PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS.

Article I.—Seeds used for Food.

Cacao—Theobroma Cacao, LinnÆus.

The genus Theobroma, of the order ByttneriaceÆ, allied to the MalvaceÆ, consists of fifteen to eighteen species, all belonging to tropical America, principally in the hotter parts of Brazil, Guiana, and Central America.

The common cacao, Theobroma Cacao, is a small tree wild in the forests of the Amazon and Orinoco basins1564 and of their tributaries up to four hundred feet of altitude. It is also said to grow wild in Trinidad, which lies near the mouth of the Orinoco.1565 I find no proof that it is indigenous in Guiana, although it seems probable. Many early writers indicate that it was both wild and cultivated at the time of the discovery of America from Panama to Guatemala and Campeachy; but from the numerous quotations collected by Sloane,1566 it is to be feared that its wild character was not sufficiently verified. Modern botanists are not very explicit on this head, and in general they only mention the cacao as cultivated in these regions and in the West India Islands. G. Bernoulli,1567 who had resided in Guatemala, only says, “wild and cultivated throughout tropical America;” and Hemsley,1568 in his review of the plants of Mexico and Central America, made in 1879 from the rich materials of the Kew herbarium, gives no locality where the species is indigenous. It was perhaps introduced into Central America and into the warm regions of Mexico by the Indians before the discovery of America. Cultivation may have naturalized it here and there, as is said to be the case in Jamaica.1569 In support of this hypothesis, it must be observed that Triana1570 indicates the cacao as only cultivated in the warm regions of New Granada, a country situated between Panama and the Orinoco valley.

However this may be, the species was grown in Central America and Yucatan at the time of the discovery of America. The seeds were sent into the highlands of Mexico, and were even used as money, so highly were they valued. The custom of drinking chocolate was general. The name of this excellent drink is Mexican. The Spaniards carried the cacao from Acapulco to the Philippine Isles in 1674 and 1680,1571 where it succeeded wonderfully. It is also cultivated in the Sunda Isles. I imagine it would succeed on the Guinea and Zanzibar coasts, but it is of no use to attempt to grow it in countries which are not very hot and very damp.

Another species, Theobroma bicolor, Humboldt and Bonpland, is found growing with the common cacao in American plantations. It is not so much prized. On the other hand, it does not require so high a temperature, and can live at an altitude of nearly three thousand feet in the valley of the Magdalena. It abounds in a wild state in New Granada.1572 Bernoulli asserts that it is only cultivated in Guatemala, though the inhabitants call it mountain cacao.

Litchi—Nephelium Litchi, Cambessides.

The seed of this species and of the two following is covered with a fleshy excrescence, very sweet and scented, which is eaten with tea.

Like most of the SapindaceÆ, the nepheliums are trees. This one has been cultivated in the south of China, India, and the Malay Archipelago from a date of which we cannot be certain. Chinese authors living at Pekin only knew the Litchi late in the third century of our era.1573 Its introduction into Bengal took place at the end of the eighteenth century.1574 Every one admits that the species is a native of the south of China, and, Blume1575 adds, of Cochin-China and the Philippine Isles, but it does not seem that any botanist has found it in a truly wild state. This is probably because the southern part of China towards Siam has been little visited. In Cochin-China and in Burmah and at Chittagong the Litchi is only cultivated.1576

Longan—Nephelium longana, Cambessides.

This second species, very often cultivated in Southern Asia, like the Litchi, is wild in British India, from Ceylon and Concan as far as the mountains to the east of Bengal, and in Pegu.1577 The Chinese introduced it into the Malay Archipelago some centuries ago.

Rambutan—Nephelium lappaceum, LinnÆus.

It is said to be wild in the Indian Archipelago, where it must have been long cultivated, to judge from the number of its varieties. A Malay name, given by Blume, signifies wild tree. Loureiro says it is wild in Cochin-China and Java. Yet I find no confirmation for Cochin-China in modern works, nor even for the islands. The new flora of British India1578 indicates it at Singapore and Malacca without affirming that it is indigenous, on which head the labels in herbaria commonly tell us nothing. Certainly the species is not wild on the continent of Asia, in spite of the vague expressions of Blume and Miquel,1579 but it is more probably a native of the Malay Archipelago.

In spite of the reputation of the nepheliums, of which the fruit can be exported, it does not appear that these trees have been introduced into the tropical colonies of Africa and America except into a few gardens as curiosities.

Pistachio Nut—Pistacia vera, LinnÆus.

The pistachio, a shrub belonging to the order AnacardiaceÆ, grows naturally in Syria. Boissier1580 found it to the north of Damascus in Anti-Lebanon, and he saw specimens of it brought from Mesopotamia, but he could not be sure that they were found wild. There is the same doubt about branches gathered in Arabia, which have been mentioned by some writers. Pliny and Galen1581 knew that the species was a Syrian one. The former tells us that the plant was introduced into Italy by Vitellius at the end of the reign of Tiberius, and thence into Spain by Flavius Pompeius.

There is no reason to believe that the cultivation of the pistachio was ancient even in its primitive country, but it is practised in our own day in the East, as well as in Sicily and Tunis. In the south of France and Spain it is of little importance.

Broad Bean—Faba vulgaris, Moench; Vicia faba, LinnÆus.

LinnÆus, in his best descriptive work, Hortus cliffortianus, admits that the origin of this species is obscure, like that of most plants of ancient cultivation. Later, in his Species, which is more often quoted, he says, without giving any proof, that the bean “inhabits Egypt.” Lerche, a Russian traveller at the end of the last century, found it wild in the Mungan desert of the Mazanderan, to the south of the Caspian Sea.1582 Travellers who have collected in this region have sometimes come across it,1583 but they do not mention it in their writings,1584 excepting Ledebour,1585 and the quotation on which he relies is not correct. Bosc1586 says that Olivier found the bean wild in Persia; I do not find this confirmed in Olivier’s Voyage, and as a rule Bosc seems to have been too ready to believe that Olivier found a good many of our cultivated plants in the interior of Persia. He says it of buckwheat and of oats, which Olivier does not mention.

The only indication besides that of Lerche which I find in floras is a very different locality. Munby mentions the bean as wild in Algeria, at Oran. He adds that it is rare. No other author, to my knowledge, has spoken of it in northern Africa. Cosson, who knows the flora of Algeria better than any one, assures me he has not seen or received any specimen of the wild bean from the north of Africa. I have ascertained that there is no specimen in Munby’s1587 herbarium, now at Kew. As the Arabs grow the bean on a large scale, it may perhaps be met with accidentally outside cultivated plots. It must not be forgotten, however, that Pliny (lib. xviii. c. 12) speaks of a wild bean in Mauritania, but he adds that it is hard and cannot be cooked, which throws doubt upon the species. Botanists who have written upon Egypt and CyrenaÏca, especially the more recent,1588 give the bean as cultivated.

This plant alone constitutes the genus Faba. We cannot, therefore, call in the aid of any botanical analogy to discover its origin. We must have recourse to the history of its cultivation and to the names of the species to find out the country in which it was originally indigenous.

We must first eliminate an error which came from a wrong interpretation of Chinese works. Stanislas Julien believed that the bean was one of the five plants which the Emperor Chin-nong commanded, 4600 years ago, to be sown every year with great solemnity.1589 Now, according to Dr. Bretschneider,1590 who is surrounded at Pekin with every possible resource for arriving at the truth, the seed similar to a bean which the emperors sow in the enjoined ceremony is that of Dolichos soja, and the bean was only introduced into China from Western Asia a century before the Christian era, at the time of Changkien’s embassy. Thus falls an assertion which it is hard to reconcile with other facts, for instance with the absence of an ancient cultivation of the bean in India, and of a Sanskrit name, or even of any modern Indian name.

The ancient Greeks were acquainted with the bean, which they called kuamos, and sometimes kuamos ellenikos, to distinguish it from that of Egypt, which was the seed of a totally different aquatic species, Nelumbium. The Iliad1591 already mentions the bean as a cultivated plant, and Virchow found some beans in the excavations at Troy.1592 The Latins called it faba. We find nothing in the works of Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Pliny, etc., which leads us to believe the plant indigenous in Greece or Italy. It was early known, because it was an ancient Roman rite to put beans in the sacrifices to the goddess Carna, whence the name FabariÆ CalendÆ.1593 The Fabii perhaps took their name from faba, and the twelfth chapter of the eighteenth book of Pliny shows, without the possibility of a doubt, the antiquity and importance of the bean in Italy. The word faba recurs in several of the Aryan languages of Europe, but with modifications which philologists alone can recognize. We must not forget, however, Adolphe Pictet’s very just remark,1594 that in the cases of the seeds of cereals and leguminous plants the names of one species are often transferred to another, or that certain names were sometimes specific and sometimes generic. Several seeds of like form were called kuamos by the Greeks; several different kinds of haricot bean (Phaseolus, Dolichos) bear the same name in Sanskrit, and faba in ancient Slav, bobu in ancient Prussian, babo in Armorican, fav, etc., may very well have been used for peas, haricot beans, etc. In our own day the phrase coffee-bean is used in the trade. It has been rightly supposed that when Pliny speaks of fabariÆ islands, where beans were found in abundance, he alludes to a species of wild pea called botanically Pisum maritimum.

The ancient inhabitants of Switzerland and of Italy in the age of bronze cultivated a small-fruited variety of Faba vulgaris.1595 Heer calls it Celtica nana, because it is only six to nine millimetres long, whereas our modern field bean is ten to twelve millimetres. He has compared the specimens from Montelier on Lake Morat, and St. Peter’s Islands on Lake Bienne, with others of the same epoch from Parma. Mortellet found, in the contemporary lake-dwellings on the Lake Bourget, the same small bean, which is, he says, very like a variety cultivated in Spain at the present day.1596

The bean was cultivated by the ancient Egyptians.1597 It is true that hitherto no beans have been found in the sarcophagi, or drawings of the plant seen on the monuments. The reason is said to be that the plant was reckoned unclean.1598 Herodotus1599 says, “The Egyptians never sow the bean in their land, and if it grows they do not eat it either cooked or raw. The priests cannot even endure the sight of it; they imagine that this vegetable is unclean.” The bean existed then in Egypt, and probably in cultivated places, for the soil which would suit it was as a rule under cultivation. Perhaps the poor population and that of certain districts did not share the prejudices of the priests; we know that the superstitions varied with the nomes. Plutarch and Diodorus Siculus mention the cultivation of the bean in Egypt, but they wrote five hundred years later than Herodotus.

The word pol occurs twice in the Old Testament;1600 it has been translated bean because of the traditions preserved by the Talmud, and of the Arabic name foul, fol, or ful, which is that of the bean. The first of the two verses shows that the Hebrews were acquainted with the bean one thousand years before Christ.

Lastly, I shall mention a sign of the ancient existence of the bean in the north of Africa. This is the Berber name ibiou, in the plural iabouen, used by the Kabyles of the province of Algiers.1601 It has no resemblance to the Semitic name, and dates perhaps from a remote antiquity. The Berbers formerly inhabited Mauritania, where Pliny asserts that the species was wild. It is not known whether the Guanchos (the Berber people of the Canaries) knew the bean. I doubt whether the Iberians had it, for their supposed descendants, the Basques, use the name baba,1602 answering to the Roman faba.

We judge from these facts that the bean was cultivated in Europe in prehistoric terms. It was introduced into Europe probably by the western Aryans at the time of their earliest migrations (Pelasgians, Kelts, Slavs). It was taken to China later, a century before the Christian era, and still later into Japan, and quite recently into India.

Its wild habitat was probably twofold some thousands of years ago, one of the centres being to the south of the Caspian, the other in the north of Africa. This kind of area, which I have called disjunctive, and to which I formerly paid a good deal of attention,1603 is rare in dicotyledons, but there are examples in those very countries of which I have just spoken.1604 It is probable that the area of the bean has long been in process of diminution and of extinction. The nature of the plant is in favour of this hypothesis, for its seed has no means of dispersing itself, and rodents or other animals can easily make prey of it. Its area in Western Asia was probably less limited at one time, and that in Africa in Pliny’s day was more or less extensive. The struggle for existence which was going against this plant, as against maize, would have gradually isolated it and caused it to disappear, if man had not saved it by cultivation.

The plant which most nearly resembles the bean is Vicia narbonensis. Authors who do not admit the genus Faba, of which the characters are not very distinct from those of Vicia, place these two species in the same section. Now, Vicia narbonensis is wild in the Mediterranean basin and in the East as far as the Caucasus, in the north of Persia, and in Mesopotamia.1605 Its area is continuous, but this renders the hypothesis I mentioned above probable by analogy.

Lentil—Ervum lens, LinnÆus; Lens esculenta, Moench.

The plants which most nearly resemble the lentil are classed by authors now in the genus Ervum, now in a distinct genus Lens, and sometimes in the genus Cicer; but the species of these ill-defined groups all belong to the Mediterranean basin or to Western Asia. This throws some light on the origin of the cultivated plant. Unfortunately, the lentil is no longer to be found in a wild state, at least with certainty. The floras of the south of Europe, of Northern Africa, of the East, and of India always mention it as cultivated, or as growing in fields after or with other cultivated species. A botanist1606 saw it in the provinces to the south of the Caucasus, “cultivated and nearly wild here and there round villages.” Another1607 indicates it vaguely in the south of Russia, but more recent floras fail to confirm this.

The history and names of this plant may give clearer indications of its origin. It has been cultivated in the East, in the Mediterranean basin and even in Switzerland, from prehistoric time. According to Herodotos, Theophrastus, etc., the ancient Egyptians used it largely. If their monuments give no proof of this, it was probably because the lentil was, like the bean, considered common and coarse. The Old Testament mentions it three times, by the name adaschum or adaschim, which must certainly mean lentil, for the Arabic name is ads,1608 or adas.1609 The red colour of Esau’s famous mess of pottage has not been understood by most authors. Reynier,1610 who had lived in Egypt, confirms the explanation given formerly by Josephus; the lentils were red because they were hulled. It is still the practice in Egypt, says Reynier, to remove the husk or outer skin from the lentil, and in this case they are a pale red. The Berbers have the Semitic name adÈs for the lentil.1611

The Greeks cultivated the species—fakos or fakai. Aristophanes mentions it as an article of food of the poor.1612 The Latins called it lens, a name whose origin is unknown, which is evidently allied to the ancient Slav lesha, Illyrian lechja, Lithuanian lenszic.1613 The difference between the Greek and Latin names shows that the species perhaps existed in Greece and Italy before it was cultivated. Another proof of ancient existence in Europe is the discovery of lentils in the lake-dwellings of St. Peter’s Island, Lake of Bienne,1614 which are of the age of bronze. The species may have been introduced from Italy.

According to Theophrastus,1615 the inhabitants of Bactriana (the modern Bokkara) did not know the fakos of the Greeks. Adolphe Pictet quotes a Persian name, mangu or margu, but he does not say whether it is an ancient name, existing, for instance, in the Zend Avesta. He admits several Sanskrit names for the lentil, masura, renuka, mangalya, etc., while Anglo-Indian botanists, Roxburgh and Piddington, knew none.1616 As these authors mention an analogous name in Hindustani and Bengali, mussour, we may suppose that masura signifies lentil, while mangu in Persian recalls the other name mangalya. As Roxburgh and Piddington give no name in other Indian languages, it may be supposed that the lentil was not known in this country before the invasion of the Sanskrit-speaking race. Ancient Chinese works do not mention the species; at least, Dr. Bretschneider says nothing of them in his work published in 1870, nor in the more detailed letters which he has since written to me.

The lentil appears to have existed in western temperate Asia, in Greece, and in Italy, where its cultivation was first undertaken in very early prehistoric time, when it was introduced into Egypt. Its cultivation appears to have been extended at a less remote epoch, but still hardly in historic time, both east and west, that is into Europe and India.

Chick-Pea—Cicer arietinum, LinnÆus.

Fifteen species of the genus Cicer are known, all of Western Asia or Greece, except one, which is Abyssinian. It seems, therefore, most probable that the cultivated species comes from the tract of land lying between Greece and the Himalayas, vaguely termed the East. The species has not been found undoubtedly wild. All the floras of the south of Europe, of Egypt, and of Western Asia as far as the Caucasus and India, give it as a cultivated species, or growing in fields and cultivated grounds. It has sometimes1617 been indicated in the Crimea, and to the north, and especially to the south of the Caucasus, as nearly wild; but well-informed modern authors do not think so.1618 This quasi-wildness can only point to its origin in Armenia and the neighbouring countries. The cultivation and the names of the species may perhaps throw some light on the question.

The Greeks cultivated this species of pea as early as Homer’s time, under the name of erebinthos,1619 and also of krios,1620 from the resemblance of the pea to the head of a ram. The Latins called it cicer, which is the origin of all the modern names in the south of Europe. The name exists also among the Albanians, descendants of the Pelasgians, under the form kikere.1621 The existence of such widely different names shows that the plant was very early known, and perhaps indigenous, in the south-east of Europe.

The chick-pea has not been found in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, Savoy, and Italy. In the first-named locality its absence is not singular; the climate is not hot enough. A common name among the peoples of the south of the Caucasus and of the Caspian Sea is, in Georgian, nachuda; in Turkish and Armenian, nachius, nachunt; in Persian, nochot.1622 Philologists can tell if this is a very ancient name, and if it has any connection with the Sanskrit chennuka.

The chick-pea is so frequently cultivated in Egypt from the earliest times of the Christian era,1623 that it is supposed to have been also known to the ancient Egyptians. There is no proof to be found in the drawings or stores of grain in their monuments, but it may be supposed that this pea, like the bean and the lentil, was considered common or unclean. Reynier1624 thought that the ketsech, mentioned by Isaiah in the Old Testament, was perhaps the chick-pea; but this name is generally attributed, though without certainty, to Nigella sativa or Vicia sativa.1625 As the Arabs have a totally different name for the chick-pea, omnos, homos, which recurs in the Kabyl language as hammez,1626 it is not likely that the ketsech of the Jews was the same plant. These details lead me to suspect that the species was unknown to the ancient Egyptians and to the Hebrews. It was perhaps introduced among them from Greece or Italy towards the beginning of our era.

It is of more ancient introduction into India, for there is a Sanskrit name, and several others, analogous or different, in modern Indian languages.1627 Bretschneider does not mention the species in China.

I do not know of any proof of antiquity of culture in Spain, yet the Castilian name garbanzo, used also by the Basques under the form garbantzua, and by the French as garvance, being neither Latin nor Arabic, may date from an epoch anterior to the Roman conquest.

Botanical, historical, and philological data agree in indicating a habitation anterior to cultivation in the countries to the south of the Caucasus and to the north of Persia. The western Aryans (Pelasgians, Hellenes) perhaps introduced the plant into Southern Europe, where, however, there is some probability that it was also indigenous. The western Aryans carried it into India. Its area perhaps extended from Persia to Greece, and the species now exists only in cultivated ground, where we do not know whether it springs from a stock originally wild or from cultivated plants.

Lupin—Lupinus albus, LinnÆus.

The ancient Greeks and Romans cultivated this leguminous plant to bury it as a green manure, and also for the sake of the seeds, which are a good fodder for cattle, and which are also used by man. The expressions of Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Cato, Varro, Pliny, etc., quoted by modern writers, refer to the culture or to the medical properties of the seeds, and do not show whether the species was the white lupin, L. albus, or the blue-flowered lupin, L. hirsutus, which grows wild in the south of Europe. Fraas says1628 that the latter is grown in the Morea at the present day; but Heldreich says1629 that L. albus grows in Attica. As this is the species which has been long cultivated in Italy, it is probable that it is the lupin of the ancients. It was much grown in the eighteenth century, especially in Italy,1630 and de l’Ecluse settles the question of the species, as he calls it Lupinus sativus albo flore.1631 The antiquity of its cultivation in Spain is shown by the existence of four different common names, according to the province; but the plant is only found cultivated or nearly wild in fields and sandy places.1632 The species is indicated by Bertoloni in Italy, on the hills of Sarzana. Yet Caruel does not believe it to be wild here, any more than in other parts of the peninsula.1633 Gussone1634 is very positive for Sicily—“on barren and sandy hills, and in meadows (in herbidis)” Lastly, Grisebach1635 found it in Turkey in Europe, near RuskoÏ, and d’Urville1636 saw it in abundance, in a wood near Constantinople. Castagne confirms this in a manuscript catalogue in my possession. Boissier does not mention any locality in the East; the species does not exist in India, but Russian botanists have found it to the south of the Caucasus, though we do not know with certainty if it was really wild.1637 Other localities will perhaps be found between Sicily, Macedonia, and the Caucasus.Egyptian Lupin—Lupinus termis, Forskal.

This species of lupin, so nearly allied to L. albus that it has sometimes been proposed to unite them,1638 is largely cultivated in Egypt and even in Crete. The most obvious difference is that the upper part of the flowers of L. termis is blue. The stem is taller than that of L. albus. The seeds are used like those of the common lupin, after they have been steeped to get rid of their bitterness.

L. termis is wild in sandy soil and mountainous districts, in Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica;1639 in Syria and Egypt, according to Boissier;1640 but Schweinfurth and Ascherson1641 say that it is only cultivated in Egypt. Hartmann saw it wild in Upper Egypt.1642 Unger1643 mentions it among the cultivated specimens of the ancient Egyptians, but he gives neither specimen nor drawing. Wilkinson1644 says only that it has been found in the tombs.

No lupin is grown in India, nor is there any Sanskrit name; its seeds are sold in bazaars under the name tourmus (Royle, Ill., p. 194).

The Arabic name, termis or termus, is also that of the Greek lupin, termos. It may be inferred that the Greeks had it from the Egyptians. As the species was known to the ancient Egyptians, it seems strange that it has no Hebrew name;1645 but it may have been introduced into Egypt after the departure of the Israelites.

Field-Pea—Pisum arvense, LinnÆus.

This pea is grown on a large scale for the seed, and also sometimes for fodder. Although its appearance and botanical characters allow of its being easily distinguished from the garden-pea, Greek and Roman authors confounded them, or are not explicit about them. Their writings do not prove that it was cultivated in their time. It has not been found in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, France, and Italy. Bobbio has a legend (A.D. 930), in which it is said that the Italian peasants called a certain seed herbilia, whence it has been supposed to be the modern rubiglia or the Pisum sativum of botanists.1646 The species is cultivated in the East, and as far as the north of India.1647 It is of recent cultivation in the latter country, for there is no Sanskrit name, and Piddington gives only one name in one of the modern languages.

Whatever may be the date of the introduction of its culture, the species is undoubtedly wild in Italy, not only in hedges and near cultivated ground, but also in forests and wild mountainous districts.1648 I find no positive indication in the floras that it grows in like manner in Spain, Algeria, Greece, and the East. The plant is said to be indigenous in the south of Russia, but sometimes its wild character is doubtful, and sometimes the species itself is not certain, from a confusion with Pisum sativum and P. elatius. Of all Anglo-Indian botanists, only Royle admits it to be indigenous in the north of India.

