurate authors also give two wild varieties, but with characters which do not tally exactly with those of the German flora.1165 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 forms 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,1166 like Malus communis of France, described by Boreau. This indicates that its prehistoric area extended from the Caspian Sea nearly to Europe.

Piddington gives in his Index a Sanskrit name for the apple, but Adolphe Pictet1167 informs us that this name seba is Hindustani, and comes from the Persian sÊb, sÊf. 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 ab, af, av, ob, as this root recurs in several European names of Aryan origin. Pictet gives aball, ubhall, in Erse; afal in Kymric; aval in Armorican; aphal in old High German; appel in old English; apli in Scandinavian; obolys in Lithuanian; iabluko in ancient Slav; iabloko in Russian. It would appear from this that the western Aryans, finding the apple wild or already naturalized in the north of Europe, kept the name under which they had known it. The Greeks had mailea or maila, the Latins malus, malum, words whose origin, according to Pictet, is very uncertain. The Albanians, descendants of the Pelasgians, have molÉ.1168 Theophrastus1169 mentions wild and cultivated maila. Lastly, the Basques (ancient Iberians) have an entirely different name, sagara, which implies an existence in Europe prior to the Aryan invasions.

The inhabitants of the terra-mare of Parma, and of the palafittes of the lakes of Lombardy, Savoy, and Switzerland, made great use of apples. They always cut them lengthways, 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,1170 who has shown great penetration in observing these details, distinguishes two varieties of the apple known to the inhabitants of the lake-dwellings before they possessed 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. lengthways by 36 wide (dried, but not carbonized). The latter corresponds to an apple of German-Swiss orchards, now called campaner. The English wild apple, figured in English Botany, pl. 179, is 17 mm. long by 22 wide. It is possible that the little apples of the lake-dwellings were wild; however, their abundance in the stores makes it doubtful. Dr. Gross sent me two apples from the more recent palafittes of Lake NeuchÂtel; the one is 17 the other 22 mm. in longitudinal diameter. At Lagozza, in Lombardy, Sordelli1171 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 prehistoric 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 that its cultivation 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.1172 A few botanists have also found it apparently wild in the Crimea, and in the north of Greece;1173 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 did not extend towards the centre of Asia. Neither is there any Hebrew name, though the species is wild upon Mount Taurus.1174 The Persian name is haivah,1175 but I do not know whether 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 armuda.1176 The Greeks grafted upon a common variety, strution, a superior kind, which came from Cydon, in Crete, whence ??d?????, translated by the Latin malum cotoneum, by cydonia, and all the European names, such as codogno in Italian, coudougner, and later coing in French, quitte in German, etc. There are Polish, pigwa, Slav, tunja,1177 and Albanian (Pelasgian?), ftua,1178 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 antiquity 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 rites prescribed by Solon. Some authors go so far as to maintain that the apple disputed by Hera, Aphrodite, and Athene was a quince. Those who are interested in such questions will find details in Comes’s paper on the plants represented in the frescoes at Pompeii.1179 The quince tree is figured twice in these, which is not surprising, as the tree was known in Cato’s time.1180

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 granatum, LinnÆus.

The pomegranate grows wild in stony ground in Persia, Kurdistan, Afghanistan, and Beluchistan.1181 Burnes saw groves of it in Mazanderan, to the south of the Caspian Sea.1182 It appears equally wild to the south of the Caucasus.1183 Westwards, that is to say, in Asia Minor, in Greece, and in the Mediterranean basin generally, in the north of Africa and in Madeira, the species appears rather to have become naturalized from cultivation, and by the dispersal of the seeds by birds. Many floras of the south of Europe speak of it as a “subspontaneous” or naturalized species. Desfontaines, in his Atlantic Flora, gives it as wild in Algeria, but subsequent authors think1184 rather it is naturalized.1185 I doubt its being wild in Beluchistan, where the traveller Stocks found it, for Anglo-Indian botanists do not allow it to be indigenous east of the Indus, and I note the absence of the species in the collections from Lebanon and Syria which Boissier is always careful to quote.

In China the pomegranate exists only as a cultivated plant. It was introduced from Samarkhand by Chang-Kien, a century and a half before the Christian era.1186

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.1187 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 rimmon,1188 whence the Arabic rumman or rÛman. 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 shrub, but the Scriptures 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 herself planted it in the isle of Cyprus,1189 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 PhÆacia and Phrygia. They called it roia or roa, which philologists believe to be derived from the Syrian and Hebrew name,1190 and also sidai,1191 which seems to be Pelasgic, for the modern Albanian name is sige.1192 There is nothing to show that the species was wild in Greece, where Fraas and Heldreich affirm that it is now only naturalized.1193

The pomegranate enters into the myths and religious ceremonies of the ancient Romans.1194 Cato speaks of its properties as a vermifuge. According to Pliny,1195 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.1196 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 Saporta1197 as a variety of the modern Punica granatum, have been discovered in the pliocene strata of the environs of Meximieux. The species, therefore, existed under this form, before our epoch, along with several 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 enduring. I arrived at these conclusions in 1869,1198 which has not prevented the repetition of the erroneous African origin in several works.

Rose Apple—Eugenia Jambos, LinnÆus; Jambosa vulgaris, de Candolle.

This small tree belongs to the family of MyrtaceÆ. 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, pl. 3356. The seed is poisonous.1199

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 afforded by some modern writers.1200 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 noticed that it was called Malacca-schambu, which shows that it came originally from the Malay Peninsula. Lastly, Brandis says 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 instance, in the Seychelles, Mauritius, and Rodriguez, and in several of the West India Islands.1201

Malay Apple—Eugenia malaccensis, LinnÆus; Jambosa malaccensis, de Candolle.

A species allied to Eugenia jambos, but differing from it in the arrangement of its flowers, and in its fruit, 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 much1202 or little1203 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.1204 The Malay apple grows wild in the forests of the Malay Archipelago, and in the peninsula of Malacca.1205

Tussac says that it was brought to Jamaica from Otahiti in 1793. It has spread and become naturalized in several of the West India Islands, also in Mauritius and the Seychelles.1206

Guava—Psidium guayava, Raddi.

