In spite of the very evident difference between the melon and cucumber,

which both belong to the genus _Cucumis_, cultivators suppose that the

species may be crossed, and that the quality of the melon is thus

sometimes spoilt. Naudin[1302] ascertained by experiments that this

fertilization is not possible, and has also shown that the distinction

of the two species is well founded.

The original country of _Cucumis sativus_ was unknown to Linnæus and

Lamarck. In 1805, Wildenow[1303] asserted it was indigenous in Tartary

and India, but without furnishing any proof. Later botanists have not

confirmed the assertion. When I went into the question in 1855, the

species had not been anywhere found wild. For various reasons deduced

from its ancient culture in Asia and in Europe, and especially from the

existence of a Sanskrit name, _soukasa_,[1304] I said, “Its original

habitat is probably the north-west of India, for instance Cabul, or some

adjacent country. Everything seems to show that it will one day be

discovered in these regions which are as yet but little known.”

This conjecture has been realized if we admit, with the best-informed

modern authors, that _Cucumis Hardwickii_, Royle, possesses the

characteristics of _Cucumis sativus_. A coloured illustration of this

cucumber found at the foot of the Himalayas may be seen in Royle’s

_Illustrations of Himalayan Plants_, p. 220, pl. 47. The stems, leaves,

and flowers are exactly those of _C. sativus_. The fruit, smooth and

elliptical, has a bitter taste; but there are similar forms of the

cultivated cucumber, and we know that in other species of the same

family, the water-melon, for instance, the pulp is sweet or bitter. Sir

Joseph Hooker, after describing the remarkable variety which he calls

the _Sikkim_ cucumber,[1305] adds that the variety _Hardwickii_, wild

from Kumaon to Sikkim, and of which he has gathered specimens, does not

differ more from the cultivated plant than certain varieties of the

latter differ from others; and Cogniaux, after seeing the plants in the

herbarium at Kew, adopts this opinion.[1306]

The cucumber, cultivated in India for at least three thousand years, was

only introduced into China in the second century before Christ, when the

ambassador Chang-kien returned from Bactriana.[1307] The species spread

more rapidly towards the West. The ancient Greeks cultivated the

cucumber under the name of _sikuos_,[1308] which remains as _si-kua_ in

the modern language. The modern Greeks have also the name _aggouria_,

from an ancient Aryan root which is sometimes applied to the

water-melon, and which recurs for the cucumber in the Bohemian _agurka_,

the German _Gurke_, etc. The Albanians (Pelasgians?) have quite a

different name, _kratsavets_,[1309] which we recognize in the Slav

_Krastavak_. The Latins called the cucumber _cucumis_. These different

names show the antiquity of the species in Europe. There is even an

Esthonian name, _uggurits_, _ukkurits_, _urits_.[1310] It does not seem

to be Finnish, but to belong to the same Aryan root as _aggouria_. If

the cucumber came into Europe before the Aryans, there would perhaps be

some name peculiar to the Basque language, or seeds would have been

found in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland and Savoy; but this is not

the case. The peoples in the neighbourhood of the Caucasus have names

quite different to the Greek; in Tartar _kiar_, in Kalmuck _chaja_, in

Armenian _karan_.[1311] The name _chiar_ exists also in Arabic for a

variety of the cucumber.[1312] This is, therefore, a Turanian name

anterior to the Sanskrit, whereby its culture in Western Asia would be

more than three thousand years old.

It is often said that the cucumber is the _kischschuim_, one of the

fruits of Egypt regretted by the Israelites in the desert.[1313]

However, I do not find any Arabic name among the three given by Forskal

which can be connected with this, and hitherto no trace has been found

of the presence of the cucumber in ancient Egypt.

+West Indian Gherkin+—_Cucumis Anguria_, Linnæus.

This small species of cucumber is designated in the _Bon Jardinier_

under the name of the cucumber _Arada_. The fruit, of the size of an

egg, is very prickly. It is eaten cooked or pickled. As the plant is

very productive, it is largely cultivated in the American colonies.

Descourtilz and Sir Joseph Hooker have published good coloured

illustrations of it, and M. Cogniaux a plate with a detailed analysis of

the flower.[1314]

Several botanists affirm that it is wild in the West Indies. P.

Browne,[1315] in the last century, spoke of the plant as the “little

wild cucumber” (in Jamaica). Descourtilz said, “The cucumber grows wild

everywhere, and principally in the dry savannahs and near rivers, whose

banks afford a rich vegetation.” The inhabitants call it the “maroon

cucumber.” Grisebach[1316] saw specimens in several other West India

Isles, and appears to admit their wild character. M. E. André found the

species growing in the sand of the sea-shore at Porto-Cabello, and

Burchell in a similar locality in Brazil, and Riedel near Rio di

Janeiro.[1317] In the case of a number of other specimens gathered in

the east of America from Brazil to Florida, it is unknown whether they

were wild or cultivated. A wild Brazilian plant, badly drawn by

Piso,[1318] is mentioned as belonging to the species, but I am very

doubtful of this.

Botanists from Tournefort down to our own day have considered the

Anguria to be of American origin, a native of Jamaica in particular. M.

Naudin[1319] was the first to point out that all the other species of

_Cucumis_ are of the old world, and principally African. He wondered

whether this one had not been introduced into America by the negroes,

like many other plants which have become naturalized. However, unable to

find any similar African plant, he adopted the general opinion. Sir

Joseph Hooker, on the contrary, is inclined to believe that _C. Anguria_

is a cultivated and modified form of some African species nearly allied

to _C. prophetarum_ and _C. Figarei_, although these are perennial. In

favour of this hypothesis, I may add: (1) The name _maroon_ cucumber,

given in the French West India Islands, indicates a plant which has

become wild, for this is the meaning of the word _maroon_ as applied to

the negroes; (2) its extended area in America from Brazil to the West

Indies, always along the coast where the slave trade was most brisk,

seems to be a proof of foreign origin. If the species grew in America

previous to its discovery, it would, with such an extensive habitat,

have been also found upon the west coast of America, and inland, which

is not the case.

The question can only be solved by a more complete knowledge of the

African species of _Cucumis_, and by experiments upon fertilization, if

any have the patience and ability necessary to do for the genus

_Cucumis_ what Naudin has done for the genus _Cucurbita_.

Lastly, I would point out the absurdity of a common name for the Anguria

in the United States—_Jerusalem Cucumber_.[1320] After this, is it

possible to take popular names as a guide in our search for origins?

+White Gourd-melon+, or +Benincasa+—_Benincasa hispida_, Thunberg;

_Benincasa cerifera_, Savi.

This species, which is the only one of the genus Benincasa, is so like

the pumpkins that early botanists took it for one,[1321] in spite of the

waxy efflorescence on the surface of the fruit. It is very generally

cultivated in tropical countries. It was, perhaps, a mistake to abandon

its cultivation in Europe after having tried it, for Naudin and the _Bon

Jardinier_ both recommend it.

It is the _cumbalam_ of Rheede, the _camolenga_ of Rumphius, who had

seen it cultivated in Malabar and the Sunda Islands, and give

illustrations of it.