Garden-Pea—Pisum sativum, LinnÆus.

The pea of our kitchen gardens is more delicate than the field-pea, and suffers from frost and drought. Its natural area, previous to cultivation, was probably more to the south and more restricted. It has not hitherto been found wild, either in Europe or in the west of Asia, whence it is supposed to have come. Bieberstein’s indication of the species in the Crimea is not correct, according to Steven, who was a resident in the country.1649 Perhaps botanists have overlooked its habitation; perhaps the plant has disappeared from its original dwelling; perhaps also it is a mere modification, effected by culture, of Pisum arvense. Alefeld held the latter opinion,1650 but he has published too little on the subject for us to be able to conclude anything from it. He only says that, having cultivated a great number of varieties both of the field and garden pea, he concludes that they belong to the same species. Darwin1651 learnt through a third person that Andrew Knight had crossed the field-pea with a garden variety known as the Prussian pea, and that the product was fertile. This would certainly be a proof of specific unity, but further observation and experiment is required. In the mean time, in the search for geographic origin, etc., I am obliged to consider the two forms separately.

Botanists who distinguish many species in the genus Pisum, admit eight, all European or Asiatic. Pisum sativum was cultivated by the Greeks in the time of Theophrastus.1652 They called it pisos, or pison. The Albanians, descendants of the Pelasgians, call it pizelle.1653 The Latins had pisum.1654 This uniformity of nomenclature seems to show that the Aryans knew the plant when they arrived in Greece and Italy, and perhaps brought it with them. Other Aryan languages have several names for the generic sense of pea; but it is evident, from Adolphe Pictet’s learned discussion on the subject,1655 that none of these names can be applied to Pisum sativum in particular. Even when one of the modern languages, Slav or Breton, limits the sense to the garden-pea, it is very probable that formerly the word signified field-pea, lentil, or any other leguminous plant.

The garden-pea1656 has been found among the remains in the lake-dwellings of the age of bronze, in Switzerland and Savoy. The seed is spherical, wherein it differs from Pisum arvense. It is smaller than our modern pea. Heer says he found it also among relics of the stone age, at Moosseedorf; but he is less positive, and only gives figures of the less ancient pea of St. Peter’s Island. If the species dates from the stone age in Switzerland, it would be anterior to the immigration of the Aryans.

There is no indication of the culture of Pisum sativum in ancient Egypt or in India. On the other hand, it has long been cultivated in the north of India, if it had, as Piddington says, a Sanskrit name, harenso, and if it has several names very different to this in modern Indian languages.1657 It has been introduced into China from Western Asia. The Pent-sao, drawn up at the end of the sixteenth century, calls it the Mahometan pea.1658 In conclusion: the species seems to have existed in Western Asia, perhaps from the south of the Caucasus to Persia, before it was cultivated. The Aryans introduced it into Europe, but it perhaps existed in Northern India before the arrival of the eastern Aryans. It no longer exists in a wild state, and when it occurs in fields, half-wild, it is not said to have a modified form so as to approach some other species.

Soy—Dolichos soja, LinnÆus; Glycine soja, Bentham.

This leguminous annual has been cultivated in China and Japan from remote antiquity. This might be gathered from the many uses of the soy bean and from the immense number of varieties. But it is also supposed to be one of the farinaceous substances called shu in Chinese writings of Confucius’ time, though the modern name of the plant is ta-tou.1659 The bean is nourishing, and contains a large proportion of oil, and preparations similar to butter, oil, and cheese are extracted from it and used in Chinese and Japanese cooking.1660 Soy is also grown in the Malay Archipelago, but at the end of the eighteenth century it was still rare in Amboyna,1661 and Forster did not see it in the Pacific Isles at the time of Cook’s voyages. It is of modern introduction in India, for Roxburgh had only seen the plant in the botanical gardens at Calcutta, where it was brought from the Moluccas.1662 There are no common Indian names.1663 Besides, if its cultivation had been ancient in India, it would have spread westward into Syria and Egypt, which is not the case.

KÆmpfer1664 formerly published an excellent illustration of the soy bean, and it had existed for a century in European botanical gardens, when more extensive information about China and Japan excited about ten years ago a lively desire to introduce it into our countries. In Austria, Hungary, and France especially, attempts have been made on a large scale, of which the results have been summed up in works worthy of consultation.1665 It is to be hoped these efforts may be successful; but we must not digress from the aim of our researches, the probable origin of the species.

LinnÆus says, in his Species, “habitat in India,” and refers to KÆmpfer, who speaks of the plant in Japan, and to his own flora of Ceylon, where he gives the plant as cultivated. Thwaites’s modern flora of Ceylon makes no mention of it. We must evidently go further east to find the origin both of the species and of its cultivation. Loureiro says that it grows in Cochin-China and that it is often cultivated in China.1666 I find no proof that it is wild in the latter country, but it may perhaps be discovered, as its culture is so ancient. Russian botanists1667 have only found it cultivated in the north of China and in the basin of the river Amur. It is certainly wild in Japan.1668 Junghuhn1669 found it in Java on Mount Gunung-Gamping, and a plant sent also from Java by Zollinger is supposed to belong to this species, but it is not certain that the specimen was wild.1670 A Malay name, kadelee,1671 a quite different to the Japanese and Chinese common names, is in favour of its indigenous character in Java.

Known facts and historical and philological probabilities tend to show that the species was wild from Cochin-China to the south of Japan and to Java when the ancient inhabitants of this region began to cultivate it at a very remote period, to use it for food in various ways, and to obtain from it varieties of which the number is remarkable, especially in Japan.

Pigeon-Pea—Cajanus indicus, Sprengel; Cytisus Cajan, LinnÆus.

This leguminous plant, often grown in tropical countries, is a shrub, but it fruits in the first year, and in some countries it is grown as an annual. Its seed is an important article of the food of the negroes and natives, but the European colonists do not care for it unless cooked green like our garden-pea. The plant is easily naturalized in poor soil round cultivated plots, even in the West India Islands, where it is not indigenous.1672

In Mauritius it is called ambrevade; in the English colonies, doll, pigeon-pea; and in the French Antilles, pois d’Angola, pois de Congo, pois pigeon.

It is remarkable that, though the species is diffused in three continents, the varieties are not numerous. Two are cited, based only upon the yellow or reddish colour of the flower, which were formerly regarded as distinct species; but a more attentive examination has resulted in their being classed as one, in accordance with LinnÆus’ opinion.1673 The small number of variations obtained even in the organ for which the species is cultivated is a sign of no very ancient culture. Its habitation previous to culture is uncertain. The best botanists have sometimes supposed it to be a native of India, sometimes of tropical Africa. Bentham, who has made a careful study of the leguminous plants, believed in 1861 in the African origin; in 1865 he inclined rather to Asia.1674 The problem is, therefore, an interesting one. There is no question of an American origin. The cajan was introduced into the West Indies from the coast of Africa by the slave trade, as the common names quoted above show,1675 and the unanimous opinion of authors or American floras. It has also been taken to Brazil, Guiana, and into all the warm parts of the American continent.

The facility with which the species is naturalized would alone prevent attaching great importance to the statements of collectors, who have found it more or less wild in Asia or in Africa; and besides, these assertions are not precise, but are usually doubtful. Most writers on the flora of continental India have only seen the plant cultivated,1676 and none, to my knowledge, affirms that it exists wild. For the island of Ceylon Thwaites says,1677 “It is said not to be really wild, and the country names seem to confirm this.” Sir Joseph Hooker, in his Flora of British India, says, “Wild (?) and cultivated to the height of six thousand feet in the Himalayas.” Loureiro1678 gives it as cultivated and non-cultivated in China and Cochin-China. Chinese authors do not appear to have spoken of it, for the species is not named by Bretschneider in his work On the Study, etc. In the Sunda Isles it is mentioned as cultivated, and that rarely, at Amboyna at the end of the eighteenth century, according to Rumphius.1679 Forster had not seen it in the Pacific Isles at the time of Cook’s voyages, but Seemann says that it has been recently introduced by missionaries into the Fiji Isles.1680 All this argues no very ancient extension of cultivation to the east and south of the continent of Asia. Besides the quotation from Loureiro, I find the species indicated on the mountain of Magelang, Java;1681 but, supposing this to be a true and ancient wild growth in both cases, it would be very extraordinary not to find the species in many other Asiatic localities.

The abundance of Indian and Malay names1682 shows a somewhat ancient cultivation. Piddington even gives a Sanskrit name, arhuku, which was not known to Roxburgh, but he gives no proof in support of his assertion. The name may have been merely supposed from the Hindu and Bengali names urur and orol. No Semitic name is known.

In Africa the cajan is often found from Zanzibar to the coast of Guinea.1683 Authors say it is cultivated, or else make no statement on this head, which would seem to show that the specimens are sometimes wild. In Egypt this cultivation is quite modern, of the nineteenth century.1684

Briefly, then, I doubt that the species is really wild in Asia, and that it has been grown there for more than three thousand years. If more ancient peoples had known it, it would have come to the knowledge of the Arabs and Egyptians before our time. In tropical Africa, on the contrary, it is possible that it has existed wild or cultivated for a very long time, and that it was introduced into Asia by ancient travellers trading between Zanzibar and India or Ceylon.

The genus Cajanus has only one species, so that no analogy of geographical distribution leads us to believe it to be rather of Asiatic than African origin, or vice versÂ.

Carob Tree1685—Ceratonia siliqua, LinnÆus.

The seeds and pods of the carob are highly prized in the hotter parts of the Mediterranean basin, as food for animals and even for man. De Gasparin1686 has given interesting details about the raising, uses, and habitation of the species as a cultivated tree. He notes that it does not pass the northern limit beyond which the orange cannot be grown without shelter. This fine evergreen tree does not thrive either in very hot countries, especially where there is much humidity. It likes the neighbourhood of the sea and rocky places. Its original country, according to Gasparin, is “probably the centre of Africa. Denham and Clapperton found it in Burnou.” This proof seems to me insufficient, for in all the Nile Valley and in Abyssinia the carob is not wild nor even cultivated.1687 R. Brown does not mention it in his account of Denham and Clapperton’s journey. Travellers have seen it in the forests of Cyrenaica between the high-lands and the littoral; but the able botanists who have drawn up the catalogue of the plants of this country are careful to say,1688 “perhaps indigenous.” Most botanists merely mention the species in the centre and south of the Mediterranean basin, from Spain and Marocco to Syria and Anatolia, without inquiring closely whether it is indigenous or cultivated, and without entering upon the question of its true country previous to cultivation. Usually they indicate the carob tree, as “cultivated and subspontaneous, or nearly wild.” However, it is stated to be wild in Greece by Heldreich, in Sicily by Gussone and Bianca, in Algeria by Munby;1689 and these authors have each lived long enough in the country for which each is quoted to form an enlightened opinion.

Bianca remarks, however, that the carob tree is not always healthy and productive in those restricted localities where it exists in Sicily, in the small adjacent islands, and on the coast of Italy. He puts forward the opinion, moreover, based upon the similarity of the Italian name carrubo with the Arabic word, that the species was anciently introduced into the south of Europe, the species being of Syrian or north African origin. He maintains as probable the theory of Hoefer and BonnÉ,1690 that the lotus of the lotophagi was the carob tree, of which the flower is sweet and the fruit has a taste of honey, which agrees with the expressions of Homer. The lotus-eaters dwelt in Cyrenaica, so that the carob must have been abundant in their country. If we admit this hypothesis we must suppose that Pliny and Herodotus did not know Homer’s plant, for the one describes the lotus as bearing a fruit like a mastic berry (Pistacia lentiscus), the other as a deciduous tree.1691

An hypothesis regarding a doubtful plant formerly mentioned by a poet can hardly serve as the basis of an argument upon facts of natural history. After all, Homer’s lotus plant perhaps existed only in the fabled garden of Hesperides. I return to more serious arguments, on which Bianca has said a few words.

The carob has two names in ancient languages—the one Greek, keraunia or kerateia;1692 the other Arabic, chirnub or charÛb. The first alludes to the form of the pod, which is like a slightly curved horn; the other means merely pod, for we find in Ebn Baithar’s1693 work that four other leguminous plants bear the same name, with a qualifying epithet. The Latins had no special name; they used the Greek word, or the expression siliqua, siliqua grÆca (Greek pod).1694 This dearth of names is the sign of a once restricted area, and of a culture which probably does not date from prehistoric time. The Greek name is still retained in Greece. The Arab name persists among the Kabyles, who call the fruit kharroub, the tree takharrout,1695 and the Spaniards algarrobo. Curiously enough, the Italians also took the Arab name currabo, carubio, whence the French caroubier. It seems that it must have been introduced after the Roman epoch by the Arabs of the Middle Ages, when there was another name for it. These details are all in favour of Bianca’s theory of a more southern origin than Sicily. Pliny says the species belonged to Syria, Ionia, Cnidos, and Rhodes, but he does not say whether it was wild or cultivated in these places. Pliny also says that the carob tree did not exist in Egypt. Yet it has been recognized in monuments belonging to a much earlier epoch than that of Pliny, and Egyptologists even attribute two Egyptian names to it, kontrates or jiri.1696 Lepsius gives a drawing of a pod which appears to him to be certainly a carob, and the botanist Kotschy made certain by microscopic investigation that a stick taken from a sarcophagus was made from the wood of the carob tree.1697 There is no known Hebrew name for the species, which is not mentioned in the Old Testament. The New Testament speaks of it by the Greek name in the parable of the prodigal son. It is a tradition of the Christians in the East that St. John Baptist fed upon the fruit of the carob in the desert, and hence came the names given to it in the Middle Ages—bread of St. John, and Johannis brodbaum.

Evidently this tree became important at the beginning of the Christian era, and it spread, especially through the agency of the Arabs, towards the West. If it had previously existed in Algeria, among the Berbers, and in Spain, older names would have persisted, and the species would probably have been introduced into the Canaries by the Phoenicians.

The information gained on the subject may be summed up as follows:—

The carob grew wild in the Levant, probably on the southern coast of Anatolia and in Syria, perhaps also in Cyrenaica. Its cultivation began within historic time. The Greeks diffused it in Greece and Italy; but it was afterwards more highly esteemed by the Arabs, who propagated it as far as Marocco and Spain. In all these countries the tree has become naturalized here and there in a less productive form, which it is needful to graft to obtain good fruit.

The carob has not been found in the tufa and quaternary deposits of Southern Europe. It is the only one of its kind in the genus Ceratonia, which is somewhat exceptional among the LeguminosÆ, especially in Europe. Nothing shows that it existed in the ancient tertiary or quaternary flora of the south-west of Europe.

Common Haricot Kidney Bean—Phaseolus vulgaris, Savi.

When, in 1855, I wished to investigate the origin of the genera Phaseolus and Dolichos,1698 the distinction of species was so little defined, and the floras of tropical countries so rare, that I was obliged to leave several questions on one side. Now, thanks to the works of Bentham and Georg von Martens,1699 completing the previous labours of Savi,1700 the LeguminÆ of hot countries are better known; lastly, the seeds discovered quite recently in the Peruvian tombs of Ancon, examined by Wittmack, have completely modified the question of origin.

I will speak first of the common haricot bean, afterwards of some other species, without, however, enumerating all those which are cultivated, for several of these are still ill defined.

Botanists held for a long time that the common haricot was of Indian origin. No one had found it wild, nor has it yet been found, but it was supposed to be of Indian origin, although the species was also cultivated in Africa and America, in temperate and hot regions, at least in those where the heat and humidity are not excessive. I called attention to the fact that there is no Sanskrit name, and that sixteenth-century gardeners often called the species Turkish bean. Convinced, moreover, that the Greeks cultivated this plant under the names fasiolos and dolichos, I suggested that it came originally from Western Asia, and not from India. Georg von Martens adopted this hypothesis.

However, the meaning of the words dolichos of Theophrastus, fasiolos of Dioscorides, faseolus and phaseolus of the Romans,1701 is far from being sufficiently defined to allow them to be attributed with certainty to Phaseolus vulgaris. Several cultivated LeguminosÆ are supported by the trellises mentioned by authors, and have pods and seeds of a similar kind. The best argument for translating these names by Phaseolus vulgaris is that the modern Greeks and Italians have names derived from fasiolus for the common haricot. In modern Greek it is fasoulia, Albanian (Pelasgic?) fasulÉ, in Italian fagiolo. It is possible, however, that the name has been transferred from a species of pea or vetch, or from a haricot formerly cultivated, to our modern haricot. It is rather bold to determine a species of Phaseolus from one or two epithets in an ancient author, when we see how difficult is the distinction of species to modern botanists with the plants under their eyes. Nevertheless, the dolichos of Theophrastus has been definitely referred to the scarlet runner, and the fasiolos to the dwarf haricot of our gardens, which are the two principal modern varieties of the common haricot, with an immense number of sub-varieties in the form of the pods and seed. I can only say it may be so.

If the common haricot was formerly known in Greece, it was not one of the earliest introductions, for the faseolos did not exist at Rome in Cato’s time, and it is only at the beginning of the empire that Latin authors speak of it. Virchow brought from the excavations at Troy the seeds of several leguminÆ, which Wittmack1702 has ascertained to belong to the following species: broad bean (Faba vulgaris), garden-pea (Pisum sativum), ervilla (Ervum ervilia), and perhaps the flat-podded vetchling (Lathyrus Cicera), but no haricot. Nor has the species been found in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, Savoy, Austria, and Italy.

There are no proofs or signs of its existence in ancient Egypt. No Hebrew name is known answering to the Phaseolus or Dolichos of botanists. A less ancient name, for it is Arabic, loubia, exists in Egypt for Dolichos lubia, and in Hindustani as loba for Phaseolus vulgaris.1703 As regards the latter species, Piddington only gives two names in modern languages, and those both Hindustani, loba and bakla. This, together with the absence of a Sanskrit name, points to a recent introduction into Southern Asia. Chinese authors do not mention P. vulgaris,1704 which is a further indication of a recent introduction into India, and also into Bactriana, whence the Chinese have imported plants from the second century of our era.

All these circumstances incline me to doubt whether the species was known in Asia before the Christian era. The argument based upon the modern Greek and Italian names for the haricot, derived from fasiolos, needs some support. It may be said in its favour that it was used in the Middle Ages, probably for the common haricot. In the list of vegetables which Charlemagne commanded to be sown in his farms, we find fasiolum,1705 without explanation. Albertus Magnus describes under the name faseolus a leguminous plant which appears to be our dwarf haricot.1706 I notice, on the other hand, that writers in the fifteenth century, such as Pierre Crescenzio1707 and Macer Floridus,1708 mention no faseolus or similar name. On the other hand, after the discovery of America, from the sixteenth century all authors publish descriptions and drawings of Phaseolus vulgaris, with a number of varieties.

It is doubtful that its cultivation is ancient in tropical Africa. It is indicated there less often than that of other species of the Dolichos and Phaseolus genera.

It had not occurred to any one to seek the origin of the haricot in America till, quite recently, some remarkable discoveries of fruits and seeds were made in Peruvian tombs at Ancon, near Lima. Rochebrune1709 published a list of the species of different families from the collection made by Cossac and Savatier. Among the number are three kinds of haricot, none of which, says the author, is Phaseolus vulgaris; but Wittmack,1710 who studied the leguminÆ brought from these same tombs by Reiss and Stubel, says he made out several varieties of the common haricot among other seeds belonging to Phaseolus lunatus, LinnÆus. He had identified them with the varieties of P. vulgaris called by botanists Oblongus purpureus (Martens), Ellipticus prÆcox (Alefeld), and Ellipticus atrofuscus (Alefeld), which belong to the category of dwarf or branchless haricots.

It is not certain that the tombs in question are all anterior to the advent of the Spaniards. The work of Reiss and Stubel, now in the press, will perhaps give some information on this head; but Wittmack admits, on their authority, that some of the tombs are not ancient. I notice a fact, however, which has passed without observation. The fifty species of Rochebrune are all American. There is not one which can be suspected to be of European origin. Evidently these plants and seeds were either deposited before the conquest, or, in certain tombs which perhaps belong to a subsequent epoch, the inhabitants took care not to put species of foreign origin. This was natural enough according to their ideas, for the custom of depositing plants in the tombs was not a result of the Catholic religion, but was an inheritance from the customs and opinions of the natives. The presence of the common haricot among exclusively American plants seems to me important, whatever the date of the tombs.

It may be objected that the seeds are insufficient ground for determining the species of a phaseolus, and that several species of this genus which are not yet well known were cultivated in South America before the arrival of the Spaniards. Molina1711 speaks of thirteen or fourteen species (or varieties?) cultivated formerly in Chili alone.

Wittmack insists upon the general and ancient use of the haricot in several parts of South America. This proves at least that several species were indigenous and cultivated. He quotes the testimony of Joseph Acosta, one of the first writers after the conquest, who says that “the Peruvians cultivated vegetables which they called frisoles and palares, and which they used as the Spaniards use garbanzos (chick-pea), beans and lentils. I have not found,” he adds, “that these or other European vegetables were found here before the coming of the Europeans.” Frisole, fajol, fasoler, are Spanish names for the common haricot, corruptions of the Latin faselus, fasolus, faseolus. Paller is American.

I may take this opportunity of explaining the origin of the French name haricot. I sought for it formerly in vain;1712 but I noticed that Tournefort1713 (Instit., p. 415) was the first to use it. I called attention also to the existence of the word arachos (Greek: arachos) in Theophrastus, probably for a kind of vetch, and of the Sanskrit word harenso for the common pea. I rejected as improbable the notion that the name of a vegetable could come from the dish called haricot or laricot of mutton, as suggested by an English author, and criticized Bescherelle, who derived the word from Keltic, while the Breton words are totally different, and signify small bean (fa-munno) or kind of pea (pis-ram). LettrÉ, in his dictionary, also seeks the etymology of the word. Without any acquaintance with my article, he inclines to the theory that haricot, the plant, comes from the ragout, seeing that the latter is older in the language, and that a certain resemblance may be traced between the haricot bean and the morsels of meat in the ragout, or else that this bean was suitable to the making of the dish. It is certain that this vegetable was called in French fasÉole or fazÉole, from the Latin name, until nearly the end of the seventeenth century; but chance has led me to discover the real origin of the word haricot. An Italian name, araco, found in Durante and Matthioli, in Latin Aracus niger,1714 was given to a leguminous plant which modern botanists attribute to Lathyrus ochrus. It is not surprising that an Italian seventeenth-century name should be transported by French cultivators of the following century to another leguminous plant, and that ara should have been ari. It is the sort of mistake which is common now. Besides, aracos or arachos has been attributed by commentators to several Leguminosoe of the genera Lathyrus, Vicia, etc. Durante gives the Greek arachos as the synonym for his araco, whereby we see the etymology. PÈre FeuillÉe1715 wrote in French aricot; before him Tournefort spelt it haricot, in the belief, perhaps, that the Greek word was written with an aspirate, which is not the case; at least in the best authors.