Ancient authors, LinnÆus, and some later botanists, admitted two species of this fruit tree of the family of MyrtaceÆ, the one with elliptical or spherical fruit, with red flesh, Psidium pomiferum; 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 round fruits growing on the same tree in Brazil.1207 The majority of botanists, especially those who have observed the guava in the colonies, follow the opinion of Raddi,1208 to which I was inclined, even in 1855, from reasons drawn from the geographical distribution.1209

Lowe,1210 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.1211

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 somewhat aromatic fruits attract omnivorous animals which cast their seeds in places 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. Out of sixty species of the genus Psidium, all those which have been carefully studied are American. It is true that botanists from the sixteenth century have found plants of Psidium guayava (varieties pomiferum and pyriferum) more or less wild in the Malay Archipelago and the south of Asia,1212 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 guiava. 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 the 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 introduction and naturalization.1213

It is more difficult to discover from what part of America the guava originally came. In the present century it is undoubtedly wild in the West Indies, in Mexico, in Central America, Venezuela, Peru, Guiana, and Brazil.1214 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 1855.1215 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,1216 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 mountains in San Domingo and the other islands entirely covered with guavas, 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. Acosta says that it grows in South America, adding that the Peruvian guavas have a white flesh superior to that of the red fruit. This argues an ancient cultivation on the mainland. Hernandez1217 saw both varieties wild in Mexico in the warm regions of the plains and mountains near Quauhnaci. He gives a description and a fair drawing of P. pomiferum. Piso and Marcgraf1218 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 wild 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 guavas 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 earliest state, the species bore spherical, highly coloured fruit, harsh to the taste. The other form is perhaps the result of cultivation. Gourd,1219 or Calabash—Lagenaria vulgaris, Seringe; Cucurbita lagenaria, LinnÆus.

The fruit of this Curcubitacea has 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.1220 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 flesh is sometimes sweet and eatable, sometimes bitter and even purgative.

LinnÆus1221 pronounced the species to be American. De Candolle1222 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.1223 Roxburgh1224 considered it to be wild in India, although subsequent floras give it only as a cultivated species. Lastly, Rumphius1225 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 gourd, ulavou, and another, bitter, kutou-toumbi, to which Pictet also attributes the name tiktaka or tiktika.1226 Seemann1227 saw the species cultivated and naturalized in the Fiji Isles. Thozet gathered it on the coast of Queensland,1228 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 Schimper.1229

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.1230

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.1231 He is speaking here of cultivated plants. The modern 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 lines1232 of the tenth book of Columella. After describing the different forms of the fruit, he says—

Pliny1233 speaks of a Cucurbitacea, of which vessels and flasks for wine were made, which can only apply to this species.

It does not appear that the Arabs were early acquainted with it, for Ibn AlawÂm and Ibn Baithar say nothing of it.1234 Commentators of Hebrew works attribute 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.1235 Alexander Braun, Ascherson, and Magnus, in their learned paper on the Egyptian remains of plants in the Berlin Museum,1236 indicate several CucurbitaceÆ without mentioning this one. The earliest modern travellers, such as Rauwolf,1237 in 1574, 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 illustrations of this species, which was more generally cultivated 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 indifferent 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 pl. 216 of Herbarius PataviÆ Impressus, in 4to, 1485—a rare work.

In spite of the use of similar names by some authors, I do not believe that the gourd existed in America before the arrival of the Europeans. The Taquera of Piso1238 and Cucurbita lagenÆforma of Marcgraf1239 are perhaps Lagenaria vulgaris as monographs say,1240 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 1504. From that time until the voyages of these two botanists in 1637 and 1638, a much longer time elapsed than is needed to account for the introduction and diffusion 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 Cucurbita siceratia, Molina, attributed sometimes to the species under consideration, sometimes to Cucurbita maxima,1241 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. Acosta1242 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 first naturalists to mention the species after the discovery of America (1492) is Oviedo,1243 who had visited the mainland, and, after dwelling at Vera Paz, came back to Europe in 1515, but returned to Nicaragua in 1539.1244 According to Ramusio’s compilation1245 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,1246 however, mentions a large cultivated gourd, and a smaller one with a bitter and purgative pulp, which was found wild. Lastly, Elliott1247 writes as follows, in 1824, in a work on the Southern States of America: “L. 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 dealings with them is doubtful. Torrey and Gray1248 mentioned it as certain in their flora published in 1830-40, and later the second of these able botanists,1249 in an article on the CucurbitaceÆ known 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.1250

[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. Early 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 calabazas, but I do not see that this proves that this was the species called by botanists Cucurbita lagmaria. The only character independent 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.]

Gourd—Cucurbita maxima, Duchesne.

In enumerating the species of the genus Cucurbita, I should explain that their distinction, formerly exceedingly difficult, has been established by M. Naudin1251 in a very scientific manner, by means of an assiduous cultivation of varieties and of experiments upon their crossed fertilization. Those groups of forms which cannot fertilize each other, or of which the product is not fertile and stable, are regarded by him as species, and the forms which can be crossed and yield a fertile and varied product, as races, breeds, or varieties. Later experiments1252 showed him that the establishment of species on this basis is not without exceptions, but in the genus Cucurbita physiological facts agree with exterior differences. M. Naudin has established the true distinctive characters of C. maxima 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 Cucurbita maxima are the great yellow gourd, which sometimes attains to an enormous size,1253 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 given epoch in a given country. For this reason, when I considered the subject in 1855, the home of these plants seemed to me either unknown or very doubtful. At the present day it is more easy to investigate the question.

According to Sir Joseph Hooker,1254 Cucurbita maxima was found by Barter on the banks of the Niger in Guinea, apparently indigenous, and by Welwitsch in Angola without any assertion of its wild character. In works on Abyssinia, Egypt, or other African countries in which the species is commonly cultivated, I find no indication that it is found wild. The Abyssinians used the word dubba, which 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 Pepo maximus indicus, figured by Lobel,1255 which answers to the modern species; but this is a very insufficient proof, since popular 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.1256 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.1257 It is impossible to know to what species the Sanskrit name kurkarou belonged, although Roxburgh attributes it to Cucurbita Pepo; and there is no less uncertainty with respect to the gourds, pumpkins, and melons cultivated by 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 GrÆco-Roman world. The Pepones, of which Charlemagne commanded the cultivation in his farms,1258 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 show 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 CucurbitaceÆ 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 (Mexico and California); but these are perennial species, while the cultivated pumpkins are annuals.

The plant called jurumu by the Brazilians, figured by Piso and Marcgraf1259 is attributed by modern writers to Cucurbita maxima. The drawing and the short account by the two authors agree pretty 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 1637 and 1638. 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 wild 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 languages and customs of the natives, Dr. Harris for instance, and more recently Trumbull,1260 maintain that the CucurbitaceÆ called squash by the Anglo-Americans, and macock, or cashaw, cushaw, by early travellers 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 were such and such species recognized as distinct by modern botanists. All that we learn from this is that the natives a century after the discovery of Virginia, and twenty to forty years after its colonization by Sir Walter Raleigh, made use of some fruits of the CucurbitaceÆ. The common names are still so confused in the United States, that Dr. Asa Gray, in 1868, gives pumpkin and squash as answering to different species of Cucurbita,1261 while Darlington1262 attributes the name pumpkin to the common Cucurbita Pepo, and that of squash to the varieties of the latter which correspond to the forms of Melopepo of early botanists. They attribute no distinct common name to Cucurbita maxima.