From several works, even recent ones,[1322] it might be supposed that it

had never been found in a wild state, but if we notice the different

names under which it has been described we shall find that this is not

the case. Thus _Cucurbita hispida_, Thunberg, and _Lagenaria

dasystemon_, Miquel, from authentic specimens seen by Cogniaux,[1323]

are synonyms of the species, and these plants are wild in Japan.[1324]

_Cucurbita littoralis_, Hasskarl,[1325] found among shrubs on the

sea-shore in Java, and _Gymnopetalum septemlobum_, Miquel, also in Java,

are the _Benincasa_ according to Cogniaux. As are also _Cucurbita

vacua_, Mueller,[1326] and _Cucurbita pruriens_, Forster, of which he

has seen authentic specimens found at Rockingham, in Australia, and in

the Society Islands. Nadeaud[1327] does not mention the latter.

Temporary naturalization may be suspected in the Pacific Isles and in

Queensland, but the localities of Java and Japan seem quite certain. I

am the more inclined to believe in the latter, that the cultivation of

the Benincasa in China dates from the remotest antiquity.[1328]

+Towel Gourd+—_Momordica cylindrica_, Linnæus; _Luffa cylindrica_,

Rœmer.

Naudin[1329] says, “_Luffa cylindrica_, which in some of our colonies

has retained the Indian name _pétole_, is probably a native of Southern

Asia, and perhaps also of Africa, Australia, and Polynesia. It is

cultivated by the peoples of most hot countries, and it appears to be

naturalized in many places where it doubtless did not exist originally.”

Cogniaux[1330] is more positive. “An indigenous species,” he says, “in

all the tropical regions of the old world; often cultivated and half

wild in America between the tropics.” In consulting the works quoted in

these two monographs, and herbaria, its character as a wild plant will

be found sometimes conclusively certified.

With regard to Asia,[1331] Rheede saw it in sandy places, in woods and

other localities in Malabar; Roxburgh says it is wild in Hindustan;

Kurz, in the forests of Burmah; Thwaites, in Ceylon. I have specimens

from Ceylon and Khasia. There is no Sanskrit name known, and Dr.

Bretschneider, in his work _On the Study and Value of Chinese Botanical

Works_, and in his letters mentions no luffa either wild or cultivated

in China. I suppose, therefore, that its cultivation is not ancient even

in India.

The species is wild in Australia, on the banks of rivers in

Queensland,[1332] and hence it is probable it will be found wild in the

Asiatic Archipelago, where Rumphius, Miquel, etc., only mention it as a

cultivated plant.

Herbaria contain a great number of specimens from tropical Africa, from

Mozambique to the coast of Guinea, and even as far as Angola, but

collectors do not appear to have indicated whether they were cultivated

or wild plants. In the Delessert herbarium, Heudelot indicates it as

growing in fertile ground in the environs of Galam. Sir Joseph

Hooker[1333] quotes this without affirming anything. Schweinfurth and

Ascheron,[1334] who are always careful in this matter, say the species

is only a cultivated one in the Nile Valley. This is curious, because

the plant was seen in the seventeenth century in Egyptian gardens under

the Arabian name of _luff_,[1335] whence the genus was called _Luffa_,

and the species _Luffa ægyptica_. The ancient Egyptian monuments show no

trace of it. The absence of a Hebrew name is another reason for

believing that its cultivation was introduced into Egypt in the Middle

Ages. It is now grown in the Delta, not only for the fruit but also for

the export of the seed, from which a preparation is made for softening

the skin.

The species is cultivated in Brazil, Guiana, Mexico, etc., but I find no

indication that it is indigenous in America. It appears to have been

here and there naturalized, in Nicaragua for instance, from a specimen

of Levy’s.

In brief, the Asiatic origin is certain, the African very doubtful, that

of America imaginary, or rather the effect of naturalization.

+Angular Luffa+—_Luffa acutangula_, Roxburgh.

The origin of this species, cultivated like the preceding one in all

tropical countries, is not very clear, according to Naudin and

Cogniaux.[1336] The first gives Senegal, the second Asia, and,

doubtfully, Africa. It is hardly necessary to say that Linnæus[1337] was

mistaken in indicating Tartary and China. Clarke, in Sir Joseph Hooker’s

flora, says without hesitation that it is indigenous in British India.

Rheede[1338] formerly saw the plant in sandy soil in Malabar. Its

natural area seems to be limited, for Thwaites in Ceylon, Kurz in

British Burmah, and Loureiro in China and Cochin-China,[1339] only give

the species as cultivated, or growing on rubbish-heaps near gardens.

Rumphius[1340] calls it a Bengal plant. No luffa has been long

cultivated in China, according to a letter of Dr. Bretschneider. No

Sanskrit name is known. All these are indications of a comparatively

recent culture in Asia.

A variety with bitter fruit is common in British India[1341] in a wild

state, since there is no inducement to cultivate it. It exists also in

the Sunda Islands. It is _Luffa amara_, Roxburgh, and _L. sylvestris_,

Miquel. _L. subangulata_, Miquel, is another variety which grows in

Java, which M. Cogniaux also unites with the others from authentic

specimens which he saw.

M. Naudin does not say what traveller gives the plant as wild in

Senegambia; but he says the negroes call it _papengaye_, and as this is

the name of the Mauritius planters,[1342] it is probable that the plant

is cultivated in Senegal, and perhaps naturalized near dwellings. Sir

Joseph Hooker, in the _Flora of Tropical Africa_, gives the species, but

without proof that it is wild in Africa, and Cogniaux is still more

brief. Schweinfurth and Ascheron[1343] do not mention it either as wild

or cultivated in Egypt, Nubia, and Abyssinia. There is no trace of its

ancient cultivation in Egypt.

The species has often been sent from the West Indies, New Granada,

Brazil, and other parts of America, but there is no indication that it

has been long in these places, nor even that it occurs at a distance

from gardens in a really wild state.

The conditions or probabilities of origin, and of date of culture, are,

it will be seen, identical for the two cultivated species of luffa. In

support of the hypothesis that the latter is not of African origin, I

may say that the four other species of the genus are Asiatic or

American; and as a sign that the cultivation of the luffa is not very

ancient, I will add that the form of the fruit varies much less than in

the other cultivated cucurbitacea.

+Snake Gourd+—_Trichosanthes anguina_, Linnæus.

An annual creeping _Cucurbitacea_, remarkable for its fringed corolla.

It is called _petole_ in Mauritius, from a Java name. The fruit, which

is something like a long fleshy pod of some leguminous plants, is eaten

cooked like a cucumber in tropical Asia.

As the botanists of the seventeenth century received the plant from

China, they imagined that the plant was indigenous there, but it was

probably cultivated. Dr. Bretschneider[1344] tells us that the Chinese

name, _mankua_, means “cucumber of the southern barbarians.” Its home

must be India, or the Indian Archipelago. No author, however, asserts

that it has been found in a distinctly wild state. Thus Clarke, in

Hooker’s _Flora of British India_, ii. p. 610, says only, “India,

cultivated.” Naudin,[1345] before him, said, “Inhabits the East Indies,

where it is much cultivated for its fruits. It is rarely found wild.”

Rumphius[1346] is not more positive for Amboyna. Loureiro and Kurz in

Cochin-China and Burmah, Blume and Miquel in the islands to the south of

Asia, have only seen the plant cultivated. The thirty-nine other species

of the genus are all of the old world, found between China or Japan, the

west of India and Australia. They belong especially to India and the

Malay Archipelago. I consider the Indian origin as the most probable

one.