I may sum up as follows:—(1) Phaseolus vulgaris has not been long cultivated in India, the south-west of Asia, and Egypt; (2) it is not certain that it was known in Europe before the discovery of America; (3) at this epoch the number of varieties suddenly increased in European gardens, and all authors commenced to mention them; (4) the majority of the species of the genus exist in South America; (5) seeds apparently belonging to the species have been discovered in Peruvian tombs of an uncertain date, intermixed with many species, all American.

I do not examine whether Phaseolus vulgaris existed in both hemispheres previous to cultivation, because examples of this nature are exceedingly rare among non-aquatic phanerogamous plants of tropical countries. Perhaps there is not one in a thousand, and even then human agency may be suspected.1716 To open this question in the case of Ph. vulgaris, it should at least be found wild in both old and new worlds, which has not happened. If it had occupied so vast an area, we should see signs of it in individuals really wild in widely separate regions on the same continent, as is the case with the following species, Ph. lunatas.

Scimetar-podded Kidney Bean, or Sugar Bean.—Phaseolus lunatus, LinnÆus; Phaseolus lunatus macrocarpus; Bentham, Ph. inamoenus, LinnÆus.

This haricot, as well as that called Lima, is so widely diffused in tropical countries, that it has been described under different names.1717 All these forms can be classed in two groups, of which LinnÆus made different species. The commonest in our gardens is that which has been called since the beginning of the century the Lima haricot. It may be distinguished by its height, by the size of its pods and beans. It lasts several years in countries which are favourable to it.

LinnÆus believed that his Ph. lunatus came from Bengal and the other from Africa, but he gives no proof. For a century his assertions were repeated. Now, Bentham,1718 who is careful about origins, believes the species and its variety to be certainly American; he only doubts about its presence as a wild plant both in Africa and Asia. I see no indication whatever of ancient existence in Asia. The plant has never been found wild, and it has no name in the modern languages of India or in Sanskrit.1719 It is not mentioned in Chinese works. Anglo-Indians call it French bean,1720 like the common haricot, which shows how modern is its cultivation.

It is cultivated in nearly all tropical Africa. However, Schweinfurth and Ascherson1721 do not mention it for Abyssinia, Nubia, or Egypt. Oliver1722 quotes a number of specimens found in Guinea and the interior of Africa, without saying whether they were wild or cultivated. If we suppose the species of African origin or of very early introduction, it would have spread to Egypt and thence to India.

The facts are quite different for South America. Bentham mentions wild specimens from the Amazon basin and Central Brazil. They belong especially to the large variety (macrocarpus), which abounds also in the Peruvian tombs of Ancon, according to Wittmack.1723 It is evidently a Brazilian species, diffused by cultivation, and perhaps long since naturalized here and there in tropical America. I am inclined to believe it was introduced into Guinea by the slave trade, and that it spread thence into the interior and the coast of Mozambique.

Moth, or Aconite-leaved Kidney Bean—Phaseolus aconitifolius, Willdenow.

An annual species grown in India as fodder, and of which the seeds are eatable, though but little valued. The Hindustani name is mout, among the Sikhs moth. It is somewhat like Ph. trilobus, which is cultivated for the seed. Ph. aconitifolius is wild in British India from Ceylon to the Himalayas.1724 The absence of a Sanskrit name, and of different names in modern Indian languages, points to a recent cultivation.

Three-lobed Kidney Bean—Phaseolus trilobus, Willdenow. One of the most commonly cultivated species in India;1725 at least in the last few years, for Roxburgh,1726 at the end of the eighteenth century, had only seen it wild. All authors agree in considering it as wild from the foot of the Himalayas to Ceylon. It also exists in Nubia, Abyssinia, and Zambesi;1727 it is not said whether wild or cultivated. Piddington gives a Sanskrit name, and several names in modern Indian languages, which shows that the species has been cultivated, or at least known for three thousand years.

Green Gram, or MÚng—Phaseolus mungo, LinnÆus.

A species commonly cultivated in India and in the Nile Valley. The considerable number of varieties, and the existence of three different names in the modern languages of India, point to a cultivation of one or two thousand years, but there is no Sanskrit name.1728 In Africa it is probably recent. Anglo-Indian botanists agree that it is wild in India.

Lablab, or Wall—Dolichos Lablab, LinnÆus.

This species is much cultivated in India and tropical Africa. Roxburgh counts as many as seven varieties with Indian names. Piddington quotes in his Index a Sanskrit name, schimbi, which recurs in modern languages. Its culture dates perhaps from three thousand years. Yet the species was not anciently diffused in China, or in Western Asia and Egypt; at least, I can find no trace of it. The little extension of these edible LeguminosÆ beyond India in ancient times is a singular fact. It is possible that their cultivation is not of ancient date.

The lablab is undoubtedly wild in India, and also, it is said, in Java.1729 It has become naturalized from cultivation in the Seychelles.1730 The indications of authors are not positive enough to say whether it is wild in Africa.1731 Lubia—Dolichos Lubia, Forskal.

This species, cultivated in Europe under the name of lubia, loubya, loubyÉ, according to Forskal and Delile,1732 is little known to botanists. According to the latter author it exists also in Syria, Persia, and India; but I do not find this in any way confirmed in modern works on these two countries. Schweinfurth and Ascherson1733 admit it as a distinct species, cultivated in the Nile Valley. Hitherto no one has found it wild. No Dolichos or Phaseolus is known in the monuments of ancient Egypt. We shall see from the evidence of the common names that these plants were probably introduced into Egyptian agriculture after the time of the Pharaohs.

The name lubia is used by the Berbers, unchanged, and by the Spaniards as alubia for the common haricot, Phaseolus vulgaris. Although Phaseolus and Dolichos are very similar, this is an example of the little value of common names as a proof of species. Loba is, as we have seen, one of the Hindustani names for Phaseolus vulgaris,1734 and lobia that of Dolichos sinensis in the same language.1735 Orientalists should tell us whether lubia is an old word in Semitic languages. I do not find a similar name in Hebrew, and it is possible that the Armenians or the Arabs took lubia from the Greek lobos (????), which means any projection, like the lobe of the ear, a fruit of the nature of a pod, and more particularly, according to Galen, Ph. vulgaris. Lobion (?????) in Dioscorides is the fruit of Ph. vulgaris, at least in the opinion of commentators.1736 It remains as loubion in modern Greek, with the same meaning.1737

Bambarra Ground Nut—Glycine subterranea, LinnÆus, junr.; Voandzeia subterranea, Petit Thouars. The earliest travellers in Madagascar remarked this leguminous annual, cultivated by the natives for the pod or seed, dressed like peas, French beans, etc. It resembles the earth, particularly in that the flower-stem curves downwards, and plunges the young fruit or pod into the earth. Its cultivation is common in the gardens of tropical Africa, and it is found, but less frequently, in those of Southern Asia.1738 It seems that it is not much grown in America,1739 except in Brazil, where it is called mandubi di Angola.1740

Early writers on Asia do not mention it; its origin must, therefore, be sought in Africa. Loureiro1741 had seen it on the eastern coast of this continent, and Petit Thouars in Madagascar, but they do not say that it was wild. The authors of the flora of Senegambia1742 described it as “cultivated and probably wild” in Galam. Lastly, Schweinfurth and Ascherson1743 found it wild on the banks of the Nile from Khartoum to Gondokoro. In spite of the possibility of naturalization from cultivation, it is extremely probable that the plant is wild in tropical Africa.

Buckwheat—Polygonum fagopyrum, LinnÆus; Fagopyrum esculentum, Moench.

The history of this species has been completely cleared up in the last few years. It grows wild in Mantschuria, on the banks of the river Amur,1744 in Dahuria, and near Lake Baikal.1745 It is also indicated in China and in the mountains of the north of India,1746 but I do not find that in these regions its wild character is certain. Roxburgh has only seen it in a cultivated state in the north of India, and Bretschneider1747 thinks it doubtful that it is indigenous in China. Its cultivation is not ancient, for the first Chinese author who mentions it lived in the tenth or eleventh century of the Christian era.

Buckwheat is cultivated in the Himalayas under the names ogal or ogla and kouton.1748 As there is no Sanskrit name for this species nor for the two following, I doubt the antiquity of their cultivation in the mountains of Central Asia. It was certainly unknown to the Greeks and Romans. The name fagopyrum is an invention of modern botanists from the similarity in the shape of the seed to a beech-nut, whence also the German buchweitzen1749 (corrupted in English into buckwheat) and the Italian faggina.

The names of this plant in European languages of Aryan origin have not a common root. Thus the western Aryans did not know the species any more than the Sanskrit-speaking Orientals, a further sign of the nonexistence of the plant in the mountains of Central Asia. Even at the present day it is probably unknown in the north of Persia and in Turkey, since floras do not mention it.1750 Bosc states, in the Dictionnaire d’Agriculture, that Olivier had seen it wild in Persia, but I do not find this in this naturalist’s published account of his travels.

The species came into Europe in the Middle Ages, through Tartary and Russia. The first mention of its cultivation in Germany occurs in a Mecklenburg register of 1436.1751 In the sixteenth century it spread towards the centre of Europe, and in poor soil, as in Brittany, it became important. Reynier, who, as a rule, is very accurate, imagined that the French name sarrasin was Keltic;1752 but M. le Gall wrote to me formerly that the Breton names simply mean black wheat or black corn, ed-du and gwinis-du. There is no original name in Keltic languages, which seems natural now that we know the origin of the species.1753

When the plant was introduced into Belgium and into France, and even when it became known in Italy, that is to say in the sixteenth century, the name blÉ sarrasin (Saracen wheat) or sarrasin was commonly adopted. Common names are often so absurd, and so unthinkingly bestowed, that we cannot tell in this particular case whether the name refers to the colour of the grain which was that attributed to the Saracens, or to the supposed introduction from the country of the Arabs or Moors. It was not then known that the species did not exist in the countries south of the Mediterranean, nor even in Syria and Persia. It is also possible that the idea of a southern origin was taken from the name sarrasin, which was given from the colour. This origin was admitted until the end of the last and even in the present century.1754 Reynier was, fifty years ago, the first to oppose it.

Buckwheat sometimes escapes from cultivation and becomes quasi-wild. The nearer we approach its original country the more often this occurs, whence it results that it is hard to define the limit of the wild plant on the confines of Europe and Asia, in the Himalayas, and in China. In Japan these semi-naturalizations are not rare.1755

Tartary Buckwheat—Polygonum tataricum, LinnÆus; Fagopyrum tataricum, GÆrtner.

Less sensitive to cold than the common buckwheat, but yielding a poorer kind of seed, this species is sometimes cultivated in Europe and Asia—in the Himalayas,1756 for instance; but its culture is recent. Authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries do not mention it, and LinnÆus was one of the first to speak of it as of Tartar origin. Roxburgh and Hamilton had not seen it in Northern India in the beginning of this century, and I find no indication of it in China and Japan.

It is undoubtedly wild in Tartary and Siberia, as far as Dauria;1757 but Russian botanists have not found it further east, in the basin of the river Amur.1758

As this plant came from Tartary into Eastern Europe later than the common buckwheat, it is the latter which bears in several Slav languages the names tatrika, tatarka, or tattar, which would better suit the Tartary buckwheat.

It seems that the Aryan peoples must have known the species, and yet no name is mentioned in the ancient Indo-European languages. No trace of it has hitherto been found in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland or of Savoy.

Notch-seeded Buckwheat—Polygonum emarginatum, Roth; Fagopyrum emarginatum, Meissner.

This third species of buckwheat is grown in the highlands of the north-east of India, under the name phaphra or phaphar,1759 and in China.1760 I find no positive proof that it has been found wild. Roth only says that it “inhabits China,” and that the grain is used for food. Don,1761 who was the first of Anglo-Indian botanists to mention it, says that it is hardly considered wild. It is not mentioned in floras of the Amur valley, nor of Japan. Judging from the countries where it is cultivated, it is probably wild in the Eastern Himalayas and the north-west of China.

The genus Fagopyrum has eight species, all of temperate Asia.

Quinoa—Chenopodium quinoa, Willdenow.

The quinoa was a staple food of the natives of New Granada, Peru, and Chili, in the high and temperate parts at the time of the conquest. Its cultivation has persisted in these countries from custom, and on account of the abundance of the product.

From all time the distinction has existed between the quinoa with coloured leaves, and the quinoa with green leaves and white seed.1762 The latter was regarded by Moquin1763 as a variety of a little known species, believed to be Asiatic; but I believe that I showed conclusively that the two American quinoas are two varieties, probably very ancient, of a single species.1764 The less coloured, which is also the most farinaceous, is probably derived from the other.

The white quinoa yields a grain which is much esteemed at Lima, according to information furnished by the Botanical Magazine, where a good drawing may be seen (pl. 3641). The leaves may be dressed in the same manner as spinach.1765

No botanist has mentioned the quinoa as wild or semi-wild. The most recent and complete work on one of the countries where the species is cultivated, the Flora of Chili, by Cl. Gay, speaks of it only as a cultivated plant. PÈre FeuillÉe and Humboldt said the same for Peru and New Granada. It is perhaps due to the insignificance of the plant and its aspect of a garden weed that collectors have neglected to bring back wild specimens.

Kiery—Amarantus frumentaceus, Roxburgh.

This annual is cultivated in the Indian peninsula for its small farinaceous grain, which is in some localities the principal food of the natives.1766 Fields of this species, of a red or golden colour, produce a beautiful effect.1767 From Roxburgh’s account, Dr. Buchanan “discovered it on the hills of Mysore and Coimbatore,” which seems to indicate a wild condition. Amarantus speciosus, cultivated in gardens and figured on pl. 2227 of the Botanical Magazine, appears to be the same species. Hamilton found it in Nepal.1768 A variety or allied species, Amarantus anardana, Wallich,1769 is grown on the slopes of the Himalayas, but has been hitherto ill defined by botanists. Other species are used as vegetables (see p. 100, Amarantus gangeticus).

Chestnut—Castanea vulgaris, Lamarck.

The chestnut, belonging to the order CupuliferÆ, has an extended but disjunctive natural area. It forms forests and woods in mountainous parts of the temperate zone from the Caspian Sea to Portugal. It has also been found in the mountains of Edough in Algeria, and more recently towards the frontier of Tunis (Letourneux). If we take into account the varieties japonica and americana, it exists also in Japan and in the temperate region of North America.1770 It has been sown or planted in several parts of the south and west of Europe, and it is now difficult to know if it is wild or cultivated. However, cultivation consists chiefly in the operation of grafting good varieties on the trees which yield indifferent fruit. For this purpose the variety which produces but one large kernel is preferred to those which bear two or three, separated by a membrane, which is the natural state of the species.

The Romans in Pliny’s time1771 already distinguished eight varieties, but we cannot discover from the text of this author whether they possessed the variety with a single kernel (Fr. marron). The best chestnuts came from Sardis in Asia Minor, and from the neighbourhood of Naples. Olivier de Serres,1772 in the sixteenth century, praises the chestnuts Sardonne and Tuscane, which produced the single-kernelled fruit called the Lyons marron.1773 He considered that these varieties came from Italy, and Targioni1774 tells us that the name marrone or marone was employed in that country in the Middle Ages (1170).

Wheat and Kindred Species.—The innumerable varieties of wheat, properly so called, of which the ripened grain detaches itself naturally from the husk, have been classed into four groups by Vilmorin,1775 which form distinct species, or modifications of the common wheat according to different authors. I am obliged to distinguish them in order to study their history, but this, as will be seen, supports the opinion of a single species.1776

1. Common Wheat—Triticum vulgare, Villars; Triticum hybernum and T. Æstivum, LinnÆus.

According to the experiments of the AbbÉ Rozier, and later of Tessier, the distinction between autumn and spring wheats has no importance. “All wheats,” says the latter,1777 “are either spring or autumn sown, according to the country. They all pass with time from the one state to the other, as I have ascertained. They only need to be gradually accustomed to the change, by sowing the autumn wheat a little later, spring wheat a little earlier, year by year.” The fact is that among the immense number of varieties there are some which feel the cold of the winter more than others, and it has become the custom to sow them in the spring.1778 We need take no note of this distinction in studying the question of origin, especially as the greater number of the varieties thus obtained date from a remote period.

The cultivation of wheat is prehistoric in the old world. Very ancient Egyptian monuments, older than the invasion of the shepherds, and the Hebrew Scriptures show this cultivation already established, and when the Egyptians or Greeks speak of its origin, they attribute it to mythical personages, Isis, Ceres, Triptolemus.1779 The earliest lake-dwellings of Western Switzerland cultivated a small-grained wheat, which Heer1780 has carefully described and figured under the name Triticum vulgare antiquorum. From various facts, taken collectively, we gather that the first lake-dwellers of Robenhausen were at least contemporary with the Trojan war, and perhaps earlier. The cultivation of their wheat persisted in Switzerland until the Roman conquest, as we see from specimens found at Buchs. Regazzoni also found it in the rubbish-heaps of the lake-dwellers of Varese, and Sordelli in those of Lagozza in Lombardy.1781 Unger found the same form in a brick of the pyramid of Dashur, Egypt, to which he assigns a date, 3359 B.C. (Unger, Bot. StreifzÜge, vii.; Ein Ziegel, etc., p. 9), Another variety (Triticum vulgare compactum muticum, Heer) was less common in Switzerland in the earliest stone age, but it has been more often found among the less ancient lake-dwellers of Western Switzerland and of Italy.1782 A third intermediate variety has been discovered at Aggtelek in Hungary, cultivated in the stone age.1783 None of these is identical with the wheat now cultivated, as more profitable varieties have taken their place.

The Chinese, who grew wheat 2700 B.C., considered it a gift direct from heaven.1784 In the annual ceremony of sowing five kinds of seed, instituted by the Emperor Shen-nung or Chin-nong, wheat is one species, the others being rice, sorghum, Setaria italica, and soy.

The existence of different names for wheat in the most ancient languages confirms the belief in a great antiquity of cultivation. The Chinese name is mai, the Sanskrit sumana and gÔdhÛma, the Hebrew chittah, Egyptian br, Guancho yrichen, without mentioning several names in languages derived from the primitive Sanskrit, nor a Basque name, ogaia or okhaya, which dates perhaps from the Iberians,1785 and several Finn, Tartar, and Turkish names, etc.,1786 which are probably Turanian. This great diversity might be explained by a wide natural area in the case of a very common wild plant, but this is far from being the case of wheat. On the contrary, it is difficult to prove its existence in a wild state in a few places in Western Asia, as we shall see. If it had been widely diffused before cultivation, descendants would have remained here and there in remote countries. The manifold names of ancient languages must, therefore, be attributed to the extreme antiquity of its culture in the temperate parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa—an antiquity greater than that of the most ancient languages. We have two methods of discovering the home of the species previous to cultivation in the immense zone stretching from China to the Canaries: first, the opinion of ancient authors; second, the existence, more or less proved, of wheat in a wild state in a given country.

According to the earliest of all historians, Berosus, a Chaldean priest, fragments of whose writings have been preserved by Herodotus, wild wheat (Frumentum agreste1787) might be seen growing in Mesopotamia. The texts of the Bible alluding to the abundance of wheat in Canaan prove no more than that the plant was cultivated there, and that it was very productive. Strabo,1788 born 50 B.C., says that, according to Aristobulus, a grain very similar to wheat grew wild upon the banks of the Indus on the 25th parallel of latitude. He also says1789 that in Hircania the modern Mazanderan) the grains of wheat which fell from the ear sowed themselves. This may be observed to some degree at the present day in all countries, and the author says nothing upon the important question whether this accidental sowing reproduced itself in the same place from generation to generation. According to the Odyssey,1790 wheat grew in Sicily without the help of man. But it is impossible to attach great importance to the words of a poet, and of a poet whose very existence is contested. Diodorus Siculus at the beginning of the Christian era says the same thing, and deserves greater confidence, since he is a Sicilian. Yet he may easily have been mistaken as to the wild character, as wheat was then generally cultivated in Sicily. Another passage in Diodorus1791 mentions the tradition that Osiris found wheat and barley growing promiscuously with other plants at Nisa, and Dureau de la Malle has proved that this town was in Palestine. Among all this evidence, that of Berosus and that of Strabo for Mesopotamia and Western India alone appear to me of any value.

The five species of seed of the ceremony instituted by Chin-nong are considered by Chinese scholars to be natives of their country,1792 and Bretschneider adds that communication between China and Western Asia dates only from the embassy of Chang-kien in the second century before Christ. A more positive assertion is needed, however, before we can believe wheat to be indigenous in China; for a plant cultivated in western Asia two or three thousand years before the epoch of Chin-nong, and of which the seeds are so easily transported, may have been introduced into the north of China by isolated and unknown travellers, as the stones of peaches and apricots were probably carried from China into Persia in prehistoric time.

Botanists have ascertained that wheat is not wild in Sicily at the present day.1793 It sometimes escapes from cultivation, but it does not persist indefinitely.1794 The plant which the inhabitants call wild wheat, Frumentu sarvaggiu, which covers uncultivated ground, is Ægilops ovata, according to Inzenga.1795

A zealous collector, Balansa, believed that he had found wheat growing on Mount Sipylus, in Asia Minor, under circumstances in which it was impossible not to believe it wild;1796 but the plant he brought back is a spelt, Triticum monococcum, according to a very careful botanist, to whom it was submitted for examination.1797 Olivier,1798 before him, when he was on the right bank of the Euphrates, to the north-west of Anah, a country unfit for cultivation, “found in a kind of ravine, wheat, barley, and spelt, which,” he adds, “we have already seen several times in Mesopotamia.”

LinnÆus says,1799 that Heintzelmann found wheat in the country of the Baschkirs, but no one has confirmed this statement, and no modern botanist has seen the species really wild in the neighbourhood of the Caucasus or the north of Persia. Bunge,1800 whose attention was drawn to this point, declares that he has seen no indication which leads him to believe that cereals are indigenous in that country. It does not even appear that wheat has a tendency in these regions to spring up accidentally outside cultivated ground. I have not discovered any mention of it as a wild plant in the north of India, in China, or Mongolia.

It is remarkable that wheat has been twice asserted to be indigenous in Mesopotamia, at an interval of twenty three centuries, once by Berosus, and once by Olivier in our own day. The Euphrates valley lying nearly in the middle of the belt of cultivation which formerly extended from China to the Canaries, it is infinitely probable that it was the principal habitation of the species in very early prehistoric times. The area may have extended towards Syria, as the climate is very similar, but to the east and west of Western Asia wheat has probably never existed but as a cultivated plant; anterior, it is true, to all known civilization.