Finally, without placing implicit faith in the indigenous 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 existence of Cucurbita 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 Cucurbita 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 C. 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 C. 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 this 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 C. maxima is communicated by M. Wittmack, who informs 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 Phaseolus vulgaris.—Author’s Note, 1884.]

Pumpkin—Cucurbita Pepo and C. Melopepo, LinnÆus. Modern authors include under the head of Cucurbita Pepo most of the varieties which LinnÆus designated by this name, and also those which he called C. Melopepo. These varieties are very different as to the shape of the fruit, which shows a very ancient cultivation. There is the Patagonian pumpkin, with enormous cylindrical fruit; the sugared pumpkin, called Brazilian; the vegetable marrow, with smaller long-shaped fruit; the Barberine, with knobby fruit; the Elector’s 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 the gardens of the warm and temperate regions of both hemispheres. The origin of the species is considered to be doubtful. I hesitated in 18551263 between Southern Asia and the Mediterranean basin. Naudin and Cogniaux1264 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 anywhere in a wild state.

The variety Cucurbita ovifera, LinnÆus, 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, LinnÆus does not assert it was wild. I have consulted all the Asiatic and African floras without finding the slightest 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 India, Roxburgh remarked this, and certainly Clarke, in his recent flora of British India, has good reasons for indicating no locality for it outside cultivation.

It is otherwise in America. A variety, C. texana,1265 very near to the variety ovata, according to Asa Gray, and which is now unhesitatingly 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, however, that it is perhaps the result of naturalization. However, as several species of the genus Cucurbita 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 Centrali-Americana, nor in Asa Gray’s recent flora of California.

Some synonyms or specimens from South America, attributed to C. Pepo, appear to me very doubtful. It is impossible to say what Molina1266 meant by the names C. Siceratia and C. mammeata, which appear, moreover, to have been cultivated plants. Two species briefly described in the account of the journey of Spix and Martius (ii. p. 536), and also attributed to C. Pepo,1267 are mentioned among cultivated plants on the banks of the Rio Francisco. Lastly, the specimen of Spruce, 2716, from the river Uaupes, a tributary of the Rio Negro, which Cogniaux1268 does not mention having seen, and which he first attributed to the C. Pepo, and afterwards to the C. moschata, was perhaps cultivated or naturalized from cultivation, or by transport, in spite of the paucity of inhabitants in this country.

Botanical indications are, therefore, in favour of a Mexican or Texan origin. It remains to be seen if 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 Herbarius PataviÆ 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, Pepo rotundus major, added in the edition of 1616, appears to me to be C. maxima. In the drawing of Pepo oblongus 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 confirmed, it may be confidently asserted that the pumpkins cultivated by the Romans and in the Middle Ages were Cucurbita maxima, and those of the natives of North America, seen by different travellers in the seventeenth century, were Cucurbita Pepo.

Musk, or Melon Pumpkin—Cucurbita moschata, Duchesne.

The Bon Jardinier quotes as the principal varieties of this species pumpkin muscade de Provence, pleine de Naples, and de Barbarie. 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 efflorescence, and the flesh is somewhat musk-scented. The lobes of the calyx are often terminated by a leafy border.1269 Cultivated in all tropical countries, it is less successful than other pumpkins in temperate regions.

Cogniaux1270 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 of Bangka, a specimen verified by Cogniaux, and which Miquel1271 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. Rumphius, 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,1272 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 diffused in Southern Asia than in other parts of the tropics. It was already grown in the seventeenth century according to the Hortus Malabaricus, in which there is a good plate (vol. viii. pl. 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 characters, and I can find no other figure which resembles it.

Fig-leaved Pumpkin—Cucurbita ficifolia, BouchÉ; Cucurbita melanosperma, Braun.

About thirty years ago this pumpkin with black or brown seeds was introduced into gardens. It differs from other 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 enumerates 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 Cucurbita are from Mexico or California.

Melon—Cucumis Melo, LinnÆus.

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 Naturelles, 4th series, vol. ii., on the genus Cucumis, is as remarkable as that on the genus Cucurbita. 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 exceptions have occurred which render the criterion of fertilization 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 experiments 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 preserved by heredity. These varieties or races can be fertilized by each other, and yield varied and variable products. They are classed by the author into ten groups, which he calls canteloups, melons brodÉs, sucrins, melons d’hiver, serpents, forme de concombre, Chito, Dudaim, rouges de Perse, and sauvages, each containing varieties or nearly allied races. These have been named in twenty-five or thirty different ways by botanists, who, without noticing 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 forms, which differ more or less the one from the other, may have produced 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 consolidated varieties.

The following are the forms which Naudin enumerates as wild: 1. Those of India, which are named by Wildenow Cucumis pubescens, and by Roxburgh C. turbinatus 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.1273 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. turbinatus and of C. maderas-patanus, though they do not cultivate it.

Referring to the most recent flora of British India, in which Clarke has described the CucurbitaceÆ (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, Roxburgh, the varieties which Naudin classes under C. Melo. Cogniaux,1274 who afterwards saw the same specimens, attributes only C. turbinatus to trigonus. The specific difference between C. Melo and C. trigonus is unfortunately obscure, from the characters given by these three authors. The principal difference is that C. Melo is an annual, the other perennial, but this duration does not appear to be very constant. Mr. Clarke says himself that C. Melo is perhaps derived by cultivation from C. trigonus; that is to say, according to him, from the forms which Naudin attributes to C. Melo.

The experiments made during three consecutive years by Naudin1275 upon the products of Cucumis trigonus, fertilized by C. 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 sufficiently good condition, or of which the wild state was sufficiently 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 Hooker1276 subsequently obtained specimens which prove more. I am not speaking of those from the Nile Valley,1277 which are probably cultivated, but of plants gathered by Barter in Guinea in the sands on the banks of the Niger. Thonning1278 had previously found, in sandy soil in Guinea, a Cucumis to which he had given the name arenarius; and Cogniaux,1279 after having seen a specimen brought home by this traveller, had classed it with C. 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 fruit 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 Dudaim among cultivated varieties is allied to it. The majority of the species of the genus Cucumis are found in Africa; a small minority in Asia or in America. Other species of CucurbitaceÆ are divided between Asia and America, although as a rule, in this family, the areas of species are continuous and restricted. Cucumis 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.1280 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, molam,1281 which is like the Latin Melo.