The species has been introduced into Mauritius, where it sows itself

round cultivated places. Elsewhere it is little diffused. No Sanskrit

name is known.

+Chayote+, or +Choco+—_Sechium edule_ Swartz.

This plant, of the order _Cucurbitaceæ_, is cultivated in tropical

America for its fruits, shaped like a pear, and tasting like a cucumber.

They contain only one seed, so that the flesh is abundant.

The species alone constitutes the genus Sechium. There are specimens in

every herbarium, but generally collectors do not indicate whether they

are naturalized, or really wild, and apparently indigenous in the

country. Without speaking of works in which this plant is said to come

from the East Indies, which is entirely a mistake, several of the best

give Jamaica[1347] as the original home. However, P. Browne,[1348] in

the middle of the last century, said positively that it was cultivated

there, and Sloane does not mention it. Jacquin[1349] says that it

“inhabits Cuba, and is cultivated there,” and Richard copies this phrase

in the flora of R. de La Sagra without adding any proof. Naudin

says,[1350] “a Mexican plant,” but he does not give his reasons for

asserting this. Cogniaux,[1351] in his recent monograph, mentions a

great number of specimens gathered from Brazil to the West Indies

without saying if he had seen any one of these given as wild.

Seemann[1352] saw the plant cultivated at Panama, and he adds a remark,

important if correct, namely, that the name _chayote_, common in the

isthmus, is the corruption of an Aztec word, _chayotl_. This is an

indication of an ancient existence in Mexico, but I do not find the word

in Hernandez, the classic author on the Mexican plants anterior to the

Spanish conquest. The _chayote_ was not cultivated in Cayenne ten years

ago.[1353] Nothing indicates an ancient cultivation in Brazil. The

species is not mentioned by early writers, such as Piso and Marcgraf,

and the name _chuchu_, given as Brazilian,[1354] seems to me to come

from _chocho_, the Jamaica name, which is perhaps a corruption of the

Mexican word.

The plant is probably a native of the south of Mexico and of Central

America, and was transported into the West India Islands and to Brazil

in the eighteenth century. The species was afterwards introduced into

Mauritius and Algeria, where it is very successful.[1355]

+Indian Fig+, or +Prickly Pear+—_Opuntia ficus indica_, Miller.

This fleshy plant of the _Cactus_ family, which produces the fruit known

in the south of Europe as the Indian fig, has no connection with the fig

tree, nor has the fruit with the fig. Its origin is not Indian but

American. Everything is erroneous and absurd in this common name.

However, since Linnæus took his botanical name from it, _Cactus ficus

indica_, afterwards connected with the genus _Opuntia_, it was necessary

to retain the specific name to avoid changes which are a source of

confusion, and to recall the popular denomination. The prickly forms,

and those more or less free from spines, have been considered by some

authors as distinct species, but an attentive examination leads us to

regard them as one.[1356]

The species existed both wild and cultivated in Mexico before the

arrival of the Spaniards. Hernandez[1357] describes nine varieties of

it, which shows the antiquity of its cultivation. The cochineal insect

appears to feed on one of these, almost without thorns, more than on the

others, and it has been transported with the plant to the Canary Isles

and elsewhere. It is not known how far its habitat extended in America

before man transported pieces of the plant, shaped like a racket, and

the fruits, which are two easy ways of propagating it. Perhaps the wild

plants in Jamaica, and the other West India Islands mentioned by

Sloane,[1358] in 1725, were the result of its introduction by the

Spaniards. Certainly the species has become naturalized in this

direction as far as the climate permits; for instance, as far as

Southern Florida.[1359]

It was one of the first plants which the Spaniards introduced to the old

world, both in Europe and Asia. Its singular appearance was the more

striking that no other species belonging to the family had before been

seen.[1360] All sixteenth-century botanists mention it, and the plant

became naturalized in the south of Europe and in Africa as its

cultivation was introduced. It was in Spain that the prickly pear was

first known under the American name _tuna_, and it was probably the

Moors who took it into Barbary when they were expelled from the

peninsula. They called it fig of the Christians.[1361] The custom of

using the plant for fences, and the nourishing property of the fruits,

which contain a large proportion of sugar, have determined its extension

round the Mediterranean, and in general in all countries near the

tropics.

The cultivation of the cochineal, which was unfavourable to the

production of the fruit,[1362] is dying out since the manufacture of

colouring matters by chemical processes.

+Gooseberry+—_Ribes grossularia_ and _R. Vacrispa_, Linnæus.

The fruit of the cultivated varieties is generally smooth, or provided

with a few stiff hairs, while that of the wild varieties has soft and

shorter hairs; but intermediate forms exist, and it has been shown by

experiment that by sowing the seeds of the cultivated fruit, plants with

either smooth or hairy fruit are obtained.[1363] There is, therefore,

but one species, which has produced under cultivation one principal

variety and several sub-varieties as to the size, colour, or taste of

the fruit.

The gooseberry grows wild throughout temperate Europe, from Southern

Sweden to the mountainous regions of Central Spain, of Italy, and of

Greece.[1364] It is also mentioned in Northern Africa, but the last

published catalogue of Algerian plants[1365] indicates it only in the

mountains of Aures, and Ball has found a variety in the Atlas of

Marocco.[1366] It grows in the Caucasus,[1367] and under more or less

different forms in the western Himalayas.[1368]

The Greeks and Romans do not mention the species, which is rare in the

South, and which is hardly worth planting where grapes will ripen. It is

especially in Germany, Holland, and England that it has been cultivated

from the sixteenth century,[1369] principally as a seasoning, whence the

English name, and the French _groseille à maquereaux_ (mackerel

currant). A wine is also made from it.

The frequency of its cultivation in the British Isles and in other

places where it is found wild, which are often near gardens, has

suggested to some English botanists the idea of an accidental

naturalization. This is likely enough in Ireland;[1370] but as it is an

essentially European species, I do not see why it should not have

existed in England, where the wild plant is more common, since the

establishment of most of the species of the British flora; that is to

say, since the end of the glacial period, before the separation of the

island from the continent. Phillips quotes an old English name,

_feaberry_ or _feabes_, which supports the theory of an ancient

existence, and two Welsh names,[1371] of which I cannot, however,

certify the originality.

+Red Currant+—_Ribes rubrum_, Linnæus.

The common red currant is wild throughout Northern and Temperate Europe,

and in Siberia[1372] as far as Kamtschatka, and in America, from Canada

and Vermont to the mouth of the river Mackenzie.[1373]

Like the preceding species, it was unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and

its cultivation was only introduced in the Middle Ages. The cultivated

plant hardly differs from the wild one. That the plant was foreign to

the south of Europe is shown by the name of _groseillier d’outremer_

(currant from beyond the sea), given in France[1374] in the sixteenth

century. In Geneva the currant is still commonly called _raisin de

mare_, and in the canton of Soleure _meertrübli_. I do not know why the

species was supposed, three centuries ago, to have come from beyond

seas. Perhaps this should be understood to mean that it was brought by

the Danes and the Northmen, and that these peoples from beyond the

northern seas introduced its cultivation. I doubt it, however, for the

_Ribes rubrum_ is wild in almost the whole of Great Britain[1375] and in

Normandy;[1376] the English, who were in constant communication with the

Danes, did not cultivate it as late as 1557, from a list of the fruits

of that epoch drawn up by Th. Tusser, and published by Phillips;[1377]

and even in the time of Gerard, in 1597,[1378] its cultivation was rare,

and the plant had no particular name.[1379] Lastly, there are French and

Breton names which indicate a cultivation anterior to the Normans in the

west of France.