2. Turgid, and Egyptian Wheat—Triticum turgidum and T. compositum, LinnÆus.

Among the numerous common names of the varieties which come under this head, we find that of Egyptian wheat. It appears that it is now much cultivated in that country and in the whole of the Nile valley. A. P. de Candolle says1801 that he recognized this wheat amongst seeds taken from the sarcophagi of ancient mummies, but he had not seen the ears. Unger1802 thinks it was cultivated by the ancient Egyptians, yet he gives no proof founded on drawings or specimens. The fact that no Hebrew or Armenian name1803 can be attributed to the species seems to me important. It proves at least that the remarkable forms with branching ears, commonly called wheat of miracle, wheat of abundance, did not exist in antiquity, for they would not have escaped the knowledge of the Israelites. No Sanskrit name is known, nor even any modern Indian names, and I cannot discover any Persian name. The Arab names which Delile1804 attributes to the species belong perhaps to other varieties of wheat. There is no Berber name.1805 From all this it results, I think, that the plants united under the name of Triticum turgidum, and especially the varieties with branching ears, are not ancient in the north of Africa or in the west of Asia.

Oswald Heer,1806 in his curious paper upon the plants of the lake-dwellers of the stone age in Switzerland, attributes to T. turgidum two non-branched ears, the one bearded, the other almost without beard, of which he gives drawings. Later, in an exploration of the lake-dwellings of Robenhausen, Messicommer did not find it, although there was abundant store of grain.1807 Stroebel and Pigorini said they found wheat with grano grosso duro (T. turgidum), in the lake-dwellings of Parmesan.1808 For the rest, Heer1809 considers this to be a variety or race of the common wheat, and Sordelli inclines to the same opinion.

Fraas thinks that the krithanias of Theophrastus was T. turgidum, but this is absolutely uncertain. According to Heldreich,1810 the great wheat is of modern introduction into Greece. Pliny1811 spoke briefly of a wheat with branching ears, yielding one hundred grains, which was most likely our miraculous wheat.

Thus history and philology alike lead us to consider the varieties of Triticum turgidum as modifications of the common wheat obtained by cultivation. The form with branching ears is not perhaps earlier than Pliny’s time.

These deductions would be overthrown by the discovery of the T. turgidum in a wild state, which has not hitherto been made with certainty. In spite of C. Koch,1812 no one admits that it grows, outside cultivation, at Constantinople and in Asia Minor. Boissier’s herbarium, so rich in Eastern plants, has no specimen of it. It is given as wild in Egypt by Schweinfurth, and Ascherson, but this is the result of a misprint.1813

3. Hard Wheat—Triticum durum, Desfontaines.

Long cultivated in Barbary, in the south of Switzerland and elsewhere, it has never been found wild. In the different provinces of Spain it has no less than fifteen names,1814 and none are derived from the Arab name quemah used in Algeria1815 and Egypt.1816 The absence of names in several other countries, especially of original names, is very striking. This is a further indication of a derivation from the common wheat obtained in Spain and the north of Africa at an unknown epoch, perhaps within the Christian era.

4. Polish Wheat—Triticum polonicum, LinnÆus.

This other hard wheat, with yet longer grain, cultivated chiefly in the east of Europe, has not been found wild. It has an original name in German, GÄner, Gommer, GÜmmer,1817 and in other languages names which are connected only with persons or with countries whence the seed was obtained. It cannot be doubted that it is a form obtained by cultivation, probably in the east of Europe, at an unknown, perhaps recent epoch.

Conclusion as to the Specific Unity of the Principal Races of Wheat.

We have just shown that the history and the vernacular names of the great races of wheat are in favour of a derivation contemporary with man, probably not very ancient, from the common kind of wheat, perhaps from the small-grained wheat formerly cultivated by the Egyptians, and by the lake-dwellers of Switzerland and Italy. Alefeld1818 arrived at the specific unity of T. vulgare, T. turgidum, and T. durum, by means of an attentive observation of the three cultivated together, under the same conditions. The experiments of Henri Vilmorin1819 on the artificial fertilization of these wheats lead to the same result. Although the author has not yet seen the product of several generations, he has ascertained that the most distinct principal forms can be crossed with ease and produce fertile hybrids. If fertilization be taken as a measure of the intimate degree of affinity which leads to the grouping of individuals into the same species, we cannot hesitate in the case in question, especially with the support of the historical considerations which I have given.

On the supposed Mummy Wheat.

Before concluding this article, I think it pertinent to say that no grain taken from an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus and sown by horticulturists has ever been known to germinate. It is not that the thing is impossible, for grains are all the better preserved that they are protected from the air and from variations of temperature or humidity, and certainly these conditions are fulfilled by Egyptian monuments; but, as a matter of fact, the attempts at raising wheat from these ancient seeds have not been successful. The experiment which has been most talked of is that of the Count of Sternberg, at Prague.1820 He had received the grains from a trustworthy traveller, who assured him they were taken from a sarcophagus. Two of these seeds germinated, it is said, but I have ascertained that in Germany well-informed persons believe there is some imposture, either on the part of the Arabs, who sometimes slip modern seeds into the tombs (even maize, an American plant), or on that of the employÉs of the Count of Sternberg. The grain known in commerce as mummy wheat has never had any proof of antiquity of origin.

Spelt and Allied Varieties or Species.1821

Louis Vilmorin,1822 in imitation of Seringe’s excellent work on cereals,1823 has grouped together those wheats whose seeds when ripe are closely contained in their envelope or husk, necessitating a special operation to free them from it, a character rather agricultural than botanical. He then enumerates the forms of these wheats under three names, which correspond to as many species of most botanists.

1. Spelt—Triticum spelta, LinnÆus.

Spelt is now hardly cultivated out of south Germany and German-Switzerland. This was not the case formerly. The descriptions of cereals by Greek authors are so brief and insignificant that there is always room for hesitation as to the sense of the words they use. Yet, judging from the customs of which they speak, scholars think1824 that the Greeks first called spelt olyra, afterwards zeia, names which we find in Herodotus and Homer. Dioscorides1825 distinguishes two sorts of zeia, which apparently answer to Triticum spelta and T. monococcum. It is believed that spelt was the semen (corn, par excellence) and the far of Pliny, which he said was used as food by the Latins for 360 years before they knew how to make bread.1826 As spelt has not been found among the lake-dwellers of Switzerland and Italy, and as the former cultivated the allied varieties called T. dicoccum and T. monococcum,1827 it is possible that the far of the Latins was rather one of these.

The existence of the true spelt in ancient Egypt and the neighbouring countries seems to me yet more doubtful. The olyra of the Egyptians, of which Herodotus speaks, was not the olyra of the Greeks; some authors have supposed it to be rice, oryza.1828 As to spelt, it is a plant which is not grown in such hot countries. Modern travellers from Rauwolf onwards have not seen it in Egyptian cultivation,1829 nor has it been found in the ancient monuments. This is what led me to suppose1830 that the Hebrew word kussemeth, which occurs three times in the Bible,1831 ought not to be attributed to spelt, as it is by Hebrew scholars.1832 I imagined it was perhaps the allied form, T. monococcum, but neither is this grown in Egypt. Spelt has no name in Sanskrit, nor in any modern Indian languages, nor in Persian,1833 and therefore, of course, none in Chinese. European names, on the contrary, are numerous, and bear witness to an ancient cultivation, especially in the east of Europe. Spelta in Saxon, whence the English name, and the French, Épeautre; Dinkel in modern German, orkiss in Polish, pobla in Russian,1834 are names which seem to come from very different roots. In the south of Europe the names are rarer. There is a Spanish one, however, of Asturia, escandia,1835 but I know of none in Basque.

History, and especially philology, point to an origin in eastern temperate Europe and the neighbouring countries of Asia. We have to discover whether the plant has been found wild.

Olivier,1836 in a passage already quoted, says that he several times found it in Mesopotamia, in particular upon the right bank of the Euphrates, north of Anah, in places unfit for cultivation. Another botanist, AndrÉ Michaux, saw it in 1783, near Hamadan, a town in the temperate region of Persia. Dureau de la Malle says that he sent some grains of it to Bosc, who sowed them at Paris and obtained the common spelt; but this seems to me doubtful, for Lamarck, in 1786,1837 and Bosc himself, in the Dictionnaire d’Agriculture, article Épeautre (spelt), published in 1809, says not a word of this. The herbariums of the Paris Museum contain no specimens of the cereals mentioned by Olivier.

There is, as we have seen, much uncertainty as to the origin of the species as a wild plant. This leads me to attribute more importance to the hypothesis that spelt is derived by cultivation from the common wheat, or from an intermediate form at some not very early prehistoric time. The experiments of H. Vilmorin1838 support this theory, for cross fertilizations of the spelt by the downy white wheat, and vice versÂ, yield “hybrids whose fertility is complete, with a mixture of the characters of both parents, those of the spelt preponderating.”

2. Starch Wheat—Triticum dicoccum, Schrank; Triticum amyleum, Seringe.

This form (Emmer, or Aemer in German), cultivated for starch chiefly in Switzerland, resists a hard winter. It contains two grains in each little ear, like the true spelt.

Heer1839 attributes to a variety of T. dicoccum an ear found in a bad state of preservation in the lake-dwellings of Wangen, Switzerland. Messicommer has since found some at Robenhausen.

It has never been found wild; and the rarity of common names is remarkable. These two circumstances, and the slight value of the botanical characters which serve to distinguish it from Tr. spelta, lead to the conclusion that it is an ancient cultivated variety of the latter.

3. One-grained Wheat—Triticum monococcum, LinnÆus.

The one-grained wheat, or little spelt, Einkorn in German, is distinguished from the two preceding by a single seed in the little ear, and by other characters which lead the majority of botanists to consider it as a really distinct species. The experiments of H. Vilmorin confirm this opinion so far, for he has not yet succeeded in crossing T. monococcum with other spelts or wheats. This may be due, as he says himself, to some detail in the manner of operating. He intends to renew his attempts, and may perhaps succeed. [In the Bulletin de la SociÉtÉ Botanique de France, 1883, p. 62, Mr. Vilmorin says that he has not met with better success in the third and fourth years in his attempts at crossing T. monococcum with other species. He intends to make the experiment with T. boeoticum, Boissier, wild in Servia, of which I sent him some seeds gathered by Pancic. As this species is supposed to be the original stock of T. monococcum, the experiment is an interesting one.—Author’s Note, 1884.] In the mean time let us see whether this form of spelt has been long in cultivation, and if it has anywhere been found growing wild.

The one-grained wheat thrives in the poorest and most stony soil. It is not very productive, but yields excellent meal. It is sown especially in mountainous districts, in Spain, France, and the east of Europe, but I do not find it mentioned in Barbary, Egypt, the East, or in India or China.

From some expressions it has been believed to be the tiphai of Theophrastus.1840 It is easier to invoke Dioscorides,1841 for he distinguishes two kinds of zeia, one with two seeds, another with only one. The latter would be the one-grained wheat. Nothing proves that it was commonly cultivated by the Greeks and Romans. Their modern descendants do not sow it.1842 There are no Sanskrit, Persian, or Arabic names. I suggested formerly that the Hebrew word kussemeth might apply to this species, but this hypothesis now seems to me difficult to maintain.

Marschall Bieberstein1843 mentions Triticum monococcum, or a variety of it, growing wild in the Crimea and the eastern Caucasus, but no botanist has confirmed this assertion. Steven,1844 who lived in the Crimea, declares that he never saw the species except cultivated by the Tartars. On the other hand, the plant which Balansa gathered in a wild state near Mount Sipylus, in Anatolia, is T. monococcum, according to J. Gay,1845 who takes with this form Triticum boeoticum, Boissier, which grows wild in the plains of Boeotia1846 and in Servia.1847 Admitting these facts, T. monococcum is a native of Servia, Greece, and Asia Minor, and as the attempts to cross it with other spelts or wheats have not been successful, it is rightly termed a species in the LinnÆan sense.

The separation of wheat with free grains from spelt must have taken place before all history, perhaps before the beginning of agriculture. Wheat must have appeared first in Asia, and then spelt, probably in Eastern Europe and Anatolia. Lastly, among spelts T. monococcum seems to be the most ancient form, from which the others have gradually developed in several thousand years of cultivation and selection.

Two-rowed Barley—Hordeum distichon, LinnÆus.

Barley is among the most ancient of cultivated plants. As all its forms resemble each other in nature and uses, we must not expect to find in ancient authors and in common names that precision which would enable us to recognize the species admitted by botanists. In many cases the name barley has been taken in a vague or generic sense. This is a difficulty which we must take into account. For instance, the expression of the Old Testament, of Berosus, of Moses of Chorene, Pausanias, Marco Polo, and more recently of Olivier, indicating “wild and cultivated barley” in a given country, prove nothing, because we do not know to which species they refer. There is the same obscurity in China. Dr. Bretschneider says1848 that, according to a work published in the year A.D. 100, the Chinese cultivated barley, but he does not specify the kind. At the extreme west of the old world the Guanchos also cultivated a barley, of which we know the name but not the species.

The common variety of the two-rowed barley, in which the husk remains attached to the ripened grain, has been found wild in Western Asia, in Arabia Petrea,1849 near Mount Sinai,1850 in the ruins of Persepolis,1851 near the Caspian Sea,1852 between Lenkoran and Baku, in the desert of Chirvan and Awhasia, to the south of the Caucasus,1853 and in Turcomania.1854 No author mentions it in Greece, Egypt, or to the east of Persia. Willdenow1855 indicates it at Samara, in the south-east of Russia; but more recent authors do not confirm this. Its modern area is, therefore, from the Red Sea to the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea.

Hence this barley should be one of the forms cultivated by Semitic and Turanian peoples. Yet it has not been found in Egyptian monuments. It seems that the Aryans must have known it, but I find no proof in vernacular names or in history.

Theophrastus1856 speaks of the two-rowed barley. The lake-dwellers of Eastern Switzerland cultivated it before they possessed metals,1857 but the six-rowed barley was more common among them.

The variety in which the grain is bare at maturity (H. distichon nudum, LinnÆus), which in France has all sorts of absurd names, orge À cafÉ, orge du PÉrou (coffee barley, Peruvian barley), has never been found wild.

The fan-shaped barley (Hordeum Zeocriton, LinnÆus) seems to me to be a cultivated form of the two-rowed barley. It is not known in a wild state, nor has it been found in Egyptian monuments, nor the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, Savoy, and Italy.

Common Barley—Hordeum vulgare, LinnÆus.

The common barley with four rows of grain is mentioned by Theophrastus,1858 but it seems to have been less cultivated in antiquity than that with two rows, and considerably less than that with six rows. It has not been found in Egyptian monuments, nor in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, Savoy, and Italy.

Willdenow1859 says that it grows in Sicily and in the south-east of Russia, at Samara, but the modern floras of these two countries do not confirm this. We do not know what species of barley it was that Olivier saw growing wild in Mesopotamia; consequently the common barley has not yet been found certainly wild.

The multitude of common names which are attributed to it prove nothing as to its origin, for in most cases it is impossible to know if they are names of barley in general, or of a particular kind of barley cultivated in a given country.

Six-rowed Barley—Hordeum hexastichon, LinnÆus.

This was the species most commonly cultivated in antiquity. Not only is it mentioned by Greek authors, but it has also been found in the earliest Egyptian monuments,1860 and in the remains of the lake-dwellings of Switzerland (age of stone), of Italy, and of Savoy (age of bronze).1861 Heer has even distinguished two varieties of the species formerly cultivated in Switzerland. One of them answers to the six-rowed barley represented on the medals of Metapontis, a town in the south of Italy, six centuries before Christ.

According to Roxburgh,1862 it was the only kind of barley grown in India at the end of the last century. He attributes to it the Sanskrit name yuva, which has become juba in Bengali. Adolphe Pictet1863 has carefully studied the names in Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages which answer to the generic name barley, but he has not been able to go into the details of each species.

The six-rowed barley has not been seen in the conditions of a wild plant, of which the species has been determined by a botanist. I have not found it in Boissier’s herbarium, which is so rich in Eastern plants. It is possible that the wild barleys mentioned by ancient authors and by Olivier were Hordeum hexastichon, but there is no proof of this.

On Barleys in general.

We have seen that the only form which is now found wild is the simplest, the least productive, Hordeum distichon, which was, like H. hexastichon, cultivated in prehistoric time. Perhaps H. vulgare has not been so long in cultivation as the two others.

Two hypotheses may be drawn from these facts: 1. That the barleys with four and six rows were, in prehistoric agriculture anterior to that of the ancient Egyptians who built the monuments, derived from H. distichon. 2. The barleys with six and four ranks were species formerly wild, extinct since the historical epoch. It would be strange in this case that no trace of them has remained in the floras of the vast region comprised between India, the Black Sea, and Abyssinia, where we are nearly sure of their cultivation, at least of that of the six-ranked barley.

Rye—Secale cereale, LinnÆus.

Rye has not been very long in cultivation, unless, perhaps, in Russia and Thrace. It has not been found in Egyptian monuments, and has no name in Semitic languages, even in the modern ones, nor in Sanskrit and the modern Indian languages derived from Sanskrit. These facts agree with the circumstance that rye thrives better in northern than in southern countries, where it is not usually cultivated in modern times. Dr. Bretschneider1864 thinks it is unknown to Chinese agriculture. He doubts the contrary assertion of a modern writer, and remarks that the name of a cereal mentioned in the memoirs of the Emperor Kanghi, which may be supposed to be this species, signifies Russian wheat. Now rye, he says, is much cultivated in Siberia. There is no mention of it in Japanese floras.

The ancient Greeks did not know it. The first author who mentions it in the Roman empire is Pliny,1865 who speaks of the secale cultivated at Turin at the foot of the Alps, under the name of Asia. Galen,1866 born in A.D. 131, had seen it cultivated in Thrace and Macedonia under the name briza. Its cultivation does not seem ancient, at least in Italy, for no trace of rye has been found in the remains of the lake-dwellings of the north of that country, or of Switzerland and Savoy, even of the age of bronze. Jetteles found remains of rye near Olmutz, together with instruments of bronze, and Heer,1867 who saw the specimens, mentions others of the Roman epoch in Switzerland.

Failing archÆological proofs, European languages show an early knowledge of rye in German, Keltic, and Slavonic countries. The principal names, according to Adolphe Pictet,1868 belong to the peoples of the north of Europe: Anglo-Saxon, ryge, rig; Scandinavian, rÛgr; Old High German, roggo; Ancient Slav, ruji, roji; Polish, rez; Illyrian, raz, etc. The origin of this name must date, he says, from an epoch previous to the separation of the Teutons from the Lithuano-Slavs. The word secale of the Latins recurs in a similar form among the Bretons, segal, and the Basques, cekela, zekhalea; but it is not known whether the Latins borrowed it from the Gauls and Iberians, or whether, conversely, the latter took the name from the Romans. This second hypothesis appears to be the more probable of the two, since the Cisalpine Gauls of Pliny’s time had quite a different name. I also find mentioned a Tartar name, aresch,1869 and an Ossete name, syl, sil,1870 which points to an ancient cultivation to the east of Europe. Thus historical and philological data show that the species probably had its origin in the countries north of the Danube, and that its cultivation is hardly earlier than the Christian era in the Roman empire, but perhaps more ancient in Russia and Tartary.

The indication of wild rye given by several authors should scarcely ever be accepted, for it has often happened that Secale cereale has been confounded with perennial species, or with others of which the ear is easily broken, which modern botanists have rightly distinguished.1871 Many mistakes which thus arose have been cleared up by an examination of original specimens. Others may be suspected. Thus I do not know what to think of the assertions of L. Ross, who said he had found rye growing wild in several parts of Anatolia,1872 and of the Russian traveller Ssaewerzoff, who said he saw it in Turkestan.1873 The latter fact is probable enough, but it is not said that any botanist verified the species. Kunth1874 had previously mentioned it in “the desert between the Black Sea and the Caspian,” but he does not say on what authority of traveller or of specimens. Boissier’s herbarium has shown me no wild Secale cereale, but it has persuaded me that another species of rye might easily be mistaken for this one, and that assertions require to be carefully verified.

Failing satisfactory proofs of wild plants, I formerly urged, in my GÉographie Botanique RaisonnÉe, an argument of some value. Secale cereale sows itself from cultivation, and becomes almost wild in parts of the Austrian empire,1875 which is seldom seen elsewhere.1876 Thus in the east of Europe, where history points to an ancient cultivation, rye finds at the present day the most favourable conditions for living without the aid of man. It can hardly be doubted, from these facts, that its original area was in the region comprised between the Austrian Alps and the north of the Caspian Sea. This seems the more probable that the five or six known species of the genus Secale inhabit western temperate Asia or the south-east of Europe.

Admitting this origin, the Aryan natives would not have known the species, as philology already shows us; but in their migrations westward they must have met with it under different names, which they transported here and there.

Common Oats and Eastern Oats—Avena sativa, LinnÆus; Avena orientalis, Schreber.

The ancient Egyptians and the Hebrews did not cultivate oats, but they are now grown in Egypt.1877 There is no Sanskrit name, nor any in modern Indian languages. They are only now and then planted by the English in India for their horses.1878 The earliest mention of oats in China is in an historical work on the period 618 to 907 A.D.; it refers to the variety known to botanists as Avena sativa nuda.1879 The ancient Greeks knew the genus very well; they called it bromos,1880 as the Latins called it avena; but these names were commonly applied to species which are not cultivated, and which are weeds mixed with cereals. There is no proof that they cultivated the common oats. Pliny’s remark1881 that the Germans lived on oatmeal, implies that the species was not cultivated by the Romans.

The cultivation of oats was, therefore, practised anciently to the north of Italy and of Greece. It was diffused later and partially in the south of the Roman empire. It is possible that it was more ancient in Asia Minor, for Galen1882 says that oats were abundant in Mysia, above Pergamus; that they were given to horses, and that men used them for food in years of scarcity. A colony of Gauls had formerly penetrated into Asia Minor. Oats have been found among the remains of the Swiss lake-dwellings of the age of bronze,1883 and in Germany, near Wittenburg, in several tombs of the first centuries of the Christian era, or a little earlier.1884 Hitherto none have been found in the lake-dwellings of the north of Italy, which confirms the belief that oats were not cultivated in Italy in the time of the Roman republic.

The vernacular names also prove an ancient existence north and west of the Alps, and on the borders of Europe towards Tartary and the Caucasus. The most widely diffused of these names is indicated by the Latin avena, Ancient Slav ovisu, ovesu, ovsa, Russian ovesu, Lithuanian awiza, Lettonian ausas, Ostias abis.1885 The English word oats comes, according to A. Pictet, from the Anglo-Saxon ata or ate. The Basque name, olba or oloa,1886 argues a very ancient Iberian cultivation.

The Keltic names are quite different:1887 Irish coirce, cuirce, corca, Armorican kerch. Tartar sulu, Georgian kari, Hungarian zab, Croat zob, Esthonian kaer, and others are mentioned by Nemnich1888 as applying to the generic name oats, but it is not likely that names so varied do not belong to a cultivated species. It is strange that there should be an independent Berber name zekkoum,1889 as there is nothing to show that the species was anciently cultivated in Africa.