It is not proved that the ancient Egyptians cultivated the melon. The fruit figured by Lepsius1282 is not recognizable. If the cultivation had been customary and 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; Galen1283 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,1284 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.1285 The species was probably introduced into the GrÆco-Roman world 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; Cucurbita Citrullus, LinnÆus.

The origin of the water-melon was long mistaken or unknown. According to LinnÆus, it was a native of Southern Italy.1286 This assertion was taken from Matthiole, without observing that this author says it was a cultivated species. Seringe,1287 in 1828, supposed it came from India and Africa, but he gives no proof. I believed it came from Southern Asia, because of its very general cultivation in this region. It was not known in a wild state. At length it was found indigenous in tropical Africa, on both sides of the equator, which settles the question.1288 Livingstone1289 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 cannot be detected from the appearance 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 CucurbitaceÆ. 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 crossing the bitter water-melon, wild at the Cape, with a cultivated species which 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 their paintings.1290 This is one reason for believing that the Israelites knew the species, and called it abbatitchim, as is said; but besides the Arabic name, battich, batteca, evidently derived from the Hebrew, is the modern name for the water-melon. The French name, pastÈque, 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, tadelaÂt,1291 which differs too widely from the Arabic name not to have existed before the Conquest. The Spanish names zandria, cindria, and the Sardinian sindria,1292 which I cannot connect with any others, show also an ancient culture in the eastern part of the Mediterranean basin. Its cultivation early spread into Asia, for there is a Sanskrit name, chayapula,1293 but the Chinese only received the plant in the tenth century of the Christian era. They call it si-kua, that is melon of the West.1294

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 carpousia or carpousea,1295 but this name does not occur in ancient authors, nor even in the Greek of the decadence and of the Middle Ages.1296 It is the same as the karpus of the Turks of Constantinople,1297 which we find again in the Russian arbus,1298 and in Bengali and Hindustani as tarbuj, turbouz.1299 Another Constantinople name, mentioned by Forskal, chimonico, recurs in Albanian chimico.1300 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 GrÆco-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 jacÉ of the Brazilians, of which Piso and Marcgraf have a drawing, is evidently introduced, for the first-named author says it is cultivated and partly naturalized.1301

Cucumber—Cucumis sativus, LinnÆus.

In spite of the very evident difference 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 sometimes spoilt. Naudin1302 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 unknown to LinnÆus and Lamarck. In 1805, Wildenow1303 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, soukasa,1304 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 Hardwickii, 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, pl. 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,1305 adds that the variety Hardwickii, wild from Kumaon to Sikkim, and of which he has gathered specimens, does not differ 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.1306

The cucumber, cultivated in India for at least three thousand years, was only introduced into China in the second century before Christ, when the ambassador Chang-kien returned from Bactriana.1307 The species spread more rapidly towards the West. The ancient Greeks cultivated the cucumber under the name of sikuos,1308 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 agurka, the German Gurke, etc. The Albanians (Pelasgians?) have quite a different name, kratsavets,1309 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, urits.1310 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 Switzerland 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.1311 The name chiar exists also in Arabic for a variety of the cucumber.1312 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.1313 However, I do not find any Arabic name among the three given by Forskal which can be connected with this, and hitherto no trace has been found of the presence of the cucumber in ancient Egypt.West Indian Gherkin—Cucumis Anguria, LinnÆus.

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 productive, 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.1314

Several botanists affirm that it is wild in the West Indies. P. Browne,1315 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 afford a rich vegetation.” The inhabitants call it the “maroon cucumber.” Grisebach1316 saw specimens in several other West India Isles, and appears to admit their wild character. M. E. AndrÉ found the species growing in the sand of the sea-shore at Porto-Cabello, and Burchell in a similar locality in Brazil, and Riedel near Rio di Janeiro.1317 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,1318 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. Naudin1319 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 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. prophetarum and C. Figarei, although these are perennial. In favour of this hypothesis, I may add: (1) The name maroon cucumber, given in the French West India Islands, indicates a plant which has become wild, for this is the meaning of the word maroon as applied to the negroes; (2) its extended area in America from Brazil to the West Indies, always along the coast where the slave trade was most brisk, seems to be a proof of foreign origin. 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 Cucumis, and by experiments upon fertilization, if any have the patience and ability necessary to do for the genus Cucumis what Naudin has done for the genus Cucurbita.

Lastly, I would point out the absurdity of a common name for the Anguria in the United States—Jerusalem Cucumber.1320 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,1321 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 abandon its cultivation in Europe after having tried it, for Naudin and the Bon Jardinier both recommend it.

It is the cumbalam of Rheede, the camolenga of Rumphius, who had seen it cultivated in Malabar and the Sunda Islands, and give illustrations of it. From several works, even recent ones,1322 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 Cucurbita hispida, Thunberg, and Lagenaria dasystemon, Miquel, from authentic specimens seen by Cogniaux,1323 are synonyms of the species, and these plants are wild in Japan.1324 Cucurbita littoralis, Hasskarl,1325 found among shrubs on the sea-shore in Java, and Gymnopetalum septemlobum, Miquel, also in Java, are the Benincasa according to Cogniaux. As are also Cucurbita vacua, Mueller,1326 and Cucurbita pruriens, Forster, of which he has seen authentic specimens found at Rockingham, in Australia, and in the Society Islands. Nadeaud1327 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.1328

Towel Gourd—Momordica cylindrica, LinnÆus; Luffa cylindrica, Roemer.

Naudin1329 says, “Luffa cylindrica, which in some of our colonies has retained the Indian name pÉtole, 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.” Cogniaux1330 is more positive. “An indigenous species,” he says, “in all the tropical regions of the old world; often cultivated and half wild in America between the tropics.” In consulting the works quoted in these two monographs, and herbaria, its character as a wild plant will be found sometimes conclusively certified.

With regard to Asia,1331 Rheede saw it in sandy places, in woods and other localities in Malabar; Roxburgh says it is wild in Hindustan; 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 Study and Value of Chinese Botanical Works, and in his letters mentions no luffa 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,1332 and hence it is probable it will be found wild in the Asiatic Archipelago, where Rumphius, 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 Hooker1333 quotes this without affirming anything. Schweinfurth and Ascheron,1334 who are 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 gardens under the Arabian name of luff,1335 whence the genus was called Luffa, and the species Luffa Ægyptica. The ancient Egyptian monuments show no trace of it. The 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 which 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 Nicaragua 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 effect of naturalization.

Angular Luffa—Luffa acutangula, Roxburgh.