The old names in France are given in the dictionary by Ménage. According

to him, red currants are called at Rouen _gardes_, at Caen _grades_, in

Lower Normandy _gradilles_, and in Anjou _castilles_. Ménage derives all

these names from _rubius_, _rubicus_, etc., by a series of imaginary

transformations, from the word _ruber_, red. Legonidec[1380] tells us

that red currants are also called _Kastilez_ (l. liquid) in Brittany,

and he derives this name from Castille, as if a fruit scarcely known in

Spain and abundant in the north could come from Spain. These words,

found both in Brittany and beyond its limits, appear to me to be of

Celtic origin; and I may mention, in support of this theory, that in

Legonidec’s dictionary _gardis_ means _rough_, _harsh_, _pungent_,

_sour_, etc., which gives a hint as to the etymology. The generic name

_Ribes_ has caused other errors. It was thought the plant might be one

which was so called by the Arabs; but the word comes rather from a name

for the currant very common in the north, _ribs_ in Danish,[1381] _risp_

and _resp_ in Swedish.[1382] The Slav names are quite different and in

considerable number.

+Black Currant+—_Cassis_; _Ribes nigrum_, Linnæus.

The black currant grows wild in the north of Europe, from Scotland and

Lapland as far as the north of France and Italy; in Bosnia,[1383]

Armenia,[1384] throughout Siberia, in the basin of the river Amur, and

in the western Himalayas;[1385] it often becomes naturalized, as for

instance, in the centre of France.[1386]

This shrub was unknown in Greece and Italy, for it is proper to colder

countries. From the variety of the names in all the languages, even in

those anterior to the Aryans, of the north of Europe, it is clear that

this fruit was very early sought after, and its cultivation was probably

begun before the Middle Ages. J. Bauhin[1387] says it was planted in

gardens in France and Italy, but most sixteenth-century authors do not

mention it. In the _Histoire de la Vie Privée des Français_, by Le Grand

d’Aussy, published in 1872, vol. i. p. 232, the following curious

passage occurs: “The black currant has been cultivated hardly forty

years, and it owes its reputation to a pamphlet entitled _Culture du

Cassis_, in which the author attributed to this shrub all the virtues it

is possible to imagine.” Further on (vol. iii. p. 80), the author

mentions the frequent use, since the publication of the pamphlet in

question, of a liqueur made from the black currant. Bosc, who is always

accurate in his articles in the _Dictionnaire d’Agriculture_, mentions

this fashion under the head _Currant_, but he is careful to add, “It has

been very long in cultivation for its fruit, which has a peculiar odour

agreeable to some, disagreeable to others, and which is held to be

stomachic and diuretic.” It is also used in the manufacture of the

liqueurs known as ratafia de Cassis.[1388]

+Olive+—_Olea Europea_, Linnæus.

The wild olive, called in botanical books the variety _sylvestris_ or

_oleaster_, is distinguished from the cultivated olive tree by a smaller

fruit, of which the flesh is not so abundant. The best fruits are

obtained by selecting the seeds, buds, or grafts from good varieties.

The oleaster now exists over a wide area east and west of Syria, from

the Punjab and Beluchistan[1389] as far as Portugal and even Madeira,

the Canaries and even Marocco,[1390] and from the Atlas northwards as

far as the south of France, the ancient Macedonia, the Crimea, and the

Caucasus.[1391] If we compare the accounts of travellers and of the

authors of floras, it will be seen that towards the limits of this area

there is often a doubt as to the wild and indigenous (that is to say

ancient in the country) nature of the species. Sometimes it offers

itself as a shrub which fruits little or not at all; and sometimes, as

in the Crimea, the plants are rare as though they had escaped, as an

exception, the destructive effects of winters too severe to allow of a

definite establishment. As regards Algeria and the south of France,

these doubts have been the subject of a discussion among competent men

in the Botanical Society.[1392] They repose upon the uncontestable fact

that birds often transport the seed of the olive into uncultivated and

sterile places, where the wild form, the oleaster, is produced and

naturalized.

The question is not clearly stated when we ask if such and such olive

trees of a given locality are really wild. In a woody species which

lives so long and shoots again from the same stock when cut off by

accident, it is impossible to know the origin of the individuals

observed. They may have been sown by man or birds at a very early epoch,

for olive trees of more than a thousand years old are known. The effect

of such sowing is a naturalization, which is equivalent to an extension

of area. The point in question is, therefore, to discover what was the

home of the species in very early prehistoric times, and how this area

has grown larger by different modes of transport.

It is not by the study of living olive trees that this question can be

answered. We must seek in what countries the cultivation began, and how

it was propagated. The more ancient it is in any region, the more

probable it is that the species has existed wild there from the time of

those geological events which took place before the coming of

prehistoric man.

The earliest Hebrew books mention the olive _sait_, or _zeit_,[1393]

both wild and cultivated. It was one of the trees promised in the land

of Canaan. It is first mentioned in Genesis, where it is said that the

dove sent out by Noah should bring back a branch of olive. If we take

into account this tradition, which is accompanied by miraculous details,

it may be added that the discoveries of modern erudition show that the

Mount Ararat of the Bible must be to the east of the mountain in Armenia

which now bears that name, and which was anciently called Masis. From a

study of the text of the Book of Genesis, François Lenormand[1394]

places the mountain in question in the Hindu Kush, and even near the

sources of the Indus. This theory supposes it near to the land of the

Aryans, yet the olive has no Sanskrit name, not even in that Sanskrit

from which the Indian languages[1395] are derived. If the olive had

then, as now, existed in the Punjab, the eastern Aryans in their

migrations towards the south would probably have given it a name, and if

it had existed in the Mazanderan, to the south of the Caspian Sea, as

at the present day, the western Aryans would perhaps have known it. To

these negative indications, it can only be objected that the wild olive

attracts no considerable attention, and that the idea of extracting oil

from it perhaps arose late in this part of Asia.

Herodotus[1396] tells us that Babylonia grew no olive trees, and that

its inhabitants made use of oil of sesame. It is certain that a country

so subject to inundation was not at all favourable to the olive. The

cold excludes the higher plateaux and the mountains of the north of

Persia.

I do not know if there is a name in Zend, but the Semitic word _sait_

must date from a remote antiquity, for it is found in modern Persian,

_seitun_,[1397] and in Arabic, _zeitun_, _sjetun_.[1398] It even exists

in Turkish and among the Tartars of the Crimea, _seitun_,[1399] which

may signify that it is of Turanian origin, or from the remote epoch when

the Turanian and Semitic peoples intermixed.