All these facts show how erroneous is the opinion which reigned in the last century,1890 that oats were brought originally from the island of Juan Fernandez, a belief which came apparently from an assertion of the navigator Anson.1891 It is evidently not in the Austral hemisphere that we must seek for the home of the species, but in those countries of the northern hemisphere where it was anciently cultivated.

Oats sow themselves on rubbish-heaps, by the wayside, and near cultivated ground more easily than other cereals, and sometimes persist in such a way as to appear wild. This has been observed in widely separate places, as Algeria and Japan, Paris and the north of China.1892 Instances of this nature render us sceptical as to the wild nature of the oats which BovÉ said he found in the desert of Sinai. It has also been said1893 that the traveller Olivier saw oats wild in Persia, but he does not mention the fact in his work. Besides, several annual species nearly resembling oats may deceive the traveller. I cannot discover either in books or herbaria the existence of really wild oats either in Europe or Asia, and Bentham has assured me that there are no such specimens in the herbarium at Kew; but certainly the half-wild or naturalized condition is more frequent in the Austrian states from Dalmatia to Transylvania1894 than elsewhere. This is an indication of origin which may be added to the historical and philological arguments in favour of eastern temperate Europe.

Avena strigosa, Schreber, appears to be a variety of the common oats, judging from the experiments in cultivation mentioned by Bentham, who adds, it is true, that these need confirmation.1895 There is a good drawing of the variety in Host, Icones Graminum Austriacorum, ii. pl. 56, which may be compared with A. sativa, pl. 59. For the rest, Avena strigosa has not been found wild. It exists in Europe in deserted fields, which confirms the hypothesis that it is a form derived by cultivation.

Avena orientalis, Schreber, of which the spikelets lean all to one side, has also been grown in Europe from the end of the eighteenth century. It is not known in a wild state. Often mixed with common oats, it is not to be distinguished from them at a glance. The names it bears in Germany, Turkish or Hungarian oats, points to a modern introduction from the East. Host gives a good drawing of it (Gram. Austr., i. pl. 44).

As all the varieties of oats are cultivated, and none have been discovered in a truly wild state, it is very probable that they are all derived from a single prehistoric form, a native of eastern temperate Europe and of Tartary.

Common Millet—Panicum miliaceum, LinnÆus.

The cultivation of this plant is prehistoric in the south of Europe, in Egypt, and in Asia. The Greeks knew it by the name kegchros, and the Latins by that of milium.1896 The Swiss lake-dwellers of the age of stone made great use of millet,1897 and it has also been found in the remains of the lake-dwellings of Varese in Italy.1898 As we do not elsewhere find specimens of these early times, it is impossible to know what was the panicum or the sorghum mentioned by Latin authors which was used as food by the inhabitants of Gaul, Panonia, and other countries. Unger1899 counts P. miliaceum among the species of ancient Egypt, but it does not appear that he had positive proof of this, for he has mentioned no monument, drawing, or seed found in the tombs. Nor is there any material proof of ancient cultivation in Mesopotamia, India, and China. For the last-named country it is a question whether the shu, one of the five cereals sown by the emperors in the great yearly ceremony, is Panicum miliaceum, an allied species, or sorghum; but it appears that the sense of the word shu has changed, and that formerly it was perhaps sorghum which was sown.1900 Anglo-Indian botanists1901 attribute two Sanskrit names to the modern species, ÛnÛ and vreehib-heda, although the modern Hindu and Bengali name cheena and the Telinga name worga are quite different. If the Sanskrit names are genuine, they indicate an ancient cultivation in India. No Hebrew nor Berber name is known,1902 but there are Arab names, dokhn, used in Egypt, and kosjÆjb in Arabia.1903 There are various European names. Besides the Greek and Latin words, there is an ancient Slav name, proso,1904 retained in Russia and Poland, an old German word hirsi, and a Lithuanian name sora.1905[P2 Corrected type at P1] The absence of Keltic names is remarkable. It appears that the species was cultivated especially in Eastern Europe, and spread westward towards the end of the Gallic dominion.

With regard to its wild existence, LinnÆus says1906 that it inhabits India, and most authors repeat this; but Anglo-Indian botanists1907 always give it as cultivated. It is not found in Japanese floras. In the north of China de Bunge only saw it cultivated,1908 and Maximowicz near the Ussuri, on the borders of fields and in places near Chinese dwellings.1909 Ledebour says1910 it is nearly wild in Altaic Siberia and Central Russia, and wild south of the Caucasus and in the country of Talysch. He quotes Hohenacker for the last-named locality, who, however, says only “nearly wild.”1911 In the Crimea, where it furnishes bread for the Tartars, it is found here and there nearly wild,1912 which is also the case in the south of France, in Italy, and in Austria.1913 It is not wild in Greece,1914 and no one has found it in Persia or in Syria. Forskal and Delile indicated it in Egypt, but Ascherson does not admit this;1915 and Forskal gives it in Arabia.1916 The species may have become naturalized in these regions, as the result of frequent cultivation from the time of the ancient Egyptians. However, its wild nature is so doubtful elsewhere, that its Egypto-Arabian origin is very probable.

Italian Millet—Panicum Italicum, LinnÆus; Setaria Italica, Beauvois.

The cultivation of this species was very common in the temperate parts of the old world in prehistoric times. Its seeds served as food for man, though now they are chiefly given to birds.

In China it is one of the five plants which the emperor sows each year in a public ceremony, according to the command issued by Chin-nong 2700 B.C.1917 The common name is siao mi (little seed), the more ancient name being ku; but the latter seems to be applied also to a very different species.1918 Pickering says he recognized it in two ancient Egyptian drawings, and that it is now cultivated in Egypt1919 under the name dokhn; but that is the name of Panicum miliaceum. It is, therefore, very doubtful that the ancient Egyptians cultivated it. It has been found among the remains of the Swiss lake-dwellings of the stone epoch, and therefore À fortiori among the lake-dwellers of the subsequent epoch in Savoy.1920

The ancient Greeks and Latins did not mention it, or at least it has not been possible to certify it from what they say of several panicums and millets. In our own day the species is rarely cultivated in the south of Europe, not at all in Greece,1921 for instance, and I do not find it indicated in Egypt, but it is common in Southern Asia.1922

The Sanskrit names kungÛ and priyungÛ, of which the first is retained in Bengali,1923 are attributed to this species. Piddington mentions several other names in Indian languages in his Index. Ainslie1924 gives a Persian name, arzun, and an Arabic name; but the latter is commonly attributed to Panicum miliaceum. There is no Hebrew name, and the plant is not mentioned in botanical works upon Egypt and Arabia. The European names have no historical value. They are not original, and commonly refer to the transmission of the species or to its cultivation in a given country. The specific name, italicum, is an absurd example, the plant being rarely cultivated and never wild in Italy.

Rumphius says it is wild in the Sunda Isles, but not very positively.1925 LinnÆus probably started from this basis to exaggerate and even promulgate an error, saying, “inhabits the Indies.”1926 It certainly does not come from the West Indies; and further, Roxburgh asserts that he never saw it wild in India. The GraminÆ have not yet appeared in Sir Joseph Hookers flora; but Aitchison1927 gives the species as only cultivated in the northwest of India. The Australian plant which Robert Brown said belonged to this species belongs to another.1928 P. italicum appears to be wild in Japan, at least in the form called germanica by different authors,1929 and the Chinese consider the five cereals of the annual ceremony to be natives of their country. Yet Bunge, in the north of China, and Maximowicz in the basin of the river Amur, only saw the species cultivated on a large scale, in the form of the germanica variety.1930 In Persia,1931 the Caucasus Mountains, and Europe, I only find in floras the plant indicated as cultivated, or escaped sometimes from cultivation on rubbish-heaps, waysides, waste ground, etc.1932

The sum of the historical, philological, and botanical data make me think that the species existed before all cultivation, thousands of years ago in China, Japan, and in the Indian Archipelago. Its cultivation must have early spread towards the West, since we know of Sanskrit names, but it does not seem to have been known in Syria, Arabia, and Greece, and it is probably through Russia and Austria that it early arrived among the lake-dwellers of the stone age in Switzerland.

Common Sorghum—Holcus sorghum, LinnÆus; Andropogon sorghum, Brotero; Sorghum vulgare, Persoon.

Botanists are not agreed as to the distinction of several of the species of sorghum, and even as to the genera into which this group of the GraminÆ should be divided. A good monograph on the sorghums is needed, as in the case of the panicums. In the mean time I will give some information on the principal species, because of their immense importance as food for man, rearing of poultry, and as fodder for cattle.

We may take as a typical species the sorghum cultivated in Europe, as it is figured by Host in his Graminoe Austriacoe (iv. pi. 2). It is one of the plants most commonly cultivated by the modern Egyptians, under the name of dourra, and also in equatorial Africa, India, and China.1933 It is so productive in hot countries that it is a staple food of immense populations in the old world.

LinnÆus and all authors, even our contemporaries, say that it is of Indian origin; but in the first edition of Roxburgh’s flora, published in 1820, this botanist, who should have been consulted, asserts that he had only seen it cultivated. He makes the same remark for the allied forms (bicolor, saccharatus, etc.), which are often regarded as mere varieties. Aitchison also had only seen the sorghum cultivated. The absence of a Sanskrit name also renders the Indian origin very doubtful. Bretschneider, on the other hand, says the sorghum is indigenous in China, although he says that ancient Chinese authors have not spoken of it. It is true that he quotes a name, common at Pekin, kao-liang (tall millet), which also applies to Holcus saccharatus, and to which it is better suited.

The sorghum has not been found among the remains of the lake-dwellings of Switzerland and Italy. The Greeks never spoke of it. Pliny’s phrase1934 about a milium introduced into Italy from India in his time has been supposed to refer to the sorghum; but it was a taller plant, perhaps Holcus saccharatus. The sorghum has not been found in a natural state in the tombs of ancient Egypt. Dr. Hannerd thought he recognized it in some crushed seeds brought by Rosellini from Thebes;1935 but Mr. Birch, the keeper of Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum, has more recently declared that the species has not been found in the ancient tombs.1936 Pickering says he recognized its leaves mixed with those of the papyrus. He says he also saw paintings of it; and Leipsius has copies of drawings which he, as well as Unger and Wilkinson, takes to be the dourra of modern cultivation.1937 The height and the form of the ear are undoubtedly those of the sorghum. It is possible that this species is the dochan, once mentioned in the Old Testament1938 as a cereal from which bread was made; yet the modern Arabic word dokhn refers to the sweet sorghum.

Common names tell us nothing, either from their lack of meaning, or because in many cases the same name has been applied to the different kinds of panicum and sorghum. I can find none which is certain in the ancient languages of India or Western Asia, which argues an introduction of but few centuries before the Christian era.

No botanist mentions the dourra as wild in Egypt or in Arabia. An analogous form is wild in equatorial Africa, but R. Brown has not been able to identify it,1939 and the flora of tropical Africa in course of publication at Kew has not yet reached the order GraminÆ. There remains, therefore, the single assertion of Dr. Bretschneider, that the tall sorghum is indigenous in China. If it is really the species in question, it spread westward very late. But it was known to the ancient Egyptians, and how could they have received it from China while it remained unknown to the intermediate peoples? It is easier to understand that it is indigenous in tropical Africa, and was introduced into Egypt in prehistoric time, afterwards into India, and finally into China, where its cultivation does not seem to be very ancient, for the first work which mentions it belongs to the fourth century of our era.

In support of the theory of African origin, I may quote the observation of Schmidt,1940 that the species abounds in the island of San Antonio, in the Cape Verde group, in rocky places. He believes it to be “completely naturalized,” which perhaps conceals a true origin.

Sweet Sorghum—Holcus saccharatus, LinnÆus; Andropogon saccharatus, Roxburgh; Sorghum saccharatum, Persoon.

This species, taller than the common sorghum and with a loose panicle,1941 is cultivated in tropical countries for the seed—which, however, is not so good as that of the common sorghum—and in less hot countries as fodder, or even for the sugar which the stem contains in considerable quantities. The Chinese extract a spirit from it, but not sugar.

The opinion of botanists and of the public in general is that it comes from India; but Roxburgh says that it is only cultivated in that country. It is the same in the Sunda Isles, where the battari is certainly this species. It is the kao-liang, or great millet of the Chinese. It is not said to be indigenous in China, nor is it mentioned by Chinese authors who lived before the Christian era.1942 From these facts, and the absence of any Sanskrit name, the Asiatic origin seems to me a delusion.

The plant is now cultivated in Egypt less than the common sorghum, and in Arabia under the name dokhna or dokhn.1943 No botanist has seen it wild in these countries. There is no proof that the ancient Egyptians cultivated it. Herodotus1944 spoke of a “tree-millet” in the plains of Assyria. It might be the species in question, but it is not possible to prove it.

The Greeks and Romans were not acquainted with it, not at least before the Roman empire, but it is possible that this was the millet, seven feet high, which Pliny mentions1945 as having been introduced from India in his lifetime.

We must probably seek its origin in tropical Africa, where the species is generally cultivated. Sir William Hooker1946 mentions specimens from the banks of the river Nun, which were perhaps wild. The approaching publication of the GraminÆ in the flora of tropical Africa will probably throw some light on this question. The spread of its cultivation from the interior of Africa to Egypt after the Pharaohs, to Arabia, the Indian Archipelago, and, after the epoch of Sanskrit, to India, lastly to China, towards the beginning of our era, tallies with historical data, and is not difficult to admit. The inverse hypothesis of a transmission from east to west presents a number of objections.

Several varieties of sorghum are cultivated in Asia and in Africa; for instance, cernuus with drooping panicles, mentioned by Roxburgh, and which Prosper Alpin had seen in Egypt; bicolor, which in height resembles the saccharatus; and niger and rubens, which also seem to be varieties of cultivation. None of these has been found wild, and it is probable that a monograph would connect them with one or other of the above-mentioned species.

Coracan—Eleusine coracana, GÆrtner.

This annual grass, which resembles the millets, is cultivated especially in India and the Malay Archipelago. It is also grown in Egypt1947 and in Abyssinia;1948 but the silence of many botanists, who have mentioned the plants of the interior and west of Africa, shows that its cultivation is not widely spread on that continent. In Japan1949 it sometimes escapes from cultivation. The seeds will ripen in the south of Europe, but the plant is valueless there except as fodder.1950

No author mentions having found it in a wild state in Asia or in Africa. Roxburgh,1951 who is attentive to such matters, after speaking of its cultivation, adds, “I never saw it wild.” He distinguishes under the name Eleusine stricta a form even more commonly cultivated in India, which appears to be simply a variety of E. coracana, and which also he has not found uncultivated.

We shall discover its country by other means.

In the first place, the species of the genus Eleusine are more numerous in the south of Asia than in other tropical regions. Besides the cultivated plant, Royle1952 mentions other species, of which the poorer natives of India gather the seeds in the plains. According to Piddington’s Index, there is a Sanskrit name, rajika, and several other names in the modern languages of India. That of coracana comes from an old name used in Ceylon, kourakhan.1953 In the Malay Archipelago the names appear less numerous and less original. In Egypt the cultivation of this species is perhaps not very ancient. The monuments of antiquity bear no trace of it. GrÆco-Roman authors who knew the country did not speak of it, nor later Prosper Alpin, Forskal, and Delile. We must refer to a modern work, that of Schweinfurth and Ascherson, to find mention of the species, and I cannot even discover an Arab name.1954 Thus botany, history, and philology point to an Indian origin. The flora of British India, in which the GraminÆ have not yet appeared, will perhaps tell us the plant has been found wild in recent explorations.

A nearly allied species is grown in Abyssinia, Eleusine Tocussa, Fresenius,1955 a plant very little known, which is perhaps a native of Africa.

Rice—Oryza sativa, LinnÆus.

In the ceremony instituted by the Chinese Emperor Chin-nong, 2800 years B.C., rice plays the principal part. The reigning emperor must himself sow it, whereas the four other species are or may be sown by the princes of his family.1956 The five species are considered by the Chinese as indigenous, and it must be admitted that this is probably the case with rice, which is in general use, and has been so for a long time; in a country intersected by canals and rivers, and hence peculiarly favourable to aquatic plants. Botanists have not sufficiently studied Chinese plants for us to know whether rice is often found outside cultivated ground; but Loureiro1957 had seen it in marshes in Cochin-China.

Rumphius and modern writers upon the Malay Archipelago give it only as a cultivated plant. The multitude of names and varieties points to a very ancient cultivation. In British India it dates at least from the Aryan invasion, for rice has Sanskrit names, vrihi, arunya1958 whence come, probably, several names in modern Indian languages, and oruza or oruzon of the ancient Greeks, rouz or arous of the Arabs. Theophrastus1959 mentioned rice as cultivated in India. The Greeks became acquainted with it through Alexander’s expedition. “According to Aristobulus,” says Strabo,1960 “rice grows in Bactriana, Babylonia, Susida;” and he adds, “we may also add in Lower Syria.” Further on he notes that the Indians use it for food, and extract a spirit from it. These assertions, doubtful perhaps for Bactriana, show that this cultivation was firmly established, at least, from the time of Alexander (400 B.C.), in the Euphrates valley, and from the beginning of our era in the hot and irrigated districts of Syria. The Old Testament does not mention rice, but a careful and judicious writer, Reynier,1961 has remarked several passages in the Talmud which relate to its cultivation. These facts lead us to suppose that the Indians employed rice after the Chinese, and that it spread still later towards the Euphrates—earlier, however, than the Aryan invasion into India. A thousand years elapsed between the existence of this cultivation in Babylonia and its transportation into Syria, whence its introduction into Egypt after an interval of probably two or three centuries. There is no trace of rice among the grains or paintings of ancient Egypt.1962 Strabo, who had visited this country as well as Syria, does not say that rice was cultivated in Egypt in his time, but that the Garamantes1963 grew it, and this people is believed to have inhabited an oasis to the south of Carthage. It is possible that they received it from Syria. At all events, Egypt could not long fail to possess a crop so well suited to its peculiar conditions of irrigation. The Arabs introduced the species into Spain, as we see from the Spanish name arroz. Rice was first cultivated in Italy in 1468, near Pisa.1964 It is of recent introduction into Louisiana.

When I said that the cultivation of rice in India was probably more recent than in China, I did not mean that the plant was not wild there. It belongs to a family of which the species cover wide areas, and, besides, aquatic plants have commonly more extensive habitations than others. Rice existed, perhaps, before all cultivation in Southern Asia from China to Bengal, as is shown by the variety of names in the monosyllabic languages of the races between India and China.1965 It has been found outside cultivation in several Indian localities, according to Roxburgh.1966 He says that wild rice, called newaree by the Telingas, grows in abundance on the shores of lakes in the country of the Circars. Its grain is prized by rich Hindus, but it is not planted because it is not very productive. Roxburgh has no doubt that this is the original plant. Thomson1967 found wild rice at Moradabad, in the province of Delhi. Historical reasons support the idea that these specimens are indigenous. Otherwise they might be supposed to be the result of the habitual cultivation of the species, all the more that there are examples of the facility with which rice sows itself and becomes naturalized in warm, damp climates.1968 In any case historical evidence and botanical probability tend to the belief that rice existed in India before cultivation.1969

Maize—Zea mays, LinnÆus.

“Maize is of American origin, and has only been introduced into the old world since the discovery of the new. I consider these two assertions as positive, in spite of the contrary opinion of some authors, and the doubts of the celebrated agriculturist Bonafous, to whom we are indebted for the most complete treatise upon maize.”1970 I used these words in 1855, after having already contested the opinion of Bonafous at the time of the publication of his work.1971 The proofs of an American origin have been since reinforced. Yet attempts have been made to prove the contrary, and as the French name, blÉ de Turquie, gives currency to an error, it is as well to resume the discussion with new data.

No one denies that maize was unknown in Europe at the time of the Roman empire, but it has been said that it was brought from the East in the Middle Ages. The principal argument is based upon a charter of the thirteenth century, published by Molinari,1972 according to which two crusaders, companions in arms of Boniface III., Marquis of Monferrat, gave in 1204 to the town of Incisa a piece of the true cross ... and a purse containing a kind of seed of a golden colour and partly white, unknown in the country and brought from Anatolia, where it was called meliga. etc. The historian of the crusades, Michaux, and later Daru and Sismondi, said a great deal about this charter; but the botanist Delile, as well as Targionitozzetti and Bonafous himself, thought that the seed in question might belong to some sorghum and not to maize. These old discussions have been rendered absurd by the Comte de Riant’s discovery1973 that the charter of Incisa is the fabrication of a modern impostor. I quote this instance to show how scholars who are not naturalists may make mistakes in the interpretation of the names of plants, and also how dangerous it is to rely upon an isolated proof in historical questions.

The names blÉ de Turquie, Turkish wheat (Indian corn), given to maize in almost all modern European languages no more prove an Eastern origin than the charter of Incisa. These names are as erroneous as that of coq d’Inde, in English turkey, given to an American bird. Maize is called in Lorraine and in the Vosges Roman corn; in Tuscany, Sicilian corn; in Sicily, Indian corn; in the Pyrenees, Spanish corn; in Provence, Barbary or Guinea corn. The Turks call it Egyptian corn, and the Egyptians, Syrian dourra. This last case proves at least that it is neither Egyptian nor Syrian. The widespread name of Turkish wheat dates from the sixteenth century. It sprang from an error as to the origin of the plant, which was fostered perhaps by the tufts which terminate the ears of maize, which were compared to the beard of the Turks, or by the vigour of the plant, which may have given rise to an expression similar to the French fort comme un turc. The first botanist who uses the name, Turkish wheat, is Ruellius, in 1536.1974 Bock or Tragus,1975 in 1552, after giving a drawing of the species which he calls Frumentum turcicum, Welschkorn, in Germany, having learnt by merchants that it came from India, conceived the unfortunate idea that it was a certain typha of Bactriana, to which ancient authors alluded in vague terms. Dodoens in 1583, Camerarius in 1588, and Matthiole1976 rectified these errors, and positively asserted the American origin. They adopted the name mays, which they knew to be American. We have seen (p. 363) that the zea of the Greeks was a spelt. Certainly the ancients did not know maize. The first travellers1977 who described the productions of the new world were surprised at it, a clear proof that they had not known it in Europe. Hernandez,1978 who left Europe in 1571, according to some authorities, in 1593 according to others,1979 did not know that from the year 1500 maize had been sent to Seville for cultivation. This fact, attested by FÉe, who has seen the municipal records,1980 clearly shows the American origin, which caused Hernandez to think the name of Turkish wheat a very bad one.

It may perhaps be urged that maize, new to Europe in the sixteenth century, existed in some parts of Asia or Africa before the discovery of America. Let us see what truth there may be in this.