The origin of this species, cultivated like the preceding one in all tropical countries, is not very clear, according to Naudin and Cogniaux.1336 The first gives Senegal, the second Asia, and, doubtfully, Africa. It is hardly necessary to say that LinnÆus1337 was mistaken in indicating Tartary and China. Clarke, in Sir Joseph Hooker’s flora, says without hesitation that it is indigenous in British India. Rheede1338 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,1339 only give the species as cultivated, or growing on rubbish-heaps near gardens. Rumphius1340 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 India1341 in a wild state, since there is no inducement to cultivate it. It exists also in the Sunda Islands. It is Luffa amara, Roxburgh, and L. sylvestris, Miquel. L. subangulata, 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 papengaye, and as this is the name of the Mauritius planters,1342 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 Ascheron1343 do not mention it either as wild or cultivated in Egypt, Nubia, and Abyssinia. There is no trace of its ancient cultivation in Egypt.

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 luffa. 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 cucurbitacea.

Snake Gourd—Trichosanthes anguina, LinnÆus.

An annual creeping Cucurbitacea, remarkable for its fringed corolla. It is called petole in Mauritius, from a Java name. The fruit, which is something like a long fleshy 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 was indigenous there, but it was probably cultivated. Dr. Bretschneider1344 tells us that the Chinese name, mankua, 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,1345 before him, said, “Inhabits the East Indies, where it is much cultivated for its fruits. It is rarely found wild.” Rumphius1346 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—Sechium edule Swartz.

This plant, of the order CucurbitaceÆ, 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 Jamaica1347 as the original home. However, P. Browne,1348 in the middle of the last century, said positively that it was cultivated there, and Sloane does not mention it. Jacquin1349 says that it “inhabits Cuba, and is cultivated there,” and Richard copies this phrase in the flora of R. de La Sagra without adding any proof. Naudin says,1350 “a Mexican plant,” but he does not give his reasons for asserting this. Cogniaux,1351 in his recent monograph, mentions a great number of specimens gathered from Brazil to the West Indies without saying if he had seen any one of these given as wild. Seemann1352 saw the plant cultivated at Panama, and he adds a remark, important if correct, namely, that the name chayote, 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.1353 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,1354 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 eighteenth century. The species was afterwards introduced into Mauritius and Algeria, where it is very successful.1355

Indian Fig, or Prickly Pear—Opuntia ficus indica, 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 LinnÆus took his botanical name from it, Cactus ficus indica, afterwards connected with the genus Opuntia, it was necessary to retain the specific name to avoid changes 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.1356

The species existed both wild and cultivated in Mexico before the arrival of the Spaniards. Hernandez1357 describes nine varieties of it, which shows the antiquity of 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 pieces of the plant, 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,1358 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.1359

It was one of the first plants which the Spaniards introduced 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.1360 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.1361 The custom of using the plant for fences, and the nourishing property 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.

The cultivation of the cochineal, which was unfavourable to the production of the fruit,1362 is dying out since the manufacture of colouring matters by chemical processes.

Gooseberry—Ribes grossularia and R. Vacrispa, LinnÆus.

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 intermediate forms exist, and it has been shown by experiment that by sowing the seeds of the cultivated fruit, plants with either smooth or hairy fruit are obtained.1363 There is, therefore, but one species, which has produced under 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 Italy, and of Greece.1364 It is also mentioned in Northern Africa, but the last published catalogue of Algerian plants1365 indicates it only in the mountains of Aures, and Ball has found a variety in the Atlas of Marocco.1366 It grows in the Caucasus,1367 and under more or less different forms in the western Himalayas.1368

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 cultivated from the sixteenth century,1369 principally as a seasoning, whence the English name, and the French groseille À maquereaux (mackerel currant). A wine is also made from it.

The frequency of its cultivation in the British Isles and in other places where it is found wild, which are often near gardens, has suggested to some English botanists the idea of an accidental naturalization. This is likely enough in Ireland;1370 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 name, feaberry or feabes, which supports the theory of an ancient existence, and two Welsh names,1371 of which I cannot, however, certify the originality.

Red Currant—Ribes rubrum, LinnÆus.

The common red currant is wild throughout Northern and Temperate Europe, and in Siberia1372 as far as Kamtschatka, and in America, from Canada and Vermont to the mouth of the river Mackenzie.1373

Like the preceding species, it was unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and its cultivation was only introduced in the Middle Ages. The cultivated plant hardly differs from the wild one. That the plant was foreign to the south of Europe is shown by the name of groseillier d’outremer (currant from beyond the sea), given in France1374 in the sixteenth century. In Geneva the currant is still commonly called raisin de mare, and in the canton of Soleure meertrÜbli. I do not know why the species was supposed, three centuries ago, to have come from beyond 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, however, for the Ribes rubrum is wild in almost the whole of Great Britain1375 and in Normandy;1376 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 drawn up by Th. Tusser, and published by Phillips;1377 and even in the time of Gerard, in 1597,1378 its cultivation was rare, and the plant had no particular name.1379 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 MÉnage. According to him, red currants are called at Rouen gardes, at Caen grades, in Lower Normandy gradilles, and in Anjou castilles. MÉnage derives all these names from rubius, rubicus, etc., by a series of imaginary transformations, from the word ruber, red. Legonidec1380 tells us that red currants are also called Kastilez (l. liquid) in Brittany, and he derives this name from Castille, as if 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 support 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 Ribes 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 the north, ribs in Danish,1381 risp and resp in Swedish.1382 The Slav names are quite different and in considerable number.

Black Currant—Cassis; Ribes nigrum, LinnÆus.

The black currant grows wild in the north of Europe, from Scotland and Lapland as far as the north of France and Italy; in Bosnia,1383 Armenia,1384 throughout Siberia, in the basin of the river Amur, and in the western Himalayas;1385 it often becomes naturalized, as for instance, in the centre of France.1386

This shrub was unknown in Greece and Italy, for it is proper to colder 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 probably begun before the Middle Ages. J. Bauhin1387 says it was planted in gardens in France and Italy, but most sixteenth-century authors do not mention it. In the Histoire de la Vie PrivÉe des FranÇais, 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 reputation 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.1388

Olive—Olea Europea, LinnÆus.

The wild olive, called in botanical books the variety 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 Beluchistan1389 as far as Portugal and even Madeira, the Canaries and even Marocco,1390 and from the Atlas northwards as far as the south of France, the ancient Macedonia, the Crimea, and the Caucasus.1391 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 country) 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.1392 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 really 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 naturalization, which is equivalent to an extension of area. The point in question is, therefore, to discover what was the home of the species in very early prehistoric times, and how this area has 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 countries 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,1393 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 miraculous 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, FranÇois Lenormand1394 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 languages1395 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 Caspian Sea, as at the present day, the western Aryans would perhaps have known it. To these negative indications, 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. Herodotus1396 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, seitun,1397 and in Arabic, zeitun, sjetun.1398 It even exists in Turkish and among the Tartars of the Crimea, seitun,1399 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.1400 Several botanists have ascertained the presence of branches or leaves of the olive in the sarcophagi.1401 Nothing is more certain, though Hehn1402 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 different to the Semitic, shows an existence more ancient than the earliest dynasties. I shall mention presently another fact in support of this great antiquity.