The ancient Egyptians cultivated the olive tree, which they called

_tat_.[1400] Several botanists have ascertained the presence of branches

or leaves of the olive in the sarcophagi.[1401] Nothing is more certain,

though Hehn[1402] has recently asserted the contrary, without giving any

proof in support of his opinion. It would be interesting to know to what

dynasty belong the most ancient mummy-cases in which olive branches have

been found. The Egyptian name, quite different to the Semitic, shows an

existence more ancient than the earliest dynasties. I shall mention

presently another fact in support of this great antiquity.

Theophrastus says[1403] that the olive was much grown, and the harvest

of oil considerable in Cyrenaica, but he does not say that the species

was wild there, and the quantity of oil mentioned seems to point to a

cultivated variety. The low-lying, very hot country between Egypt and

the Atlas is little favourable to a naturalization of the olive outside

the plantations. Kralik, a very accurate botanist, did not anywhere see

on his journey to Tunis and into Egypt the olive growing wild,[1404]

although it is cultivated in the oases. In Egypt it is only cultivated,

according to Schweinfurth and Ascherson,[1405] in their _resumé_ of the

Flora of the Nile Valley.

Its prehistoric area probably extended from Syria towards Greece, for

the wild olive is very common along the southern coast of Asia Minor,

where it forms regular woods.[1406] It is doubtless here and in the

archipelago that the Greeks early knew the tree. If they had not known

it on their own territory, had received it from the Semites, they would

not have given it a special name, _elaia_, whence the Latin _olea_. The

_Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ mention the hardness of the olive wood and the

practice of anointing the body with olive oil. The latter was in

constant use for food and lighting. Mythology attributed to Minerva the

planting of the olive in Attica, which probably signifies the

introduction of cultivated varieties and suitable processes for

extracting the oil. Aristæus introduced or perfected the manner of

pressing the fruit.

The same mythical personage carried, it was said, the olive tree from

the north of Greece into Sicily and Sardinia. It seems that this may

have been early done by the Phœnicians, but in support of the idea that

the species, or a perfected variety of it, was introduced by the Greeks,

I may mention that the Semitic name _seit_ has left no trace in the

islands of the Mediterranean. We find the Græco-Latin name here as in

Italy,[1407] while upon the neighbouring coast of Africa, and in Spain,

the names are Egyptian or Arabic, as I shall explain directly.

The Romans knew the olive later than the Greeks. According to

Pliny,[1408] it was only at the time of Tarquin the Ancient, 627 B.C.,

but the species probably existed already in Great Greece, as in Greece

and Sicily. Besides, Pliny was speaking of the cultivated olive.

A remarkable fact, and one which has not been noted or discussed by

philologists, is that the Berber name for the olive, both tree and

fruit, has the root _taz_ or _tas_, similar to the _tat_ of the ancient

Egyptians. The Kabyles of the district of Algiers, according to the

French-Berber dictionary, published by the French Government, calls the

wild olive _tazebboujt_, _tesettha_, _ou’ zebbouj_, and the grafted

olive _tazemmourt_, _tasettha_, _ou’ zemmour_. The Touaregs, another

Berber nation, call it _tamahinet_.[1409] These are strong indications

of the antiquity of the olive in Africa. The Arabs having conquered this

country and driven back the Berbers into the mountains and the desert,

having likewise subjected Spain excepting the Basque country, the names

derived from the Semitic _zeit_ have prevailed even in Spanish. The

Arabs of Algiers say _zenboudje_ for the wild, _zitoun_ for the

cultivated olive,[1410] _zit_ for olive oil. The Andalusians call the

wild olive _azebuche_, and the cultivated _aceytuno_.[1411] In other

provinces we find the name of Latin origin, _olivio_, side by side with

the Arabic words.[1412] The oil is in Spanish _aceyte_, which is almost

the Hebrew name; but the holy oils are called _oleos santos_, because

they belong to Rome. The Basques use the Latin name for the olive tree.

Early voyagers to the Canaries, Bontier for instance, in 1403, mention

the olive tree in these islands, where modern botanists regard it as

indigenous.[1413] It may have been introduced by the Phœnicians, if it

did not previously exist there. We do not know if the Guanchos had names

for the olive and its oil. Webb and Berthelot do not give any in their

learned chapter on the language of the aborigines,[1414] so the question

is open to conjecture. It seems to me that the oil would have played an

important part among the Guanchos if they had possessed the olive, and

that some traces of it would have remained in the actual speech of the

people. From this point of view the naturalization in the Canaries is

perhaps not more ancient than the Phœnician voyages.

No leaf of the olive has hitherto been found in the tufa of the south of

France, of Tuscany, and Sicily, where the laurel, the myrtle, and other

shrubs now existing have been discovered. This is an indication, until

the contrary is proved, of a subsequent naturalization.

The olive thrives in dry climates like that of Syria and Assyria. It

succeeds at the Cape, in parts of America, in Australia, and doubtless

it will become wild in these places when it has been more generally

planted. Its slow growth, the necessity of grafting or of choosing the

shoots of good varieties, and especially the concurrence of other

oil-producing species, have hitherto impeded its extension; but a tree

which produces in an ungrateful soil should not be indefinitely

neglected. Even in the old world, where it has existed for so many

thousands of years, its productiveness might be doubled by taking the

trouble to graft on wild trees, as the French have done in Algeria.

+Star Apple+—_Chrysophyllum Caïnito_, Linnæus.

The star apple belongs to the family of the Sapotaceæ. It yields a fruit

valued in tropical America, though Europeans do not care much for it. I

do not find that any pains have been taken to introduce it into the

colonies of Asia or Africa. Tussac gives a good illustration of it in

his _Flore des Antilles_, vol. ii. pl. 9.

Seemann[1415] saw the star apple wild in several places in the Isthmus

of Panama. De Tussac, a San Domingo colonist, considered it wild in the

forests of the West India Islands, and Grisebach[1416] says it is both

wild and cultivated in Jamaica, San Domingo, Antigua, and Trinidad.

Sloane considered it had escaped from cultivation in Jamaica, and

Jacquin says vaguely, “Inhabits Martinique and San Domingo.”[1417]

+Caïmito+, or +Abi+—_Lucuma Caïnito_, Alph. de Candolle.

This Peruvian Caïmito must not be confounded with the _Chrysophyllum

Caïnito_ of the West Indies. Both belong to the family Sapotaceæ, but

the flowers and seeds are different. There is a figure of this one in

Ruiz and Pavon, _Flora Peruviana_, vol. iii. pl. 240. It has been

transported from Peru, where it is cultivated, to Ega on the Amazon

River, and to Para, where it is commonly called _abi_ or _abiu_.[1418]

Ruiz and Pavon say it is wild in the warm regions of Peru, and at the

foot of the Andes.

+Marmalade Plum+, or +Mammee Sapota+—_Lucuma mammosa_, Gærtner.

This fruit tree, of the order Sapotaceæ and a native of tropical

America, has been the subject of several mistakes in works on

botany.[1419] There exists no satisfactory and complete illustration of

it as yet, because colonists and travellers think it is too well known

to send selected specimens of it, such as may be described in herbaria.