The famous orientalist D’Herbelot1981 had accumulated several errors pointed out by Bonafous and by me, on the subject of a passage in the Persian historian Mirkoud of the fifteenth century, about a cereal which Rous, son of Japhet, sowed upon the shores of the Caspian Sea, and which he takes to be the Indian corn of our day. It is hardly worth considering these assertions of a scholar to whom it had never occurred to consult the works of the botanists of his own day, or earlier. What is more important is the total silence on the subject of maize of the travellers who visited Asia and Africa before the discovery of America; also the absence of Hebrew and Sanskrit names for this plant; and lastly, that Egyptian monuments present no specimen or drawing of it.1982 Rifaud, it is true, found an ear of maize in a sarcophagus at Thebes, but it is believed to have been the trick of an Arab impostor. If maize had existed in ancient Egypt, it would be seen in all monuments, and would have been connected with religious ideas like all other remarkable plants. A species so easy of cultivation would have spread into all neighbouring countries. Its cultivation would not have been abandoned; and we find, on the contrary, that Prosper Alpin, visiting Egypt in 1592, does not speak of it, and that Forskal,1983 at the end of the eighteenth century, mentioned maize as still but little grown in Egypt, where it had no name distinct from the sorghums. Ebn Baithar, an Arab physician of the thirteenth century, who had travelled through the countries lying between Spain and Persia, indicates no plant which can be supposed to be maize.

J. Crawfurd,1984 having seen maize generally cultivated in the Malay Archipelago under a name jarung, which appears to be indigenous, believed that the species was a native of these islands. But then how is it Rumphius makes no mention of it. The silence of this author points to an introduction later than the seventeenth century. Maize was so little diffused on the continent of India in the last century, that Roxburgh1985 wrote in his flora, which was published long after it was drawn up, “Cultivated in different parts of India in gardens, and only as an ornament, but nowhere on the continent of India as an object of cultivation on a large scale.” We have seen that there is no Sanskrit name.

Maize is frequently cultivated in China in modern times, and particularly round Pekin for several generations,1986 although most travellers of the last century make no mention of it. Dr. Bretschneider, in his work published in 1870, does not hesitate to say that maize is not indigenous in China; but some words in his letter of 1881 make me think that he now attributes some importance to an ancient Chinese author, of whom Bonafous and afterwards Hance and Mayers have said a great deal. This is a work by Li-chi-tchin, entitled Phen-thsao-kang-mou, or PÊn-tsao-kung-mu, a species of treatise on natural history, which Bretschneider1987 says was written at the end of the sixteenth century. Bonafous says it was concluded in 1578, and the edition which he had seen in the Huzard library was of 1637. It contains a drawing of maize with the Chinese character. This plate is copied in Bonafous’ work, at the beginning of the chapter on the original country of the maize. It is clear that it represents the plant. Dr. Hance1988 appears to have based his arguments upon the researches of Mayers, who says that early Chinese authors assert that maize was imported from Sifan (Lower Mongolia, to the west of China) long before the end of the fifteenth century, at an unknown date. The article contains a copy of the drawing in the PÊn-tsao-kung-mu, to which he assigns the date 1597.

The importation through Mongolia is improbable to such a degree that it is hardly worth speaking of it, and as for the principal assertion of the Chinese author, the dates are uncertain and late. The work was finished in 1578 according to Bonafous, in 1597 according to Mayers. If this be true, and especially if the second of these dates is the true one, it may be admitted that maize was brought to China after the discovery of America. The Portuguese came to Java in 1496,1989 that is to say four years after the discovery of America, and to China in 1516.1990 Magellan’s voyage from South America to the Philippine Islands took place in 1520. During the fifty-eight or seventy-seven years between 1516 and the dates assigned to the Chinese work, seeds of maize may have been taken to China by navigators from America or from Europe. Dr. Bretschneider wrote to me recently that the Chinese did not know the new world earlier than the Europeans, and that the lands to the east of their country, to which there are some allusions in their ancient writings, are the islands of Japan. He had already quoted the opinion of a Chinese savant, that the introduction of maize in the neighbourhood of Pekin dates from the last years of the Ming dynasty, which ended in 1644. This date agrees with the other facts. The introduction into Japan was probably of later date, since KÆmpfer makes no mention of the species.1991

From all these facts, we conclude that maize is not a native of the old world. It became rapidly diffused in it after the discovery of America, and this very rapidity completes the proof that, had it existed anywhere in Asia or Africa, it would have played an important part in agriculture for thousands of years.

We shall see that the facts are quite contrary to these in America.

At the time of the discovery of the new continent, maize was one of the staples of its agriculture, from the La Plata valley to the United States. It had names in all the languages.1992 The natives planted it round their temporary dwellings where they did not form a fixed population. The burial-mounds of the natives of North America who preceded those of our day, the tombs of the Incas, the catacombs of Peru, contain ears or grains of maize, just as the monuments of ancient Egypt contain grains of barley and wheat and millet-seed. In Mexico, a goddess who bore a name derived from that of maize (Cinteutl, from Cintli) answered to the Ceres of the Greeks, for the first-fruits of the maize harvest were offered to her, as the first-fruits of our cereals to the Greek goddess. At Cusco the virgins of the sun offered sacrifices of bread made from Indian corn. Nothing is better calculated to show the antiquity and generality of the cultivation of a plant than this intimate connection with the religious rites of the ancient inhabitants. We must not, however, attribute to these indications the same importance in America as in the old world. The civilization of the Peruvians under the Incas, and that of the Toltecs and Aztecs in Mexico, has not the extraordinary antiquity of the civilizations of China, Chaldea, and Egypt. It dates at earliest from the beginning of the Christian era; but the cultivation of maize is more ancient than the monuments, to judge from the numerous varieties of the species found in them, and their dispersal into remote regions.

A yet more remarkable proof of antiquity has been discovered by Darwin. He found ears of Indian corn, and eighteen species of shells of our epoch, buried in the soil of the shore in Peru, now at least eighty-five feet above the level of the sea.1993 This maize was perhaps not cultivated, but in this case it would be yet more interesting, as an indication of the origin of the species.

Although America has been explored by a great number of botanists, none have found maize in the conditions of a wild plant.

Auguste de Saint-Hilaire1994 thought he recognized the wild type in a singular variety, of which each grain is enclosed within its sheath or bract. It is known at Buenos-Ayres under the name pinsigallo. It is Zea Mays tunicata of Saint-Hilaire, of which Bonafous gives an illustration, pl. 5, bis, under the name Zea cryptosperma. Lindley1995 also gives a description and a drawing from seeds brought, it is said, from the Rocky Mountains, but this is not confirmed by recent Californian floras. A young Guarany, born in Paraguay on its frontiers, had recognized this maize, and told Saint-Hilaire that it grew in the damp forests of his country. This is very insufficient proof that it is indigenous. No traveller to my knowledge has seen this plant wild in Paraguay or Brazil. But it is an interesting fact that it has been cultivated in Europe, and that it often passes into the ordinary state of maize. Lindley observed it when it had been only two or three years in cultivation, and Professor Radic obtained from one sowing 225 ears of the form tunicata, and 105 of the common form with naked grains.1996 Evidently this form, which might be believed a true species, but whose country is, however, doubtful, is hardly even a race. It is one of the innumerable varieties, more or less hereditary, of which botanists who are considered authorities make only a single species, because of their want of stability and the transitions which they frequently present.

On the condition of Zea Mays, and its habitation in America before it was cultivated, we have nothing but conjectural knowledge. I will state what I take to be the sum of this, because it leads to certain probable indications.

I remark first that maize is a plant singularly unprovided with means of dispersion and protection. The grains are hard to detach from the ear, which is itself enveloped. They have no tuft or wing to catch the wind, and when the ear is not gathered by man the grains fall still fixed in the receptacle, and then rodents and other animals must destroy them in quantities, and all the more that they are not sufficiently hard to pass intact through the digestive organs. Probably so unprotected a species was becoming more and more rare in some limited region, and was on the point of becoming extinct, when a wandering tribe of savages, having perceived its nutritious qualities, saved it from destruction by cultivating it. I am the more disposed to believe that its natural area was small that the species is unique; that is to say, that it constitutes what is called a single-typed genus. The genera which contain few species, and especially the monotypes, have as a rule more restricted areas than others. PalÆontology will perhaps one day show whether there ever existed in America several species of Zea, or similar GraminÆ, of which maize is the last survivor. Now, the genus Zea is not only a monotype, but stands almost alone in its family. A single genus, EuchlÆna of Schrader, may be compared with it, of which there is one species in Mexico and another in Guatemala; but it is a quite distinct genus, and there are no intermediate forms between it and Zea.

Wittmack has made some curious researches in order to discover which variety of maize probably represents the form belonging to the epoch anterior to cultivation. For this purpose he has compared ears and grains taken from the mounds of North America with those from Peru. If these monuments offered only one form of maize, the result would be important, but several different varieties have been found in the mounds and in Peru. This is not very surprising; these monuments are not very ancient. The cemetery of Ancon in Peru, whence Wittmack obtained his best specimens, is nearly contemporary with the discovery of America.1997 Now, at that epoch the number of varieties was already considerable, which proves a much more ancient cultivation.

Experiments in sowing varieties of maize in uncultivated ground several years in succession would perhaps show a reversion to some common form which might then be considered as the original stock, but nothing of this kind has been attempted. The varieties have only been observed to lack stability in spite of their great diversity.

As to the habitation of the unknown primitive form, the following considerations may enable us to guess it. Settled populations can only have been formed where nutritious species existed naturally in soil easy of cultivation. The potato, the sweet potato, and maize doubtless fulfilled these conditions in America, and as the great populations of this part of the world existed first in the high grounds of Chili and Mexico, it is there probably that wild maize existed. We must not look for it in the low-lying regions such as Paraguay and the banks of the Amazon, or the hot districts of Guiana, Panama, and Mexico, since their inhabitants were formerly less numerous. Besides, forests are unfavourable to annuals, and maize does not thrive in the warm damp climates where manioc is grown.1998 On the other hand, its transmission from one tribe to another is easier to comprehend if we suppose the point of departure in the centre, than if we place it at one of the limits of the area over which the species was cultivated at the time of the Incas and the Toltecs, or rather of the Mayas, Nahuas, and Chibehas, who preceded these. The migrations of peoples have not always followed a fixed course from north to south, or from south to north. They have taken different directions according to the epoch and the country.1999 The ancient Peruvians scarcely knew the Mexicans, and vice versÂ, as the total difference of their beliefs and customs shows. As they both early cultivated maize, we must suppose an intermediate point of departure. New Granada seems to me to fulfil these conditions. The nation called Chibcha which occupied the table-land of Bogota at the time of the Spanish conquest, and considered itself aboriginal, was an agricultural people. It enjoyed a certain degree of civilization, as the monuments recently investigated show. Perhaps this tribe first possessed and cultivated maize. It marched with Peru, then but little civilized, on the one hand, and with the Mayas on the other, who occupied Central America and Yucatan. These were often at war with the Nahuas, predecessors of the Toltecs and the Aztecs in Mexico. There is a tradition that Nahualt, chief of the Nahuas, taught the cultivation of maize.2000

I dare not hope that maize will be found wild, although its habitation before it was cultivated was probably so small that botanists have perhaps not yet come across it. The species is so distinct from all others, and so striking, that natives or unscientific colonists would have noticed and spoken of it. The certainty as to its origin will probably come rather from archÆological discoveries. If a great number of monuments in all parts of America are studied, if the hieroglyphical inscriptions of some of these are deciphered, and if dates of migrations and economical events are discovered, our hypothesis will be justified, modified, or rejected.

Article II.—Seeds used for Different Purposes.

Poppy—Papaver somniferum, LinnÆus.

The poppy is usually cultivated for the oil contained in the seed, and sometimes, especially in Asia, for the sap, extracted by making incisions in the capsules, and from which opium is obtained.

The variety which has been cultivated for centuries escapes readily from cultivation, or becomes almost naturalized in certain localities of the south of Europe.2001 It cannot be said to exist in a really wild state, but botanists are agreed in regarding it as a modification of the poppy called Papaver setigerum, which is wild on the shores of the Mediterranean, notably in Spain, Algeria, Corsica, Sicily, Greece, and the island of Cyprus. It has not been met with in Eastern Asia,2002 consequently this is really the original of the cultivated form. Its cultivation must have begun in Europe or in the north of Africa. In support of this theory we find that the Swiss lake-dwellers of the stone age cultivated a poppy which is nearer to P. setigerum than to P. somniferum. Heer2003 has not been able to find any of the leaves, but the capsule is surmounted by eight stigmas, as in P. setigerum, and not by ten or twelve, as in the cultivated poppy. This latter form, unknown in nature, seems therefore to have been developed within historic times. P. setigerum is still cultivated in the north of France, together with P. somniferum, for the sake of its oil.2004

The ancient Greeks were well acquainted with the cultivated poppy. Homer, Theophrastus, and Dioscorides mention it. They were aware of the somniferous properties of the sap, and Dioscorides2005 mentions the variety with white seeds. The Romans cultivated the poppy before the republic, as we see by the anecdote of Tarquin and the poppy-heads. They mixed its seeds with their flour in making bread.

The Egyptians of Pliny’s time2006 used the juice of the poppy as a medicament, but we have no proof that this plant was cultivated in Egypt in more ancient times.2007 In the Middle Ages2008 and in our own day it is one of the principal objects of cultivation in that country, especially for the manufacture of opium. Hebrew writings do not mention the species. On the other hand, there are one or two Sanskrit names. Piddington gives chosa, and Adolphe Pictet khaskhasa, which recurs, he says, in the Persian chashchÂsh, the Armenian chashchash,2009 and in Arabic. Another Persian name is kouknar.2010 These names, and others I could quote, very different from the maikÔn (?????) of the Greeks, are an indication of an ancient cultivation in Europe and Western Asia. If the species was first cultivated in prehistoric time in Greece, as appears probable, it may have spread eastward before the Aryan invasion of India, but it is strange that there should be no proof of its extension into Palestine and Egypt before the Roman epoch. It is also possible that in Europe the variety called Papaver setigerum, employed by the Swiss lake-dwellers, was first cultivated, and that the variety now grown came from Asia Minor, where the species has been cultivated for at least three thousand years. This theory is supported by the existence of the Greek name maikÔn, in Dorian makon, in several Slav languages, and in those of the peoples to the south of the Caucasus, under the form mack.2011

The cultivation of the poppy in India has been recently extended, because of the importation of opium into China; but the Chinese will soon cease to vex the English by buying this poison of them, for they are beginning eagerly to produce it themselves. The poppy is now grown over more than half of their territory.2012 The species is never wild in the east of Asia, and even as regards China its cultivation is recent.2013 The name opium given to the drug extracted from the juice of the capsule is derived from the Greek. Dioscorides wrote opos (?p??). The Arabs converted it into afiun,2014 and spread it eastwards even to China.

FlÜckiger and Hanbury2015 give a detailed and interesting account of the extraction, trade, and use of opium in all countries, particularly in China. Yet I imagine my readers may like to read the following extracts from Dr. Bretschneider’s letters, dated from Pekin, Aug. 23, 1881, Jan. 28, and June 18, 1882. They give the most certain information which can be derived from accurately translated Chinese works.

“The author of the Pent-sao-kang-mou, who wrote in 1552 and 1578, gives some details concerning the a-fou-yong (that is afioun, opiun), a foreign drug produced by a species of ying-sou with red flowers in the country of Tien-fang (Arabia), and recently used as a medicament in China. In the time of the preceding dynasty there had been much talk of the a-fou-yong. The Chinese author gives some details relative to the extraction of opium in his native country, but he does not say that it is also produced in China, nor does he allude to the practice of smoking it. In the Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands, by Crawfurd, p. 312, I find the following passage: ‘The earliest account we have of the use of opium, not only from the Archipelago, but also from India and China, is by the faithful, intelligent Barbosa.2016 He rates it among the articles brought by the Moorish and Gentile merchants of Western India, to exchange for the cargoes of Chinese junks.’”

“It is difficult to fix the exact date at which the Chinese began to smoke opium and to cultivate the poppy which produces it. As I have said, there is much confusion on this head, and not only European authors, but also the modern Chinese, apply the name ying-sou to P. somniferum as well as to P. rhÆas. P. somniferum is now extensively cultivated in all the provinces of the Chinese empire, and also in Mantchuria and Mongolia. Williamson (Journeys in North China, Mantchuria, Mongolia, 1868, ii. p. 55) saw it cultivated everywhere in Mantchuria. He was told that the cultivation of the poppy was twice as profitable as that of cereals. Potanin, a Russian traveller, who visited Northern Mongolia in 1876, saw immense plantations of the poppy in the valley of Kiran (between lat. 47° and 48°), This alarms the Chinese government, and still more the English, who dread the competition of native opium.”

“You are probably aware that opium is eaten, not smoked, in India and Persia. The practice of smoking this drug appears to be a Chinese invention, and modern. Nothing proves that the Chinese smoked opium before the middle of the last century. The Jesuit missionaries to China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries do not mention it; Father d’Incarville alone says in 1750 that the sale of opium is forbidden because it was used by suicides. Two edicts forbidding the smoking of opium date from before 1730, and another in 1796 speaks of the progress made by the vice in question. Don Sinibaldo di Mas, who in 1858 published a very good book on China, where he had lived many years as Spanish ambassador, says that the Chinese took the practice from the people of Assam, where the custom had long existed.”

So bad a habit, like the use of tobacco or absinth, is sure to spread. It is becoming gradually introduced into the countries which have frequent relations with China. It is to be hoped that it will not attack so large a proportion of the peoples of other countries as in Amoy, where the proportion of opium-smokers are as fifteen to twenty of the adult population.2017

Arnotto, or Anatto—Bisca orellana, LinnÆus.

The dye, called rocou in French, arnotto in English, is extracted from the pulp which encases the seed. The inhabitants of the West India Islands, of the Isthmus of Darien, and of Brazil, used it at the time of the discovery of America to stain their bodies red, and the Mexicans in painting.2018 The arnotto, a small tree of the order BixaceÆ, grows wild in the West Indies,2019 and over a great part of the continent of America between the tropics. Herbaria and floras abound in indications of locality, but do not generally specify whether the species is cultivated, wild, or naturalized. I note, however, that it is said to be indigenous by Seemann on the north-west coast of Mexico and Panama, by Triana in New Granada, by Meyer in Dutch Guiana, and by Piso and Claussen in Brazil.2020 With such a vast area, it is not surprising that the species has many names in American languages; that of the Brazilians, urucu, is the origin of rocou.

It was not very necessary to plant this tree in order to obtain its product; nevertheless Piso relates that the Brazilians, in the sixteenth century, were not content with the wild plant, and in Jamaica, in the seventeenth century, the plantations of Bixa were common. It was one of the first species transported from America to the south of Asia and to Africa. It has become so entirely naturalized, that Roxburgh2021 believed it to be indigenous in India.

Cotton—Gossypium herbaceum, LinnÆus.

When, in 1855, I sought the origin of the cultivated cottons,2022 there was still great uncertainty as to the distinction of the species. Since then two excellent works have appeared in Italy, upon which we can rely; one by Parlatore,2023 formerly director of the botanical gardens at Florence, the other by Todaro,2024 of Palermo. These two works are illustrated with magnificent coloured plates. Nothing better can be desired for the cultivated cottons. On the other hand, our knowledge of the true species, I mean of those which exist naturally in a wild state, has not increased as much as it might. However, the definition of species seems fairly accurate in the works of Dr. Masters,2025 whom I shall therefore follow. This author agrees with Parlatore in admitting seven well-known species and two doubtful, while Todaro counts fifty-four, of which only two are doubtful, reckoning as species forms with some distinguishing character, but which originated and are preserved by cultivation.

The common names of the cottons give no assistance; they are even calculated to lead us completely astray as to the origin of the species. A cotton called Siamese comes from America; another is called Brazilian or Ava cotton, according to the fancy or the error of cultivators.

We will first consider Gossypium herbaceum, an ancient species in Asiatic plantations, and now the commonest in Europe and in the United States. In the hot countries whence it came, its stem lasts several years, but out of the tropics it becomes annual from the effect of the winter’s cold. The flower is generally yellow, with a red centre; the cotton yellow or white, according to the variety. Parlatore examined in herbaria several wild specimens, and cultivated others derived from wild plants of the Indian Peninsula. He also admits it to be indigenous in Burmah and in the Indian Archipelago, from the specimens of collectors, who have not perhaps been sufficiently careful to verify its wild character.

Masters regards as undoubtedly wild in Sindh a form which he calls Gossypium Stocksii, which he says is probably the wild condition of Gossypium herbaceum, and of other cottons cultivated in India for a long time. Todaro, who is not given to uniting many forms in a single species, nevertheless admits the identity of this variety with the common G. herbaceum. The yellow colour of the cotton is then the natural condition of the species. The seed has not the short down which exists between the longer hairs in the cultivated G. herbaceum.

Cultivation has probably extended the area of the species beyond the limits of the primitive habitation. This is, I imagine, the case in the Sunda Islands and the Malay Peninsula, where certain individuals appear more or less wild. Kurz,2026 in his Burmese flora, mentions G. herbaceum, with yellow or white cotton, as cultivated and also as wild in desert places and waste ground.

The herbaceous cotton is called kapase in Bengali, kapas in Hindustani, which shows that the Sanskrit word karpassi undoubtedly refers to this species.2027 It was early cultivated in Bactriana, where the Greeks had noticed it at the time of the expedition of Alexander. Theophrastus speaks of it2028 in such a manner as to leave no doubt. The tree-cotton of the Isle of Tylos, in the Persian Gulf, of which he makes mention further on,2029 was probably also G. herbaceum; for Tylos is not far from India, and in such a hot climate the herbaceous cotton becomes a shrub. The introduction of a cotton plant into China took place only in the ninth or tenth century of our era, which shows that probably the area of G. herbaceum was originally limited to the south and east of India. The knowledge and perhaps the cultivation of the Asiatic cotton was propagated in the GrÆco-Roman world after the expedition of Alexander, but before the first centuries of the Christian era.2030 If the byssos of the Greeks was the cotton plant, as most scholars think, it was cultivated at Elis, according to Pausanias and Pliny;2031 but Curtius and C. Ritter2032 consider the word byssos as a general term for threads, and that it was probably applied in this case to fine linen. It is evident that the cotton was never, or very rarely, cultivated by the ancients. It is so useful that it would have become common if it had been introduced into a single locality—in Greece, for instance. It was afterwards propagated on the shores of the Mediterranean by the Arabs, as we see from the name qutn or kutn,2033 which has passed into the modern languages of the south of Europe as cotone, coton, algodon. Eben el Awan, of Seville, who lived in the twelfth century, describes its cultivation as it was practised in his time in Sicily, Spain, and the East.2034

Gossypium herbaceum is the species most cultivated in the United States.2035 It was probably introduced there from Europe. It was a new cultivation a hundred years ago, for a bale of North American cotton was confiscated at Liverpool in 1774, on the plea that the cotton-plant did not grow there.2036 The silky cotton (sea island) is another species, American, of which I shall presently speak.