Theophrastus says1403 that the olive was much grown, and the harvest of oil considerable in Cyrenaica, but he does not say that the species was 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 anywhere see on his journey to Tunis and into Egypt the olive growing wild,1404 although it is cultivated in the oases. In Egypt it is only cultivated, according to Schweinfurth and Ascherson,1405 in their resumÉ 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 regular woods.1406 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. AristÆus 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 Sardinia. 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 GrÆco-Latin name here as in Italy,1407 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,1408 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 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 Government, calls the wild olive tazebboujt, tesettha, ou’ zebbouj, and the grafted olive tazemmourt, tasettha, ou’ zemmour. The Touaregs, another Berber nation, call it tamahinet.1409 These are strong indications of the antiquity of the olive in Africa. The Arabs having conquered this country 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 zenboudje for the wild, zitoun for the cultivated olive,1410 zit for olive oil. The Andalusians call the wild olive azebuche, and the cultivated aceytuno.1411 In other provinces we find the name of Latin origin, olivio, side by side with the Arabic words.1412 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 Latin name for the olive tree.

Early voyagers to the Canaries, Bontier for instance, in 1403, mention the olive tree in these islands, where modern botanists regard it as indigenous.1413 It may have been introduced by the Phoenicians, if it did not previously 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,1414 so the question is open to conjecture. It seems to me that the oil would have played an important 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 the naturalization in the Canaries is perhaps not more ancient than the Phoenician voyages.

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 existing 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—Chrysophyllum CaÏnito, LinnÆus.

The star apple belongs to the family of the SapotaceÆ. It yields a fruit valued in tropical America, though Europeans do not care much for it. I do not find that any 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. pl. 9.

Seemann1415 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 Grisebach1416 says it is both wild and cultivated in Jamaica, San Domingo, Antigua, and Trinidad. Sloane considered it had escaped from cultivation in Jamaica, and Jacquin says vaguely, “Inhabits Martinique and San Domingo.”1417

CaÏmito, or Abi—Lucuma CaÏnito, Alph. de Candolle.

This Peruvian CaÏmito must not be confounded with the Chrysophyllum CaÏnito of the West Indies. Both belong to the family SapotaceÆ, but the flowers and seeds are different. There is a figure of this one in Ruiz and Pavon, Flora Peruviana, vol. iii. pl. 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 abi or abiu.1418 Ruiz and Pavon say it is wild in the warm regions of Peru, and at the foot of the Andes.

Marmalade Plum, or Mammee Sapota—Lucuma mammosa, GÆrtner.

This fruit tree, of the order SapotaceÆ and a native of tropical America, has been the subject of several mistakes in works on botany.1419 There exists no satisfactory 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 neglect is common enough 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.1420 I do not find that it has been transported into Africa and Asia, the Philippines1421 excepted. This is probably due to the insipid taste of the fruit. Humboldt and Bonpland found it wild in the forests on the banks of the Orinoco.1422 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 SapotaceÆ, 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 illustration in the Botanical Magazine, pls. 3111 and 3112, and in Tussac, Flore des Antilles, i. pl. 5. It has been introduced into gardens in Mauritius, the Malay Archipelago, 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,1423 of Venezuela,1424 and perhaps of Trinidad.1425 In Jamaica, in the time of Sloane, it existed only in gardens.1426 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, LinnÆus; Solanum esculentum, Dunal.

The aubergine has a Sanskrit name, vartta, and several names, which Piddington in his Index considers as both Sanskrit and Bengali, such as bong, bartakon, mahoti, hingoli. Wallich, in his edition of Roxburgh’s Indian Flora, gives vartta, varttakou, varttaka bunguna, whence the Hindustani bungan. 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 seventeenth century,1427 but its cultivation must have spread towards Africa before the Middle Ages. The Arab physician, Ebn Baithar,1428 who wrote in the thirteenth century, speaks of it, and he quotes Rhasis, who lived in the ninth century. Rauwolf1429 had seen the plant in the gardens of Aleppo at the end of the sixteenth century. It was called melanzana and bedengiam. This Arabic name, which Forskal writes badinjan, is the same as the Hindustani badanjan, which Piddington gives. A sign of antiquity in Northern Africa is the existence of a name, tabendjalts, among the Berbers or Kabyles of the province of Algiers,1430 which differs 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.1431 It has been transported into America.

The cultivated form of Solanum melongena has not hitherto been found wild, but most botanists are agreed in regarding Solanum insanum, Roxburgh, and S. incanum, LinnÆus, as belonging to the same species. Other synonyms are sometimes added, the result of a study made by Nees von Esenbeck from numerous specimens.1432 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 SolanaceÆ in the Flora of British India, will probably give more precise information on this head.

Red Pepper—Capsicum. 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 cultivated, but I cannot refrain from stating my opinion that no capsicum is indigenous to the old world. I believe them to be all of American 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 throughout 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 neither Romans, Greeks, nor even Hebrews were acquainted with them. They are not mentioned in ancient Chinese books.1433 The islanders of the Pacific did not cultivate them at the time of Cook’s voyages,1434 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. frutescens, bran-maricha,1435 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.1436 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 herbaria 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, LinnÆus.

This species has a number of different names in European languages,1437 which all indicate a foreign origin and the resemblance of the taste to that of pepper. In French it is often called poivre de GuinÉe (Guinea pepper), but also poivre du BrÉzil, d’Inde (Indian, Brazilian 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 Marcgraf1438 saw grown in Brazil under the name quija or quiya. They say nothing as to its origin. The species appears to have been early cultivated in the West Indies, where it has several Carib names.1439

Botanists who have most thoroughly studied the genus Capsicum1440 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.

C. grossum, Willdenow, seems to be a variety of the same species. It is cultivated in India under the name kafree murich, and kafree chilly, but Roxburgh did not consider it to be of Indian origin.1441

Shrubby Capsicum—Capsicum 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. Blume says it is naturalized in the Malay Archipelago in hedges.1442 In America, on the contrary, where its culture is ancient, it has been several times found wild in forests, apparently indigenous. De Martius brought it from the banks of the Amazon, Poeppig from the province of Maynas in Peru, and Blanchet from the province of Bahia.1443 So that its area extends from Bahia to Eastern Peru, which explains its diffusion over South America generally.

Tomato—Lycopersicum esculentum, Miller.