This neglect is common enough in the case of cultivated plants. The

mammee is cultivated in the West Indies and in some warm regions of

America. Sagot tells us it is grown in Venezuela, but not in

Cayenne.[1420] I do not find that it has been transported into Africa

and Asia, the Philippines[1421] excepted. This is probably due to the

insipid taste of the fruit. Humboldt and Bonpland found it wild in the

forests on the banks of the Orinoco.[1422] All authors mention it in the

West Indies, but as cultivated or without asserting that it is wild. In

Brazil it is only a garden species.

+Sapodilla+—_Sapota achras_, Miller.

The sapodilla is the most esteemed of the order Sapotaceæ, and one of

the best of tropical fruits. “An over-ripe sapodilla,” says Descourtilz,

in his _Flore des Antilles_, “is melting, and has the sweet perfumes of

honey, jasmin, and lily of the valley.” There is a very good

illustration in the _Botanical Magazine_, pls. 3111 and 3112, and in

Tussac, _Flore des Antilles_, i. pl. 5. It has been introduced into

gardens in Mauritius, the Malay Archipelago, and India, from the time of

Rheede and Rumphius, but no one disputes its American origin. Several

botanists have seen it wild in the forests of the Isthmus of Panama, of

Campeachy,[1423] of Venezuela,[1424] and perhaps of Trinidad.[1425] In

Jamaica, in the time of Sloane, it existed only in gardens.[1426] It is

very doubtful that it is wild in the other West India Islands, although

perhaps the seeds, scattered here and there, may have naturalized it to

a certain degree. Tussac says that the young plants are not easy to rear

in the plantations.

+Aubergine+—_Solanum melongena_, Linnæus; _Solanum esculentum_, Dunal.

The aubergine has a Sanskrit name, _vartta_, and several names, which

Piddington in his _Index_ considers as both Sanskrit and Bengali, such

as _bong_, _bartakon_, _mahoti_, _hingoli_. Wallich, in his edition of

Roxburgh’s _Indian Flora_, gives _vartta_, _varttakou_, _varttaka

bunguna_, whence the Hindustani _bungan_. Hence it cannot be doubted

that the species has been known in India from a very remote epoch.

Rumphius had seen it in gardens in the Sunda Islands, and Loureiro in

those of Cochin-China. Thunberg does not mention it in Japan, though

several varieties are now cultivated in that country. The Greeks and

Romans did not know the species, and no botanist mentions it in Europe

before the beginning of the seventeenth century,[1427] but its

cultivation must have spread towards Africa before the Middle Ages. The

Arab physician, Ebn Baithar,[1428] who wrote in the thirteenth century,

speaks of it, and he quotes Rhasis, who lived in the ninth century.

Rauwolf[1429] had seen the plant in the gardens of Aleppo at the end of

the sixteenth century. It was called _melanzana_ and _bedengiam_. This

Arabic name, which Forskal writes _badinjan_, is the same as the

Hindustani _badanjan_, which Piddington gives. A sign of antiquity in

Northern Africa is the existence of a name, _tabendjalts_, among the

Berbers or Kabyles of the province of Algiers,[1430] which differs

considerably from the Arab word. Modern travellers have found the

aubergine cultivated in the whole of the Nile Valley and on the coast of

Guinea.[1431] It has been transported into America.

The cultivated form of _Solanum melongena_ has not hitherto been found

wild, but most botanists are agreed in regarding _Solanum insanum_,

Roxburgh, and _S. incanum_, Linnæus, as belonging to the same species.

Other synonyms are sometimes added, the result of a study made by Nees

von Esenbeck from numerous specimens.[1432] _S. insanum_ appears to have

been lately found wild in the Madras presidency and at Tong-dong in

Burmah. The publication of the article on the Solanaceæ in the _Flora of

British India_, will probably give more precise information on this

head.

+Red Pepper+—_Capsicum._ In the best botanical works the genus Capsicum

is encumbered with a number of cultivated forms, which have never been

found wild, and which differ especially in their duration (which is

often variable), or in the form of the fruit, a character which is of

little value in plants cultivated for that special organ. I shall speak

of the two species most often cultivated, but I cannot refrain from

stating my opinion that no capsicum is indigenous to the old world. I

believe them to be all of American origin, though I cannot absolutely

prove it. These are my reasons.

Fruits so conspicuous, so easily grown in gardens, and so agreeable to

the palate of the inhabitants of hot countries, would have been very

quickly diffused throughout the old world, if they had existed in the

south of Asia, as it has sometimes been supposed. They would have had

names in several ancient languages. Yet neither Romans, Greeks, nor even

Hebrews were acquainted with them. They are not mentioned in ancient

Chinese books.[1433] The islanders of the Pacific did not cultivate them

at the time of Cook’s voyages,[1434] in spite of their proximity to the

Sunda Isles, where Rumphius mentions their very general use. The Arabian

physician, Ebn Baithar, who collected in the thirteenth century all that

Eastern nations knew about medicinal plants, says nothing about it.

Roxburgh knew no Sanskrit name for the capsicums. Later, Piddington

mentions a name for _C. frutescens_, _bran-maricha_,[1435] which he says

is Sanskrit; but this name, which may be compared to that of black

pepper (_muricha_, _murichung_), is probably not really ancient, for it

has left no trace in the Indian languages which are derived from

Sanskrit.[1436] The wild nature and ancient existence of the capsicum is

always uncertain, owing to its very general cultivation; but it seems to

me to be more often doubtful in Asia than in South America. The Indian

specimens described by the most trustworthy authors nearly all come from

the herbaria of the East India Company, in which we never know whether a

plant appeared really wild, if it was found far from dwellings, in

forests, etc. For the localities in the Malay Archipelago authors often

give rubbish-heaps, hedges, etc. We pass to a more particular

examination of the two cultivated species.

+Annual Capsicum+—_Capsicum annuum_, Linnæus.

This species has a number of different names in European

languages,[1437] which all indicate a foreign origin and the resemblance

of the taste to that of pepper. In French it is often called _poivre de

Guinée_ (Guinea pepper), but also _poivre du Brézil_, _d’Inde_ (Indian,

Brazilian pepper), etc., denominations to which no importance can be

attributed. Its cultivation was introduced into Europe in the sixteenth

century. It was one of the peppers that Piso and Marcgraf[1438] saw

grown in Brazil under the name _quija_ or _quiya_. They say nothing as

to its origin. The species appears to have been early cultivated in the

West Indies, where it has several Carib names.[1439]

Botanists who have most thoroughly studied the genus Capsicum[1440] do

not appear to have found in herbaria a single specimen which can be

considered wild. I have not been more fortunate. The original home is

probably Brazil.

_C. grossum_, Willdenow, seems to be a variety of the same species. It

is cultivated in India under the name _kafree murich_, and _kafree

chilly_, but Roxburgh did not consider it to be of Indian origin.[1441]

+Shrubby Capsicum+—_Capsicum frutescens_, Willdenow.

This species, taller and with a more woody stock than _C. annuum_, is

generally cultivated in the warm regions of both hemispheres. The great

part of our so-called Cayenne pepper is made from it, but this name is

given also to the product of other peppers. Roxburgh, the author who is

most attentive to the origin of Indian plants, does not consider it to

be wild in India. Blume says it is naturalized in the Malay Archipelago

in hedges.[1442] In America, on the contrary, where its culture is

ancient, it has been several times found wild in forests, apparently

indigenous. De Martius brought it from the banks of the Amazon, Pœppig

from the province of Maynas in Peru, and Blanchet from the province of

Bahia.[1443] So that its area extends from Bahia to Eastern Peru, which

explains its diffusion over South America generally.