Tree-Cotton—Gossypium arboreum, LinnÆus.

This species is taller and of longer duration than the herbaceous cotton; the lobes of the leaf are narrower, the bracts less divided or entire. The flower is usually pink, with a red centre. The cotton is always white.

According to Anglo-Indian botanists, this is not, as it was supposed, an Indian species, and is even rarely cultivated in India. It is a native of tropical Africa. It has been seen wild in Upper Guinea, in Abyssinia, Sennaar, and Upper Egypt.2037 So great a number of collectors have brought it from these countries, that there is no room for doubt; but cultivation has so diffused and mixed this species with others that it has been described under several names in works on Southern Asia. Parlatore attributed to G. arboreum some Asiatic specimens of G. herbaceum, and a plant but little known which Forskal found in Arabia. He suspected from this that the ancients had known G. arboreum as well as G. herbaceum. Now that the two species are better distinguished, and that the origin of both is known, this does not seem probable. They knew the herbaceous cotton through India and Persia, while the tree-cotton can only have come to them through Egypt. Parlatore himself has given a most interesting proof of this. Until his work appeared in 1866, it was not certain to what species belonged some seeds of the cotton plant which Rosellini found in a vase among the monuments of ancient Thebes.2038 These seeds are in the Florence museum. Parlatore examined them carefully, and declares them to belong to Gossypium arboreum.2039 Rosellini is certain he was not imposed upon, as he was the first to open both the tomb and the vase. No archÆologist has since seen or read signs of the cotton plant in the ancient times of Egyptian civilization. How is it that a plant so striking, remarkable for its flowers and seed, was not described nor preserved habitually in the tombs if it were cultivated? How is it that Herodotus, Dioscorides, and Theophrastus made no mention of it when writing of Egypt? The cloths in which all the mummies are wrapt, and which were formerly supposed to be cotton, are always linen according to Thompson and many other observers who are familiar with the use of the microscope. Hence I conclude that if the seeds found by Rosellini were really ancient they were a rarity, an exception to the common custom, perhaps the product of a tree cultivated in a garden, or perhaps they came from Upper Egypt, a country where we know the tree-cotton to be wild. Pliny2040 does not say that cotton was cultivated in Lower Egypt; but here is a translation of his very remarkable passage, which is often quoted. “The upper part of Egypt, towards Arabia, produces a shrub which some call gossipion and others xylon, whence the name xylina given to the threads obtained from it. It is low-growing, and bears a fruit like that of the bearded nut, and from the interior of this is taken a wool for weaving. None is comparable to this in softness and whiteness.” Pliny adds, “The cloth made from it is used by preference for the dress of the Egyptian priests.” Perhaps the cotton destined to this purpose was sent from Upper Egypt, or perhaps the author, who had not seen the fabrication, and did not possess a microscope, was mistaken in the nature of the sacerdotal raiment, as were our contemporaries who handled the grave-cloths of hundreds of mummies before suspecting that they were not cotton. Among the Jews, the priestly robes were commanded to be of linen, and it is not likely that their custom was different to that of the Egyptians.

Pollux,2041 born in Egypt a century later than Pliny, expresses himself clearly about the cotton plant, of which the thread was used by his countrymen; but he does not say whence the shrub came, and we cannot tell whether it was Gossypium arboreum or G. herbaceum. It does not even appear whether the plant was cultivated in Lower Egypt, or if the cotton came from the more southern region. In spite of these doubts, it may be suspected that a cotton plant, probably that of Upper Egypt, had recently been introduced into the Delta. The species which Prosper Alpin had seen cultivated in Egypt in the sixteenth century was the tree-cotton. The Arabs, and afterwards Europeans, preferred and transported into different countries the herbaceous cotton rather than the tree-cotton, which yields a poorer product and requires more heat.

Regarding the two cottons of the old world, I have made as little use as possible of arguments based upon Greek names, such as ?ss??, s??d??, ?????, ???? etc., or Sanskrit names, and their derivatives, as carbasa, carpas, or Hebrew names, schesch, buz, which are doubtfully attributed to the cotton tree. This has been a fruitful subject of discussion,2042 but the clearer distinction of species and the discovery of their origin greatly diminishes the importance of these questions—to naturalists, at least, who prefer facts to words. Moreover, Reynier, and after him C. Ritter, arrived in their researches at a conclusion which we must not forget: that these same names were often applied by ancient peoples to different plants and tissues—to linen and cotton, for example. In this case as in others, modern botany explains ancient words where words and the commentaries of philologists may mislead.

Barbados Cotton—Gossypium barbadense, LinnÆus.

At the time of the discovery of America, the Spaniards found the cultivation and use of cotton established from the West India Islands to Peru, and from Mexico to Brazil. The fact is proved by all the historians of the epoch. But it is still very difficult to tell what were the species of these American cottons and in what countries they were indigenous. The botanical distinction of the American species or varieties is in the last degree confused. Authors, even those who have seen large collections of growing cotton plants, are not agreed as to the characters. They are also embarrassed by the difficulty of deciding which of the specific names of LinnÆus should be retained, for the original definitions are insufficient. The introduction of American seed into African and Asiatic plantations has given rise to further complications, as botanists in Java, Calcutta, Bourbon, etc., have often described American forms as species under different names. Todaro admits ten American species; Parlatore reduced them to three, which answer, he says, to Gossypium hirsutum, G. barbadense, and G. religiosum of LinnÆus; lastly, Dr. Masters unites all the American forms into a single species which he calls G. barbadense, giving as the chief character that the seed bears only long hairs, whereas the species of the old world have a short down underneath the longer hairs.2043 The flower is yellow, with a red centre. The cotton is white or yellow. Parlatore strove to include fifty or sixty of the cultivated forms under one or other of the three heads he admits, from the study of plants in gardens or herbaria. Dr. Masters mentions but few synonyms, and it is possible that certain forms with which he is not acquainted do not come under the definition of his single species.

Where there is such confusion it would be the best course for botanists to seek with care the Gossypia, which are wild in America, to constitute the one or more species solely upon these, leaving to the cultivated species their strange and often absurd and misleading names. I state this opinion because with regard to no other genus of cultivated plants have I felt so strongly that natural history should be based upon natural facts, and not upon the artificial products of cultivation. If we start from this point of view, which has the merit of being a truly scientific method, we find unfortunately that our knowledge of the cottons indigenous in America is still in a very elementary state. At most we can name only one or two collectors who have found Gossypia really identical with or very similar to certain cultivated forms.

We can seldom trust early botanists and travellers on this head. The cotton plant grows sometimes in the neighbourhood of plantations, and becomes more or less naturalized, as the down on the seeds facilitates accidental transport. The usual expression of early writers—such a cotton plant grows in such a country—often means a cultivated plant. LinnÆus himself in the eighteenth century often says of a cultivated species, “habitat,” and he even says it sometimes without good ground.2044 Hernandez, one of the most accurate among sixteenth-century authors, is quoted as having described and figured a wild Gossypium in Mexico, but the text suggests some doubts as to the wild condition of this plant,2045 which Parlatore believes to be G. hirsutum, LinnÆus. Hemsley,2046 in his catalogue of Mexican plants, merely says of a Gossypium which he calls barbadense, “wild and cultivated.” He gives no proof of the former condition. Macfadyen2047 mentions three forms wild and cultivated in Jamaica. He attributes specific names to them, and adds that they possibly all may be included in LinnÆus’ G. hirsutum. Grisebach2048 admits that one species, G. barbadense, is wild in the West Indies. As to the specific distinctions, he declares himself unable to establish them with certainty.

With regard to New Grenada, Triana2049 describes a Gossypium which he calls G. barbadense, LinnÆus, and which he says is “cultivated and half wild along the Rio Seco, in the province of Bogota, and in the valley of the Cauca near Cali;” and he adds a variety, hirsutum, growing (he does not say whether spontaneously or no) along the Rio Seco. I cannot discover any similar assertion for Peru, Guiana, and Brazil;2050 but the flora of Chili, published by Cl. Gay,2051 mentions a Gossypium, “almost wild in the province of Copiapo,” which the writer attributes to the variety G. peruvianum, Cavanilles. Now, this author does not say the plant is wild, and Parlatore classes it with G. religiosum, LinnÆus.

An important variety of cultivation is that of the cotton with long silky down, called by Anglo-Americans sea island, or long staple cotton, which Parlatore ranks with G. barbadense, LinnÆus. It is considered to be of American origin, but no one has seen it wild.

In conclusion, if historical records are positive in all that concerns the use of cotton in America from a time far earlier than the arrival of Europeans, the natural wild habitation of the plant or plants which yield this product is yet but little known. We become aware on this occasion of the absence of floras of tropical America, similar to those of the Dutch and English colonies of Asia and Africa.

Mandubi, Pea-nut, Monkey-nut—Arachis hypogÆa, LinnÆus.

Nothing is more curious than the manner in which this leguminous plant matures its fruits. It is cultivated in all hot countries, either for the seed, or for the oil contained in the cotyledons.2052 Bentham has given, in his Flora of Brazil, in folio, vol. xv. pl. 23, complete details of the plant, in which may be seen how the flower-stalk bends downwards and plunges the pod into the earth to ripen.

The origin of the species was disputed for a century, even by those botanists who employ the best means to discover it. It is worth while to show how the truth was arrived at, as it may serve as a guide in similar cases. I will quote, therefore, what I wrote in 1855,2053 giving in conclusion new proofs which allow no possibility of further doubt.

“LinnÆus2054 said of the Arachis, ‘it inhabits Surinam Brazil, and Peru.’ As usual with him, he does not specify whether the species was wild or cultivated in these countries. In 1818, R. Brown2055 writes: ‘It was probably introduced from China into the continent of India, Ceylon, and into the Malay Archipelago, where, in spite of its now general cultivation, it is thought not to be indigenous, particularly from the names given to it. I consider it not improbable that it was brought from Africa into different parts of equatorial America, although, however, it is mentioned in some of the earliest writings on this continent, particularly on Peru and Brazil. According to Sprengel, it is mentioned by Theophrastus as cultivated in Egypt, but it is not at all evident that the Arachis is the plant to which Theophrastus alludes in the quoted passage. If it had been formerly cultivated in Egypt it would probably still exist in that country, whereas it does not occur in Forskal’s catalogue nor in Delile’s more extended flora. There is nothing very unlikely,’ continues Brown, ‘in the hypothesis that the Arachis is indigenous both in Africa and America; but if it is considered as existing originally in one of these continents only, it is more probable that it was brought from China through India to Africa, than that it took the contrary direction.’ My father in 1825, in the Prodromus (ii. p. 474), returned to LinnÆus’ opinion, and admitted without hesitation the American origin. “Let us reconsider the question” (I said in 1855) “with the aid of the discoveries of modern science.

“Arachis hypogoea was the only species of this singular genus known. Six other species, all Brazilian, have since been discovered.2056 Thus, applying the rule of probability of which Brown first made great use, we incline À priori to the idea of an American origin. We must remember that Maregraf2057 and Piso2058 describe and figure the plant as used in Brazil, under the name mandubi, which seems to be indigenous. They quote Monardes, a writer of the end of the sixteenth century, as having indicated it in Peru under a different name, anchic. Joseph Acosta2059 merely mentions an American name, mani, and speaks of it with other species which are not of foreign origin in America. The Arachis was not ancient in Guiana, in the West Indies, and in Mexico. Aublet2060 mentions it as a cultivated plant, not in Guiana, but in the Isle of France. Hernandez does not speak of it. Sloane2061 had seen it only in a garden, grown from seeds brought from Guinea. He says that the slave-dealers feed the negroes with it on their passage from Africa, which indicates a then very general cultivation in Africa. Pison, in his second edition (1638, p. 256), not in that of 1648, gives a figure of a similar fruit imported from Africa into Brazil under the name mandobi, very near to the name of the Arachis, mandubi. From the three leaflets of the plant it would seem to be the Voandzeia, so often cultivated; but the fruit seems to me to be longer than in this genus, and it has two or three seeds instead of one or two. However this may be, the distinction drawn by Piso between these two subterranean seeds, the one Brazilian, the other African, tends to show that the Arachis is Brazilian.

“The antiquity and the generality of its cultivation in Africa is, however, an argument of some force, which compensates to a certain degree its antiquity in Brazil, and the presence of six other Arachis in the same country. I would admit its great value if the Arachis had been known to the ancient Egyptians and to the Arabs; but the silence of Greek, Latin, and Arab authors, and the absence of the species in Egypt in Forskal’s time, lead me to think that its cultivation in Guinea, Senegal,2062 and the east coast of Africa2063 is not of very ancient date. Neither has it the marks of a great antiquity in Asia. No Sanskrit name for it is known,2064 but only a Hindustani one. Rumphius2065 says that it was imported from Japan into several islands of the Indian Archipelago. It would in that case have borne only foreign names, like the Chinese name, for instance, which signifies only ‘earth-bean.’ At the end of the last century it was generally cultivated in China and Cochin-China. Yet, in spite of Rumphius’s theory of an introduction into the islands from China or Japan, I see that Thunberg does not speak of it in his Japanese Flora. Now, Japan has had dealings with China for sixteen centuries, and cultivated plants, natives of one of the two countries, were commonly early introduced into the other. It is not mentioned by Forster among the plants employed in the small islands of the Pacific. All these facts point to an American, I might even say a Brazilian, origin. None of the authors I have consulted mentions having seen the plant wild, either in the old or the new world. Those who indicate it in Africa or Asia are careful to say the plant is cultivated. Marcgraf does not say so, writing of Brazil, but Piso says the species is planted.”

Seeds of Arachis have been found in the Peruvian tombs at Ancon,2066 which shows some antiquity of existence in America, and supports the opinion I expressed in 1855. Dr. Bretschneider’s study of Chinese works2067 oversets Brown’s hypothesis. The Arachis is not mentioned in the ancient works of this country, nor even in the Pent-sao, published in the sixteenth century. He adds that he believes the plant was only introduced in the last century.

All the recent floras of Asia and Africa mention the species as a cultivated one, and most authors believe it to be of American origin. Bentham, after satisfying himself that it had not been found wild in America or elsewhere, adds that it is perhaps a form derived from one of the six other species wild in Brazil, but he does not say which. This is probable enough, for a plant provided with an efficacious and very peculiar manner of germinating does not seem of a nature to become extinct. It would have been found wild in Brazil in the same condition as the cultivated plant, if the latter were not a product of cultivation. Works on Guiana and other parts of America mention the species as a cultivated one; Grisebach2068 says, moreover, that in several of the West India islands it becomes naturalized from cultivation.

A genus of which all the well-known species are thus placed in a single region of America can scarcely have a species common to both hemispheres; it would be too great an exception to the law of geographical botany. But then how did the species (or cultivated variety) pass from the American continent to the old world? This is hard to guess, but I am inclined to believe that the first slave-ships carried it from Brazil to Guinea, and the Portuguese from Brazil into the islands to the south of Asia, in the end of the fifteenth century.

Coffee—Coffea arabica, LinnÆus.

This shrub, belonging to the family of the RubiaceÆ, is wild in Abyssinia,2069 in the Soudan,2070 and on the coasts of Guinea and Mozambique.2071 Perhaps in these latter localities, so far removed from the centre, it may be naturalized from cultivation. No one has yet found it in Arabia, but this may be explained by the difficulty of penetrating into the interior of the country. If it is discovered there it will be hard to prove it wild, for the seeds, which soon lose their faculty of germinating, often spring up round the plantations and naturalize the species. This has occurred in Brazil and the West India Islands,2072 where it is certain that the coffee plant was never indigenous.

The use of coffee seems to be very ancient in Abyssinia. Shehabeddin Ben, author of an Arab manuscript of the fifteenth century (No. 944 of the Paris Library), quoted in John Ellis’s excellent work,2073 says that coffee had been used in Abyssinia from time immemorial. Its use, even as a drug, had not spread into the neighbouring countries, for the crusaders did not know it, and the celebrated physician Ebn Baithar, born at Malaga, who had travelled over the north of Africa and Syria at the beginning of the thirteenth century of the Christian era, does not mention coffee.2074 In 1596 Bellus sent to de l’Ecluse some seeds from which the Egyptians extracted the drink cavÉ.2075 Nearly at the same time Prosper Alpin became acquainted with coffee in Egypt itself. He speaks of the plant as the “arbor bon, cum fructu suo buna.” The name bon recurs also in early authors under the forms bunnu, buncho, bunca.2076 The names cahue, cahua, chaubÉ,2077 cavÉ,2078 refer rather in Egypt and Syria to the prepared drink, whence the French word cafÉ. The name bunnu, or something similar, is certainly the primitive name of the plant which the Abyssinians still call boun.2079

If the use of coffee is more ancient in Abyssinia than elsewhere, that is no proof that its cultivation is very ancient. It is very possible that for centuries the berries were sought in the forests, where they were doubtless very common. According to the Arabian author quoted above, it was a mufti of Aden, nearly his contemporary, who, having seen coffee drunk in Persia, introduced the practice at Aden, whence it spread to Mocha, into Egypt, etc. He says that the coffee plant grew in Arabia.2080 Other fables or traditions exist, according to which it was always an Arabian priest or a monk who invented the drink,2081 but they all leave us in uncertainty as to the date of the first cultivation of the plant. However this may be, the use of coffee having been spread first in the east, afterwards in the west, in spite of a number of prohibitions and absurd conflicts,2082 its production became important to the colonies. Boerhave tells us that the Burgermeister of Amsterdam, Nicholas Witsen, director of the East India Company, urged the Governor of Batavia, Van Hoorn, to import coffee berries from Arabia to Batavia. This was done, and in 1690 Van Hoorn sent some living plants to Witsen. These were placed in the Botanical Gardens of Amsterdam, founded by Witsen, where they bore fruit. In 1714, the magistrates of the town sent a flourishing plant covered with fruit to Louis XIV., who placed it in his garden at Marly. Coffee was also grown in the hothouses of the king’s garden in Paris. One of the professors of this establishment, Antoine de Jussieu, had already published in 1713, in the MÉmoires de l’AcadÉmie des Sciences, an interesting description of the plant from one which Pancras, director of the Botanical Garden at Amsterdam, had sent to him.

The first coffee plants grown in America were introduced into Surinam by the Dutch in 1718. The Governor of Cayenne, de la Motte-Aigron, having been at Surinam, obtained some plants in secret and multiplied them in 1725.2083 The coffee plant was introduced into Martinique by de Clieu,2084 a naval officer, in 1720, according to Deleuze;2085 in 1723, according to the Notices Statistiques sur les Colonies FranÇaises.2086 Thence it was introduced into the other French islands, into Guadaloupe, for instance, in 1730.2087 Sir Nicholas Lawes first grew it in Jamaica.2088 From 1718 the French East India Company had sent plants of Mocha coffee to Bourbon;2089 others say2090 that it was even in 1717 that a certain Dufougerais-Grenier had coffee plants brought from Mocha into this island. It is known how the cultivation of this shrub has been extended in Java, Ceylon, the West Indies, and Brazil. Nothing prevents it from spreading in nearly all tropical countries, especially as the coffee plant thrives on sloping ground and in poor soils where other crops cannot flourish. It corresponds in tropical agriculture to the vine in Europe and tea in China.

Further details may be found in the volume published by H. Welter2091 on the economical and commercial history of coffee. The author adds an interesting chapter on the various fair or very bad substitutes used for a commodity which it is impossible to overrate in its natural condition.

Liberian Coffee—Coffea liberica, Hiern.2092

Plants of this species have for some years been sent from the Botanical Gardens at Kew into the English colonies. It grows wild in Liberia, Angola, Golungo Alto,2093 and probably in several other parts of western tropical Africa.

It is of stronger growth than the common coffee, and the berries, which are larger, yield an excellent product. The official reports of Kew Gardens by the learned director, Sir Joseph Hooker, show the progress of this introduction, which is very favourably received, especially in Dominica.

Madia—Madia sativa, Molina.

The inhabitants of Chili before the discovery of America cultivated this annual species of the Composite family, for the sake of the oil contained in the seed. Since the olive has been extensively planted, the madia is despised by the Chilians, who only complain of the plant as a weed which chokes their gardens.2094 The Europeans began to cultivate it with indifferent success, owing to its bad smell.

The madia is indigenous in Chili and also in California.2095 There are other examples of this disjunction of habitation between the two countries.2096

Nutmeg—Myristica fragrans, Houttuyn.

The nutmeg, a little tree of the order Myristiceoe, is wild in the Moluccas, principally in the Banda Islands.2097 It has long been cultivated there, to judge from the considerable number of its varieties. Europeans have received the nutmeg by the Asiatic trade since the Middle Ages, but the Dutch long possessed the monopoly of its cultivation. When the English owned the Moluccas at the end of the last century, they carried live nutmeg trees to Bencoolen and into Prince Edward’s Islands.2098 It afterwards spread to Bourbon, Mauritius, Madagascar, and into some of the colonies of tropical America, but with indifferent success from a commercial point of view.

Sesame—Sesamum indicum, de Candolle; S. indicum and S. orientale, LinnÆus.

Sesame has long been cultivated in the hot regions of the old world for the sake of the oil extracted from the seeds.

The order Pedalineoe to which this annual belongs is composed of several genera distributed through the tropical parts of Asia, Africa, and America. Each genus has only a small number of species. Sesamum, in the widest sense of the name,2099 has ten, all African except perhaps the cultivated species whose origin we are about to seek. The latter forms alone the true genus Sesamum, which is a section in Bentham and Hooker’s work. Botanical analogy points to an African origin, but the area of a considerable number of plants is known to extend from the south of Asia into Africa. Sesame has two races, the one with black, the other with white seed, and several varieties differing in the shape of the leaf. The difference in the colour of the seeds is very ancient, as in the case of the poppy.

The seeds of sesame often sow themselves outside plantations, and more or less naturalize the species. This has been observed in regions very remote one from the other; for instance, in India, the Sunda Isles, Egypt, and even in the West India Islands, where its cultivation is certainly of modern introduction.2100 This is perhaps the reason that no author asserts he has found it in a wild state except Blume,2101 a trustworthy observer, who mentions a variety with redder flowers than usual growing in the mountains of Java. This is doubtless an indication of origin, but we need others to establish a proof. I shall seek them in the history of its cultivation. The country where this began should be the ancient habitation of the species, or have had dealings with this ancient habitation.