The tomato, or love apple, belongs to a genus of the SolaneÆ, of which all the species are American.1444 It has no name in the ancient languages of Asia, nor even in modern Indian languages.1445 It was not cultivated in Japan in the time of Thunberg, that is to say a century ago, and the silence of ancient writers on China on this head shows that it is of recent introduction there. Rumphius1446 had seen it in gardens in the Malay Archipelago. The Malays called it tomatte, but this is an American name, for C. Bauhin calls the species tumatle Americanorum. 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 sixteenth century indicate that they received the plant from Peru.1447 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 Hughes1448 says it was brought to Barbados from Portugal hardly more than a century ago. Humboldt considered that the cultivation of the tomato was of ancient date in Mexico.1449 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 cultivated throughout tropical America. Thus by the process of exhaustion we return to the idea of a Peruvian origin, at least for its cultivation.

De Martius1450 found the plant wild in the neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro and Para, but it had perhaps escaped from gardens. I do not know of any botanist who has found it really 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 think1451) as belonging to the same species. This variety is wild on the sea-shore of Peru,1452 at Tarapoto, in Eastern Peru,1453 and on the frontiers of Mexico and of the United States towards California.1454 It is sometimes naturalized in clearings near gardens.1455 It is probably in this manner that its area has extended north and south from Peru.

Avocado, or Alligator Pear—Persea gratissima, GÆrtner.

The avocado pear is one of the most highly prized of tropical fruits. It belongs to the order LaurineÆ. It is like a pear containing one large stone, as is well shown in Tussac’s illustrations, Flore des Antilles, iii. pl. 3, and in the Botanical Magazine, pl. 4580. The common 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 persea of the Greeks, which was a Cordia. Clusius,1456 writing in 1601, says that the avocado pear is an American fruit tree introduced into a garden in Spain; but as it is widely spread in the colonies of the old world, and has here and there become almost wild,1457 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 Isles1458 in the middle of the eighteenth century, and in 1750 into Mauritius and Bourbon.1459

In America its actual area in a wild state is of uncommon 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.1460 It has not always occupied this vast region. P. Browne says distinctly that the avocado pear was introduced from the Continent into Jamaica, and Jacquin held the same opinion as regards the West India Islands generally.1461 Piso and Marcgraf do not mention it for Brazil, and Martius gives no Brazilian name.

At the time of the discovery of America, the species was certainly wild and cultivated in Mexico, according to Hernandez. Acosta1462 says it was cultivated in Peru under the name of palto, which was that of a people of the eastern part of Peru, among whom it was abundant.1463 I find no proof that it was wild upon the Peruvian littoral.

Papaw—Carica Papaya, LinnÆus; 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.1464 It is now grown in all tropical countries, 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 1848 and 1855 its American origin.1465 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 ababai.1466 Rumphius1467 says that the inhabitants of the Malay Archipelago considered it as an exotic plant introduced by the Portuguese, and gave it names expressing its likeness to other species or its foreign extraction. Sloane,1468 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 the plantations of the Pacific Isles at the time of Cook’s voyages. Loureiro,1469 in the middle of the eighteenth century, 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 world for thousands of years if it had existed there. Everything leads to the belief that it was 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.1470

Marcgraf had often seen the male plant (always commoner 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, says1471 that his drawing was made in 1607, in the bay of Todos Santos (province of Bahia). I know of no modern author who has confirmed the habitation in Brazil. Martius does not mention the species in his dictionary of the names of fruits in the language of the Tupis.1472 It is not given as wild in Guiana and Columbia. P. Browne1473 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. Oviedo1474 seems to have seen the papaw in Central America, and he gives the common name olocoton for Nicaragua. Yet Correa de Mello and Spruce, in their important article on the PapayaceÆ, 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 seen1475 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—Ficus carica, LinnÆus.

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 digestive organs 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 north 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 quasi-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 Afghanistan, across the whole of the Mediterranean region as far as the Canaries.1476 From north to south this zone varies in width from the 25th to the 40th or 42nd parallel, according to local circumstances. As a rule, the fig stops like the olive at the foot of the Caucasus and the mountains of Europe which limit the Mediterranean basin, but it grows nearly wild on the south-west coast of France, where the winter is very mild.1477

We turn to historical and philological records to see whether the area was more limited in antiquity. The ancient Egyptians called the fig teb,1478 and the earliest Hebrew books speak of the fig, whether wild or cultivated, under the name teenah,1479 which leaves its trace in the Arabic tin.1480 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 fig tree from Persia, but only in the eighth century of our era.1481 Herodotus1482 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.1483 Hehn asserts1484 that the cultivated fig cannot have been developed from the wild fig, but all botanists hold a contrary opinion;1485 and, without speaking of floral details on which they rely, I may say that Gussone obtained from the same seeds plants of the form caprificus, and other varieties.1486 The remark made by several scholars as to the absence of all mention of the cultivated fig sukai 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, says Hehn, does not mention it, and Archilochus (700 B.C.) is the first to mention distinctly its cultivation by the Greeks of Paros. According 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 figs.1487

Romulus and Remus, according to tradition, were nursed at the foot of a fig tree called ruminalis, from rumen, breast or udder.1488 The Latin name, ficus, which Hehn derives, by an effort of erudition, from the Greek sukai,1489 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 assembled 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 words, arahormaze and achormaze, green figs, taharemenen and tehahunemen, dried figs. Webb and Berthelot,1490 who quote these names, and who admit the common origin of the Guanchos and Berbers, would have noted with pleasure the existence among the Touaregs, a Berber people, of the word tahart, fig tree,1491 and in the French-Berber dictionary, published since their time, the names tabeksist, green fig, 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 basin from Syria to the Canaries.

We may doubt the antiquity of the fig in the south of France, but a curious fact deserves mention. Planchon found in the quaternary tufa of Montpellier, and de Saporta1492 in those of Aygalades near Marseilles, and in the quaternary strata of La Celle near Paris, leaves and even fruit of the wild Ficus carica, with teeth of Elephas primigenius, and leaves of plants of which some no longer exist, and others, like Laurus canariensis, 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 reappeared 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 the fourth epoch.

Bread-Fruit—Artocarpus incisa, LinnÆus.

The bread-fruit tree was cultivated in all the islands of the Asiatic Archipelago, and of the great oceans near the equator, from Sumatra to the Marquesas Isles, when first Europeans began to visit them. Its fruit is constituted, 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.1493

Sonnerat1494 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 diffused into several parts of tropical America.1495

Rumphius1496 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. Seemann1497 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, Amboyna, 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 propagating 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.1498

Jack-Fruit—Artocarpus integrifolia, LinnÆus.

The jack-fruit, larger than the bread-fruit, for it sometimes weighs as much as eighty pounds, hangs from the branches of a tree thirty to fifty feet high.1499 The common name is derived from the Indian names jaca, or tsjaka.