+Tomato+—_Lycopersicum esculentum_, Miller.

The tomato, or love apple, belongs to a genus of the Solaneæ, of which

all the species are American.[1444] It has no name in the ancient

languages of Asia, nor even in modern Indian languages.[1445] It was not

cultivated in Japan in the time of Thunberg, that is to say a century

ago, and the silence of ancient writers on China on this head shows that

it is of recent introduction there. Rumphius[1446] had seen it in

gardens in the Malay Archipelago. The Malays called it _tomatte_, but

this is an American name, for C. Bauhin calls the species _tumatle

Americanorum_. Nothing leads us to suppose it was known in Europe before

the discovery of America.

The first names given to it by botanists in the sixteenth century

indicate that they received the plant from Peru.[1447] It was cultivated

on the continent of America before it was grown in the West India

Islands, for Sloane does not mention it in Jamaica, and Hughes[1448]

says it was brought to Barbados from Portugal hardly more than a century

ago. Humboldt considered that the cultivation of the tomato was of

ancient date in Mexico.[1449] I notice, however, that the earliest work

on the plants of this country (Hernandez, _Historia_) makes no mention

of it. Neither do the early writers on Brazil, Piso and Marcgraf, speak

of it, although the species is now cultivated throughout tropical

America. Thus by the process of exhaustion we return to the idea of a

Peruvian origin, at least for its cultivation.

De Martius[1450] found the plant wild in the neighbourhood of Rio de

Janeiro and Para, but it had perhaps escaped from gardens. I do not know

of any botanist who has found it really wild in the state in which it

is familiar to us, with the fruit more or less large, lumpy, and with

swelled sides; but this is not the case with the variety with small

spherical fruit, called _L. cerasiforme_ in some botanical works, and

considered in others (and rightly so, I think[1451]) as belonging to the

same species. This variety is wild on the sea-shore of Peru,[1452] at

Tarapoto, in Eastern Peru,[1453] and on the frontiers of Mexico and of

the United States towards California.[1454] It is sometimes naturalized

in clearings near gardens.[1455] It is probably in this manner that its

area has extended north and south from Peru.

+Avocado+, or +Alligator Pear+—_Persea gratissima_, Gærtner.

The avocado pear is one of the most highly prized of tropical fruits. It

belongs to the order Laurineæ. It is like a pear containing one large

stone, as is well shown in Tussac’s illustrations, _Flore des Antilles_,

iii. pl. 3, and in the _Botanical Magazine_, pl. 4580. The common names

are absurd. The origin of that of _alligator_ is unknown; _avocado_ is a

corruption of the Mexican _ahuaca_, or _aguacate_. The botanical name

_Persea_ has nothing to do with the _persea_ of the Greeks, which was a

_Cordia_. Clusius,[1456] writing in 1601, says that the avocado pear is

an American fruit tree introduced into a garden in Spain; but as it is

widely spread in the colonies of the old world, and has here and there

become almost wild,[1457] it is possible to make mistakes as to its

origin. This tree did not exist in the gardens of British India at the

beginning of the nineteenth century. It had been introduced into the

Sunda Isles[1458] in the middle of the eighteenth century, and in 1750

into Mauritius and Bourbon.[1459]

In America its actual area in a wild state is of uncommon extent. The

species has been found in forests, on the banks of rivers, and on the

sea-shore from Mexico and the West Indies as far as the Amazon.[1460] It

has not always occupied this vast region. P. Browne says distinctly

that the avocado pear was introduced from the Continent into Jamaica,

and Jacquin held the same opinion as regards the West India Islands

generally.[1461] Piso and Marcgraf do not mention it for Brazil, and

Martius gives no Brazilian name.

At the time of the discovery of America, the species was certainly wild

and cultivated in Mexico, according to Hernandez. Acosta[1462] says it

was cultivated in Peru under the name of _palto_, which was that of a

people of the eastern part of Peru, among whom it was abundant.[1463] I

find no proof that it was wild upon the Peruvian littoral.

+Papaw+—_Carica Papaya_, Linnæus; _Papaya vulgaris_, de Candolle.

The papaw is a large herbaceous plant rather than a tree. It has a sort

of juicy trunk terminated by a tuft of leaves, and the fruit, which is

like a melon, hangs down under the leaves.[1464] It is now grown in all

tropical countries, even as far as thirty to thirty-two degrees of

latitude. It is easily naturalized outside plantations. This is one

reason why it has been said, and people still say that it is a native of

Asia or of Africa, whereas Robert Brown and I proved in 1848 and 1855

its American origin.[1465] I repeat the arguments against its supposed

origin in the eastern hemisphere.

The species has no Sanskrit name. In modern Indian languages it bears

names derived from the American word _papaya_, itself a corruption of

the Carib _ababai_.[1466] Rumphius[1467] says that the inhabitants of

the Malay Archipelago considered it as an exotic plant introduced by

the Portuguese, and gave it names expressing its likeness to other

species or its foreign extraction. Sloane,[1468] in the beginning of the

eighteenth century, quotes several of his contemporaries, who mention

that it was taken from the West Indies into Asia and Africa. Forster had

not seen it in the plantations of the Pacific Isles at the time of

Cook’s voyages. Loureiro,[1469] in the middle of the eighteenth century,

had seen it in cultivation in China, Cochin-China, and Zanzibar. So

useful and so striking a plant would have been spread throughout the old

world for thousands of years if it had existed there. Everything leads

to the belief that it was introduced on the coasts of Africa and Asia

after the discovery of America.

All the species of the family are American. This one seems to have been

cultivated from Brazil to the West Indies, and in Mexico before the

arrival of the Europeans, since the earliest writers on the productions

of the new world mention it.[1470]

Marcgraf had often seen the male plant (always commoner than the female)

in the forests of Brazil, while the female plants were in gardens.

Clusius, who was the first to give an illustration of the plant,

says[1471] that his drawing was made in 1607, in the bay of Todos Santos

(province of Bahia). I know of no modern author who has confirmed the

habitation in Brazil. Martius does not mention the species in his

dictionary of the names of fruits in the language of the Tupis.[1472] It

is not given as wild in Guiana and Columbia. P. Browne[1473] asserts, on

the other hand, that it is wild in Jamaica, and before his time Ximenes

and Hernandez said the same for St. Domingo and Mexico. Oviedo[1474]

seems to have seen the papaw in Central America, and he gives the common

name _olocoton_ for Nicaragua. Yet Correa de Mello and Spruce, in their

important article on the _Papayaceæ_, after having botanized extensively

in the Amazon region, in Peru and elsewhere, consider the papaw as a

native of the West Indies, and do not think it is anywhere wild upon the

Continent. I have seen[1475] specimens from the mouth of the river

Manatee in Florida, from Puebla in Mexico, and from Columbia, but the

labels had no remark as to their wild character. The indications, it

will be noticed, are numerous for the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and

for the West Indies. The habitation in Brazil which lies apart is very

doubtful.

+Fig+—_Ficus carica_, Linnæus.