That its cultivation dates in Asia from a very early epoch is clear from the diversity of names. Sesame is called in Sanskrit tila,2102 in Malay widjin, in Chinese moa (Rumphius) or chi-ma (Bretschneider), in Japanese koba.2103 The name sesam is common to Greek, Latin, and Arabic, with trifling variations of letter. Hence it might be inferred that its area was very extended, and that the cultivation of the plant was begun independently in several different countries. But we must not attribute too much importance to such an argument. Chinese works seem to show that sesame was not introduced into China before the Christian era. The first certain mention of it occurs in a book of the fifth or sixth century, entitled Tsi-min-yao-chou.2104 Before this there is confusion between the name of this plant and that of flax, of which the seed also yields an oil, and which is not very ancient in China.2105

Theophrastus and Dioscorides say that the Egyptians cultivated a plant called sesame for the oil contained in its seed, and Pliny adds that it came from India.2106 He also speaks of a sesame wild in Egypt from which oil was extracted, but this was probably the castor-oil plant.2107 It is not proved that the ancient Egyptians before the time of Theophrastus cultivated sesame. No drawing or seeds have been found in the monuments. A drawing from the tomb of Rameses III. show the custom of mixing small seeds with flour in making pastry, and in modern times this is done with sesame seeds, but others are also used, and it is not possible to recognize in the drawing those of the sesame in particular.2108 If the Egyptians had known the species at the time of the Exodus, eleven hundred years before Theophrastus, there would probably have been some mention of it in the Hebrew books, because of the various uses of the seed and especially of the oil. Yet commentators have found no trace of it in the Old Testament. The name semsem or simsim is clearly Semitic, but only of the more recent epoch of the Talmud,2109 and of the agricultural treatise of Alawwam,2110 compiled after the Christian era began. It was perhaps a Semitic people who introduced the plant and the name semsem (whence the sesam of the Greeks) into Egypt after the epoch of the great monuments and of the Exodus. They may have received it with the name from Babylonia, where Herodotus says2111 that sesame was cultivated.

An ancient cultivation in the Euphrates valley agrees with the existence of a Sanskrit name, tila, the tilu of the Brahmans (Rheede, Malabar, i., ix., pp 105-107), a word of which there are traces in several modern languages of India, particularly in Ceylon.2112 Thus we are carried back to India in accordance with the origin of which Pliny speaks, but it is possible that India itself may have received the species from the Sunda Isles before the arrival of the Aryan conquerors. Rumphius gives three names for the sesame in these islands, very different one from the other, and from the Sanskrit word, which supports the theory of a more ancient existence in the archipelago than on the continent.

In conclusion, from the fact that the sesame is wild in Java, and from historical and philological arguments, the plant seems to have had its origin in the Sunda Isles, It was introduced into India and the Euphrates valley two or three thousand years ago, and into Egypt at a less remote epoch, from 1000 to 500 B.C. It was transported from the Guinea coast to Brazil by the Portuguese,2113 but it is unknown how long it has been cultivated in the rest of Africa.

Castor-oil Plant—Ricinus communis, LinnÆus.

The most modern works and those in highest repute consider the south of Asia to be the original home of this Euphorbiacea; sometimes they indicate certain varieties in Africa or America without distinguishing the wild from the cultivated plant. I have reason to believe that the true origin is to be found in tropical Africa, in accordance with the opinion of Ball.2114

The difficulties with which the question is attended arise from the antiquity of cultivation in different countries, from the facility with which the plant sows itself and becomes naturalized on rubbish-heaps and in waste ground, lastly from the diversity of its forms, which have often been described as species. This latter point need not detain us, for Dr. J. MÜller’s careful monograph2115 proves the existence of sixteen varieties, scarcely hereditary, which pass one into the other by many transitions, and constitute, therefore, but one species.

The number of varieties is the sign of a very ancient cultivation. They differ more or less as to capsules, seeds, inflorescence, etc. Moreover, they are small trees in hot countries, but they do not endure frost, and become annuals north of the Alps and in similar regions. They are in such cases planted in gardens for ornament, while in the tropics, and even in Italy, they are grown for the sake of the oil contained in the seed. This oil, which is more or less purgative, is used for lamps in Bengal and elsewhere.

In no country has the species been found wild with such certainty as in Abyssinia, Sennaar, and the Kordofan. The expressions of authors and collectors are distinct on this head. The castor-oil plant is common in rocky places in the valley of ChirÉ, near Goumalo, says Quartin Dillon; it is wild in those parts of Upper Sennaar which are flooded during the rains, says Hartmann.2116 I have a specimen from Kotschy, No. 243, gathered on the northern slope of Mount Kohn, in the Kordofan. The indications of travellers in Mozambique and on the coast of Guinea are not so clear, but it is possible that the natural area of the species covers a great part of tropical Africa. As it is a useful species, and one very conspicuous and easily propagated, the negroes must have early diffused it. However, as we draw near the Mediterranean, it is no longer said to be indigenous. In Egypt, Schweinfurth and Ascherson2117 say the species is only cultivated and naturalized. Probably in Algeria, Sardinia, and Morocco, and even in the Canaries, where it is principally found in the sand on the sea-shore, it has been naturalized for centuries. I believe this to be the case with specimens brought from Djedda, in Arabia, by Schimper, which were gathered near a cistern. Yet Forskal2118 gathered the caster-oil plant in the mountains of Arabia Felix, which may signify a wild station. Boissier2119 indicates it in Beluchistan and the south of Persia, but as “subspontaneous,” as in Syria, Anatolia, and Greece.

Rheede2120 speaks of the plant as cultivated in Malabar and growing in the sand, but modern Anglo-Indian authors do not allow that it is wild. Some make no mention of the species. A few speak of the facility with which the species becomes naturalized from cultivation. Loureiro had seen it in Cochin-China and in China “cultivated and uncultivated,” which perhaps means escaped from cultivation. Lastly, for the Sunda Islands, Rumphius2121 is as usual one of the most interesting authorities. The castor-oil plant, he says, grows especially in Java, where it forms immense fields and produces a great quantity of oil. At Amboyna, it is planted here and there, near dwellings and in fields, rather for medicinal purposes. The wild species grows in deserted gardens (in desertis hortis); it is doubtless sprung from the cultivated plant (sine dubio degeneratio domestica). In Japan the castor-oil plant grows among shrubs and on the slopes of Mount Wuntzen, but Franchet and Savatier add,2122 “probably introduced.” Lastly, Dr. Bretschneider mentions the species in his work of 1870, p. 20; but what he says here, and in a letter of 1881, does not argue an ancient cultivation in China.

The species is cultivated in tropical America. It becomes easily naturalized in clearings, on rubbish-heaps, etc.; but no botanist has found it in the conditions of a really indigenous plant. Its introduction must have taken place soon after the discovery of America, for a common name, lamourou, exists in the West India Islands; and Piso gives another in Brazil, nhambuguacu, figuero inferno in Portuguese. I have received the largest number of specimens from Bahia; none are accompanied by the assertion that it is really indigenous.

In Egypt and Western Asia the culture of the species dates from so remote an epoch that it has given rise to mistakes as to its origin. The ancient Egyptians practised it extensively, according to Herodotus, Pliny, Diodorus, etc. There can be no mistake as to the species, as its seeds have been found in the tombs.2123 The Egyptian name was kiki. Theophrastus and Dioscorides mention it, and it is retained in modern Greek,2124 while the Arabs have a totally different name, kerua, kerroa, charua.2125

Roxburgh and Piddington quote a Sanskrit name, eranda, erunda, which has left descendants in the modern languages of India. Botanists do not say from what epoch of Sanskrit this name dates; as the species belongs to hot climates, the Aryans cannot have known it before their arrival in India, that is at a less ancient epoch than the Egyptian monuments.

The extreme rapidity of the growth of the castor-oil plant has suggested different names in Asiatic language, and that of Wunderbaum in German. The same circumstance, and the analogy with the Egyptian name kiki, have caused it to be supposed that the kikajon of the Old Testament,2126 the growth, it is said, of a single night, was this plant.

I pass a number of common names more or less absurd, as palma Christi, girasole, in some parts of Italy, etc., but it is worth while to note the origin of the name castor oil, as a proof of the English habit of accepting names without examination, and sometimes of distorting them. It appears that in the last century this plant was largely cultivated in Jamaica, where it was once called agno casto by the Portuguese and the Spaniards, being confounded with Vitex agnus castus, a totally different plant. From casto the English planters and London traders made castor.2127

Walnut—Juglans regia, LinnÆus.

Some years ago the walnut tree was known to be wild in Armenia, in the district to the south of the Caucasus and of the Caspian Sea, in the mountains of the north and north-east of India, and in Burmah.2128 C. Koch2129 denied that it was indigenous in Armenia and to the south of the Caucasus, but this has been proved by several travellers. It has since been discovered wild in Japan,2130 which renders it probable that the species exists also in the north of China, as Loureiro and Bunge said,2131 but without particularizing its wild character. Heldreich2132 has recently placed it beyond a doubt that the walnut is abundant in a wild state in the mountains of Greece, which agrees with passages in Theophrastus2133 which had been overlooked. Lastly, Heuffel saw it, also wild, in the mountains of Banat.2134 Its modern natural area extends, then, from eastern temperate Europe to Japan. It once existed in Europe further to the west, for leaves of the walnut have been found in the quaternary tufa in Provence.2135 Many species of Juglans existed in our hemisphere in the tertiary and quaternary epochs; there are now ten, at most, distributed throughout North America and temperate Asia.

The use of the walnut and the planting of the tree may have begun in several of the countries where the species was found, and cultivation extended gradually and slightly its artificial area. The walnut is not one of those trees which sows itself and is easily naturalized. The nature of its fruit is perhaps against this; and, moreover, it needs a climate where the frosts are not severe and the heat moderate. It scarcely passes the northern limit of the vine, and does not extend nearly so far south.

The Greeks, accustomed to olive oil, neglected the walnut until they received from Persia a better variety, called karuon basilikon,2136 or Persikon.2137 The Romans cultivated the walnut from the time of their kings; they considered it of Persian origin.2138 They had an old custom of throwing nuts in the celebration of weddings.

ArchÆology confirms these details. The only nuts which have hitherto been found under the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, Savoy, or Italy are confined to a single locality near Parma, called Fontinellato, in a stratum of the iron age.2139 Now, this metal, very rare at the time of the Trojan war, cannot have come into general use among the agricultural population of Italy until the fifth or sixth century before Christ, an epoch at which even bronze was perhaps still unknown to the north of the Alps. In the station at Lagozza, walnuts have been found in a much higher stratum, and not ancient.2140 Evidently the walnuts of Italy, Switzerland, and France are not descended from the fossil plants of the quaternary tufa of which I spoke just now.

It is impossible to say at what period the walnut was first planted in India. It must have been early, for there is a Sanskrit name, akschÔda, akhoda, or akhÔta. Chinese authors say that the walnut was introduced among them from Thibet, under the Han dynasty, by Chang-kien, about the year 140-150 B.C.2141 This was perhaps a perfected variety. Moreover, it seems probable, from the actual records of botanists, that the wild walnut is rare in the north of China, and is perhaps wanting in the east. The date of its cultivation in Japan is unknown.

The walnut tree and walnuts had an infinite number of names among ancient peoples, which have exercised the science and imagination of philologists,2142 but the origin of the species is so clear that we need not stay to consider them.

Areca—Areca Catechu, LinnÆus. The areca palm is much cultivated in the countries where it is a custom to chew betel, that is to say throughout Southern Asia. The nut, or rather the almond which forms the principal part of the seed contained in the fruit, is valued for its aromatic taste; chopped, mixed with lime, and enveloped in a leaf of the pepper-betel, it forms an agreeable stimulant, which produces a flow of saliva and blackens the teeth to the satisfaction of the natives.

The author of the principal work on the order PalmaceÆ, de Martius,2143 says of the origin of this species, “Its country is uncertain (non constat); probably the Sunda Isles.” We may find it possible to affirm something positive by referring to more modern authors.

On the continent of India, in Ceylon and Cochin-China, the species is always indicated as cultivated.2144 So in the Sunda Isles, the Moluccas, etc., to the south of Asia. Blume,2145 in his work entitled Rumphia, says that the “habitat” of the species is the Malay Peninsula, Siam, and the neighbouring islands. Yet he does not appear to have seen the indigenous plants of which he speaks.] Dr. Bretschneider2146 believes that the species is a native of the Malay Archipelago, principally of Sumatra, for he says those islands and the Philippines are the only places where it is found wild. The first of these facts is not confirmed by Miquel, nor the second by Blanco,2147 who lived in the Philippines. Blume’s opinion appears the most probable, but we must still say with Martius, “The country is not proved.” The existence of a number of Malay names, pinang, jambe, etc., and of a Sanskrit name, gouvaka, as well as very numerous varieties, show the antiquity of cultivation. The Chinese received it, 111 B.C., from the south, with the Malay name, pin-lang. The Telinga name, arek, is the origin of the botanical name Areca.

ElÆis—ElÆis guineensis, Jacquin.

Travellers who visited the coast of Guinea in the first half of the sixteenth century2148 already noticed this palm, from which the negroes extracted oil by pressing the fleshy part of the fruit. The tree is indigenous on all that coast.2149 It is also planted, and the exportation of palm-oil is the object of an extensive trade. As it is also found wild in Brazil and perhaps in Guiana,2150 a doubt arose as to the true origin. It seems the more likely to be American that the only other species which with this one constitutes the genus ElÆis belongs to New Granada.2151 Robert Brown, however, and the authors who have studied the family of palms, are unanimous in their belief that ElÆis guineensis was introduced into America by the negroes and slave-traders in the traffic between the Guinea coast and the coast of America. Many facts confirm this opinion. The first botanists who visited Brazil, Piso and Marcgraf and others, do not mention the ElÆis. It is only found on the littoral, from Rio di Janeiro to the mouth of the Amazon, never in the interior. It is often cultivated, or has the appearance of a species escaped from the plantations. Sloane,2152 who explored Jamaica in the seventeenth century, relates that this tree was introduced in his time into a plantation which he names, from the coast of Guinea. It has since become naturalized in some of the West India Islands.2153

Cocoa-nut Palm—Cocos nucifera, LinnÆus.

The cocoa-nut palm is perhaps, of all tropical trees, the one which yields the greatest variety of products. Its wood and fibres are utilized in various ways. The sap extracted from the inner part of the inflorescence yields a much-prized alcoholic drink. The shell of the nut forms a vessel, the milk of the half-ripe fruit is a pleasant drink, and the nut itself contains a great deal of oil. It is not surprising that so valuable a tree has been a good deal planted and transported. Besides, its dispersion is aided by natural causes. The woody shell and fibrous envelope of the nut enable it to float in salt water without injury to the germ. Hence the possibility of its transportation to great distances by currents and its naturalization on coasts where the temperature is favourable. Unfortunately, this tree requires a warm, damp climate, such as exists only in the tropics, or in exceptional localities just without them. Nor does it thrive at a distance from the sea.

The cocoa-nut abounds on the littoral of the warm regions of Asia, of the islands to the south of this continent, and in analogous regions of Africa and America; but it may be asserted that it dates in Brazil, the West Indies, and the west coast of Africa from an introduction which took place about three centuries ago. Piso and Marcgraf2154 seem to admit that the species is foreign to Brazil without saying so positively. De Martius,2155 who has published a very important work on the PalmaceÆ, and has travelled through the provinces of Bahia, Pernambuco, and others, where the cocoa-nut abounds, does not say that it is wild. It was introduced into Guiana by missionaries.2156 Sloane2157 says it is an exotic in the West Indies. An old author of the sixteenth century, Martyr, whom he quotes, speaks of its introduction. This probably took place a few years after the discovery of America, for Joseph Acosta2158 saw the cocoa-nut palm at Porto Rico in the sixteenth century. De Martius says that the Portuguese introduced it on the coast of Guinea. Many travellers do not even mention it in this region, where it is apparently of no great importance. More common in Madagascar and on the east coast, it is not, however, named in several works on the plants of Zanzibar, the Seychelles, Mauritius, etc., perhaps because it is considered as cultivated in these parts.

Evidently the species is not of African origin, nor of the eastern part of tropical America. Eliminating these countries, there remain western tropical America, the islands of the Pacific, the Indian Archipelago, and the south of Asia, where the tree abounds with every appearance of being more or less wild and long established.

The navigators Dampier and Vancouver2159 found it at the beginning of the seventeenth century, forming woods in the islands near Panama, not on the mainland, and in the isle of Cocos, situated at three hundred miles from the continent in the Pacific. At that time these islands were uninhabited. Later the cocoa-nut palm was found on the western coast from Mexico to Peru, but usually authors do not say that it was wild, excepting Seemann,2160 however, who saw this palm both wild and cultivated on the Isthmus of Panama. According to Hernandez,2161 in the sixteenth century the Mexicans called it coyolli, a word which does not seem to be native.

Oviedo,2162 writing in 1526, in the first years of the conquest of Mexico, says that the cocoa-nut palm was abundant on the coast of the Pacific in the province of the Cacique Chiman, and he clearly describes the species. This does not prove the tree to be wild. In southern Asia, especially in the islands, the cocoa-nut is both wild and cultivated. The smaller the islands, and the lower and the more subject to the influence of the sea air, the more the cocoa-nut predominates and attracts the attention of travellers. Some take their name from the tree, among others two islands close to the Andamans and one near Sumatra. The cocoa-nut occurring with every appearance of an ancient wild condition at once in Asia and western America, the question of origin is obscure. Excellent authors have solved it differently. De Martius believes it to have been transported by currents from the islands situated to the west of Central America, into those of the Asiatic Archipelago. I formerly inclined to the same hypothesis,2163 since admitted without question by Grisebach;2164 but the botanists of the seventeenth century often regarded the species as Asiatic, and Seemann,2165 after a careful examination, says he cannot come to a decision. I will give the reasons for and against each hypothesis.

In favour of an American origin, it may be said—

1. The eleven other species of the genus Cocos are American, and all those which de Martius knew well are Brazilian.2166 Drude,2167 who has studied the PalmaceÆ, has written a paper to show that each genus of this family is proper to the ancient or to the new world, excepting the genus ElÆis, and even here he suspects a transport of the E. guineensis from America into Africa, which is not at all probable. (See above, p. 429.) The force of this argument is somewhat diminished by the circumstance that Cocos nucifera is a tree which grows on the littoral and in damp places, while the other species live under different conditions, frequently far from the sea and from rivers. Maritime plants, and those which grow in marshes or damp places, have commonly a more vast habitation than others of the same genus.

2. The trade winds of the Pacific, to the south and yet more to the north of the equator, drive floating bodies from America to Asia, a direction contrary to that of the general currents.2168 It is known, moreover, from the unexpected arrival of bottles containing papers on different coasts, that chance has much to do with these transports.

The arguments in favour of an Asiatic, or contrary to an American origin, are the following:—

1. A current between the third and fifth parallels, north latitude, flows from the islands of the Indian Archipelago to Panama.2169 To the north and south of this are currents which take the opposite direction, but they start from regions too cold for the cocoa-nut, and do not touch Central America, where it is supposed to have been long indigenous.

2. The inhabitants of the islands of Asia were far bolder navigators than the American Indians. It is very possible that canoes from the Asiatic Islands, containing a provision of cocoa-nuts, were thrown by tempests or false manoeuvres on to the islands or the west coast of America. The converse is highly improbable.

3. The area for three centuries has been much vaster in Asia than in America, and the difference was yet more considerable before that epoch, for we know that the cocoa-nut has not long existed in the east of tropical America.

4. The inhabitants of the islands of Asia possess an immense number of varieties of this tree, which points to a very ancient cultivation. Blume, in his Rumphia, enumerates eighteen varieties in Java and the adjacent islands, and thirty-nine in the Philippines. Nothing similar has been observed in America.

5. The uses of the cocoa-nut are more varied and more habitual in Asia. The natives of America hardly utilize it except for the contents of the nut, from which they do not extract the oil.

6. The common names, very numerous and original in Asia, as we shall presently see, are rare, and often of European origin in America.

7. It is not probable that the ancient Mexicans and inhabitants of Central America would have neglected to spread the cocoa-nut in several directions, had it existed among them from a very remote epoch. The trifling breadth of the Isthmus of Panama would have facilitated the transport from one coast to the other, and the species would soon have been established in the West Indies, at Guiana, etc., as it has become naturalized in Jamaica, Antigua,2170 and elsewhere, since the discovery of America.

8. If the cocoa-nut in America dated from a geological epoch more ancient than the pleiocene or even eocene deposits in Europe, it would probably have been found on both coasts, and the islands to the east and west equally.

9. We cannot find any ancient date of the existence of the cocoa-nut in America, but its presence in Asia three or four thousand years ago is proved by several Sanskrit names. Piddington in his index only quotes one, narikela. It is the most certain, since it recurs in modern Indian languages. Scholars count ten of these, which, according to their meaning, seem to apply to the species or its fruit.2171 Narikela has passed with modifications into Arabic and Persian.2172 It is even found at Otahiti in the form ari or haari,2173 together with a Malay name.

10. The Malays have a name widely diffused in the archipelago—kalÂpa. klÂpa, klÔpo. At Sumatra and Nicobar we find the name njÎor, nicor; in the Philippines, niog; at Bali, niuh, njo; at Tahiti, niuh; and in other islands, nu, nidju, ni; even at Madagascar, wua-niu.2174 The Chinese have ye, or ye-tsu (the tree is ye). With the principal Sanskrit name this constitutes four different roots, which show an ancient existence in Asia. However, the uniformity of nomenclature in the archipelago as far as Tahiti and Madagascar indicates a transport by human agency since the existence of known languages.

The Chinese name means head of the king of YuË, referring to an absurd legend of which Dr. Bretschneider speaks.2175 This savant tells us that the first mention of the cocoa-nut occurs in a poem of the second century before Christ, but the most unmistakable descriptions are in works later than the ninth century of our era. It is true that the ancient writers scarcely knew the south of China, the only part of the empire where the cocoa-nut palm can live.

In spite of the Sanskrit names, the existence of the cocoa-nut in Ceylon, where it is well established on the coast, dates from an almost historical epoch. Near Point de Galle, Seemann tells us may be seen carved upon a rock the figure of a native prince, Kotah Raya, to whom is attributed the discovery of the uses of the cocoa-nut, unknown before him; and the earliest chronicle of Ceylon, the Marawansa, does not mention this tree, although it carefully reports the fruits imported by different princes. It is also noteworthy that the ancient Greeks and Egyptians only knew the cocoa-nut at a late epoch as an Indian curiosity. Apollonius of Tyana saw this palm in Hindustan, at the beginning of the Christian era.2176

From these facts the most ancient habitation in Asia would be in the archipelago, rather than on the continent or in Ceylon; and in America in the islands west of Panama. What are we to think of this varied and contradictory evidence? I formerly thought that the arguments in favour of Western America were the strongest. Now, with more information and greater experience in similar questions, I incline to the idea of an origin in the Indian Archipelago. The extension towards China, Ceylon, and India dates from not more than three thousand or four thousand years ago, but the transport by sea to the coasts of America and Africa took place perhaps in a more remote epoch, although posterior to those epochs when the geographical and physical conditions were different to those of our day.

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