The species has long been cultivated in southern Asia, 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 suppose 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 absolutely certain. Roxburgh mentions one, punusa, but Piddington does not admit it into his Index. The Persians 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 frontiers. Dr. Bretschneider does not speak of any Artocarpus 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-fruit was not diffused at a very early epoch. The first statement as to its existence 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 British Burmah.1500 The species is, therefore, a native of the region lying at the foot of the western mountains of the Indian Peninsula, 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.1501 It has also been introduced into Brazil, Mauritius, the Seychelles, and Rodriguez Island.1502

Date-Palm—Phoenix dactylifera, LinnÆus.

The date-palm has existed from prehistoric times in the warm dry 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 Martius, Carl Ritter, and myself.1503 It is needless to reproduce 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, sylvestris, that is to say wild, with small and sour fruit; but it is perhaps the result of recent naturalization in an unfavourable soil. Historical and philological data are of more value here, though doubtless from the antiquity of cultivation they can only establish probabilities. From Egyptian and Assyrian remains, as well as from tradition and 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 contain fruits and drawings of the tree.1504 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 ingenious observation 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 after Moses, 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 Babylonian date-palms that only the greater part produced good fruit which was used for food. This seems to indicate 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 Pliny1505 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 are numerous and very different. The Hebrews called the date-palm tamar, and the ancient Egyptians beq.1506 The complete difference between these words, both very ancient, shows that these peoples found the species indigenous and perhaps already named in Western Asia and in Egypt. The number of Persian, Arabic, and Berber names is incredible.1507 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 again shows ancient cultivation in different countries. Webb and Berthelot have not discovered a name for the date-palm in the language of the Guanchos, and this is much to be regretted. The Greek name, phoenix, refers simply to Phoenicia and the Phoenicians, possessors of the date-palm.1508 The names dactylus and date are derivations of dachel in a Hebrew dialect.1509 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.1510 The Hindustani name khurma 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.1511 As a rule, beyond the arid region which 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 grown with success in Australia and at the Cape, but the Europeans 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 dynasties the date-palm already existed, wild or sown here and there by wandering tribes, in a narrow zone extending from the Euphrates 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 Islands1512 on the other, so that the natural area has remained very nearly the same for about five thousand years. What it was previously, palÆontological discoveries may one day reveal.

Banana—Musa sapientum and M. paradisiaca, LinnÆus; M. sapientum, 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 Spain1513 he quoted early authors who assert that the banana was cultivated in America before the conquest.

He admits, on Oviedo’s authority,1514 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.1515 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 him a remarkable carelessness; “for,” he says,1516 “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 products, the Peruvian Garcilasso de la Vega,1517 says distinctly 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. Father Acosta1518 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 1814,1519 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 structural 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 sapientum, 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 MusÆ 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 Congo. 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 says that the traveller Caldcleugh1520 found among the Puris 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 travels1521 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 beans1522 in these huacas, a plant which undoubtedly belongs to the old world, his assertions are not very trustworthy.

Boussingault1523 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 which were already known;1524 nor does the geographer Ritter,1525 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.1526 The two first insist upon the absence of names for the banana in the languages of Peru and Mexico. Piso knew no Brazilian name. Martius1527 has since indicated, in the Tupi language of Brazil, the names pacoba or bacoba. 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 introduction 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 names.1528 The Greeks, Latins, and Arabs have mentioned it as a remarkable Indian fruit tree. Pliny1529 speaks of it distinctly. He says that the Greeks of the expedition of Alexander saw it in India, and he quotes the name pala which still persists in Malabar. Sages reposed beneath its shade and ate of its fruit. Hence the botanical name Musa sapientum. Musa is from the Arabic mouz or mauwz, 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 Egyptians1530 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 Pacific1531 and to the west coast of Africa;1532 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 diffusion 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. Roxburgh had seen it in the forests of Chittagong,1533 in the form of Musa sapientum. Rumphius1534 describes a wild variety with small fruits in the Philippine Isles. Loureiro1535 probably speaks of the same form by the name M. seminifera agrestis, which he contrasts with M. seminifera domestica, which is wild in Cochin-China.1536 Blanco also mentions a wild banana in the Philippines,1537 but his description is vague. Finlayson1538 found the banana wild in abundance in the little island of Pulo Ubi at the southern extremity of Siam. Thwaites1539 saw the variety M. sapientum 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 Thomson1540 found it wild at Khasia.

The facts are quite different in America. The wild banana has been seen nowhere except in Barbados,1541 but here it is a tree of which the fruit does not ripen, and which is, consequently, in all probability the result of cultivated varieties of which the seed is not abundant. Sloane’s wild plantain1542 appears to be a plant very different to the musa. The varieties which are supposed to be possibly indigenous in America are only two, and as a rule far fewer varieties are grown than in Asia. The culture of the banana may be said to be recent in the greater part of America, for it dates from but little more than three centuries. Piso1543 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. Did it exist, then, in the western part on the shores of the Pacific? 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 1530 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.1544 He says,1545 “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 (Platanus) of the ancients. He describes the banana very well, and adds that the tree is very common in the Indies (i.e. America), “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 Espagnolle1546 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,1547 as into Mexico from Cuernavaca and the other valleys. On the continent and in some of the islands there are great plantations of them which form dense thickets.” Surely it is not thus that the author would express himself were he writing of a fruit tree of American origin. 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 diffusion in the warm regions of Mexico may well 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.1548 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.1549

As regards the argument of the modern native plantations 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 Portuguese 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 effect 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 of the species in both hemispheres. The whole of geographical 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 from the botanical point of view, by Roxburgh, Desvaux, and 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, LinnÆus.

In spite of the doubts of a few writers, the pine-apple must be an American plant, early introduced by Europeans into Asia and Africa.

Nana was the Brazilian name,1550 which the Portuguese turned into ananas. The Spanish called it pinas, because the shape resembles the fruit of a species of pine.1551 All early writers on America mention it.1552 Hernandez says that the pine-apple grows in the warm regions of Haiti and Mexico. He mentions a Mexican name, matzatli. A pine-apple was brought to Charles V., who mistrusted it, and would not taste it.

The works 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. Rheede1553 in the seventeenth century was persuaded of this; but Rumphius1554 disputed it later, because he said 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 anarush seems to be a corruption of ananas. Roxburgh knew of none, and Wilson’s dictionary does not mention the word anarush. Royle1555 says that the pine-apple was introduced into Bengal in 1594. Kircher1556 says that the Chinese cultivated it in the seventeenth century, but it was believed to have been brought to them from Peru.

Clusius1557 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,1558 in India,1559 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 Veraguas1560 near Panama, in the upper Orinoco valley,1561 in Guiana1562 and the province of Bahia.1563