The history of the fig presents a close analogy with that of the olive

in point of origin and geographical limits. Its area as a wild species

may have been extended by the dispersal of the seeds as cultivation

spread. This seems probable, as the seeds pass intact through the

digestive organs of men and animals. However, countries may be cited

where the fig has been cultivated for a century at least, and where no

such naturalization has taken place. I am not speaking of Europe north

of the Alps, where the tree demands particular care and the fruit ripens

with difficulty, even the first crop, but of India for instance, the

Southern States of America, Mauritius, and Chili, where, to judge from

the silence of compilers of floras, the instances of quasi-wildness are

rare. In our own day the fig tree grows wild, or nearly wild, over a

vast region of which Syria is about the centre; that is to say, from the

east of Persia, or even from Afghanistan, across the whole of the

Mediterranean region as far as the Canaries.[1476] From north to south

this zone varies in width from the 25th to the 40th or 42nd parallel,

according to local circumstances. As a rule, the fig stops like the

olive at the foot of the Caucasus and the mountains of Europe which

limit the Mediterranean basin, but it grows nearly wild on the

south-west coast of France, where the winter is very mild.[1477]

We turn to historical and philological records to see whether the area

was more limited in antiquity. The ancient Egyptians called the fig

_teb_,[1478] and the earliest Hebrew books speak of the fig, whether

wild or cultivated, under the name _teenah_,[1479] which leaves its

trace in the Arabic _tin_.[1480] The Persian name is quite different,

_unjir_; but I do not know if it dates from the Zend. Piddington’s

_Index_ has a Sanskrit name, _udumvara_, which Roxburgh, who is very

careful in such matters, does not give, and which has left no trace in

modern Indian languages, to judge from four names quoted by authors. The

antiquity of its existence east of Persia appears to me doubtful, until

the Sanskrit name is verified. The Chinese received the fig tree from

Persia, but only in the eighth century of our era.[1481] Herodotus[1482]

says the Persians did not lack figs, and Reynier, who has made careful

researches into the customs of this ancient people, does not mention the

fig tree. This only proves that the species was not utilized and

cultivated, but it perhaps existed in a wild state.

The Greeks called the wild fig _erineos_, and the Latins _caprificus_.

Homer mentions a fig tree in the _Iliad_ which grew near Troy.[1483]

Hehn asserts[1484] that the cultivated fig cannot have been developed

from the wild fig, but all botanists hold a contrary opinion;[1485] and,

without speaking of floral details on which they rely, I may say that

Gussone obtained from the same seeds plants of the form _caprificus_,

and other varieties.[1486] The remark made by several scholars as to the

absence of all mention of the cultivated fig _sukai_ in the _Iliad_,

does not therefore prove the absence of the fig tree in Greece at the

time of the Trojan war. Homer mentions the sweet fig in the _Odyssey_,

and that but vaguely. Hesiod, says Hehn, does not mention it, and

Archilochus (700 B.C.) is the first to mention distinctly its

cultivation by the Greeks of Paros. According to this, the species grew

wild in Greece, at least in the Archipelago, before the introduction of

cultivated varieties of Asiatic origin. Theophrastus and Dioscorides

mention wild and cultivated figs.[1487]

Romulus and Remus, according to tradition, were nursed at the foot of a

fig tree called _ruminalis_, from _rumen_, breast or udder.[1488] The

Latin name, _ficus_, which Hehn derives, by an effort of erudition, from

the Greek _sukai_,[1489] also argues an ancient existence in Italy, and

Pliny’s opinion is positive on this head. The good cultivated varieties

were of later introduction. They came from Greece, Syria, and Asia

Minor. In the time of Tiberius, as now, the best figs came from the

East.

We learnt at school how Cato exhibited to the assembled senators

Carthaginian figs, still fresh, as a proof of the proximity of the hated

country. The Phœnicians must have transported good varieties to the

coast of Africa and their other colonies on the Mediterranean, even as

far as the Canaries, where, however, the wild fig may have already

existed.

For the Canaries we have a proof in the Guanchos words, _arahormaze_ and

_achormaze_, green figs, _taharemenen_ and _tehahunemen_, dried figs.

Webb and Berthelot,[1490] who quote these names, and who admit the

common origin of the Guanchos and Berbers, would have noted with

pleasure the existence among the Touaregs, a Berber people, of the word

_tahart_, fig tree,[1491] and in the French-Berber dictionary, published

since their time, the names _tabeksist_, green fig, and _tagrourt_, fig

tree. These old names, of more ancient and local origin than Arabic,

bear witness to a very ancient habitation in the north of Africa as far

as the Canaries.

The result of our inquiry shows, then, that the prehistoric area of the

fig tree covered the middle and southern part of the Mediterranean basin

from Syria to the Canaries.

We may doubt the antiquity of the fig in the south of France, but a

curious fact deserves mention. Planchon found in the quaternary tufa of

Montpellier, and de Saporta[1492] in those of Aygalades near Marseilles,

and in the quaternary strata of La Celle near Paris, leaves and even

fruit of the wild _Ficus carica_, with teeth of _Elephas primigenius_,

and leaves of plants of which some no longer exist, and others, like

_Laurus canariensis_, have survived in the Canaries. So that the fig

tree perhaps existed in its modern form in this remote epoch. It is

possible that it perished in the south of France, as it certainly did at

Paris, and reappeared later in a wild state in the southern region.

Perhaps the fig trees which Webb and Berthelot had seen as old plants in

the wildest part of the Canaries were descended from those which

existed in the fourth epoch.

+Bread-Fruit+—_Artocarpus incisa_, Linnæus.

The bread-fruit tree was cultivated in all the islands of the Asiatic

Archipelago, and of the great oceans near the equator, from Sumatra to

the Marquesas Isles, when first Europeans began to visit them. Its fruit

is constituted, like the pine-apple, of an assemblage of bracts and

fruits welded into a fleshy mass, more or less spherical; and as in the

pine-apple, the seeds come to nothing in the most productive cultivated

varieties.[1493]

Sonnerat[1494] carried the bread-fruit tree to Mauritius, where the

Intendant Poivre took care to spread it. Captain Bligh was commissioned

to introduce it into the English West Indian Isles. The mutiny of his

crew prevented his succeeding the first time, but a second attempt

proved more fortunate. In January, 1793, he landed 153 plants at St.

Vincent, whence the species has been diffused into several parts of

tropical America.[1495]

Rumphius[1496] saw the species wild in several of the Sunda Isles.

Modern authors, less careful, or acquainted only with cultivated

species, say nothing on this head. Seemann[1497] says for the Fiji

Isles, “cultivated, and to all appearance wild in some places.” On the

continent of Asia it is not even cultivated, as the climate is not hot

enough.

The bread-fruit is evidently a native of Java, Amboyna, and the

neighbouring islands; but the antiquity of its cultivation in the whole

of the archipelago, proved by the number of varieties, and the facility

of propagating it by buds and suckers, prevent us from knowing its

history accurately. In the islands to the extreme east, like Otahiti,

certain fables and traditions point to an introduction which is not very

ancient, and the absence of seeds confirms this.[1498]

+Jack-Fruit+—_Artocarpus integrifolia_, Linnæus.

The jack-fruit, larger than the bread-fruit, for it sometimes weighs as

much as eighty pounds, hangs from the branches of a tree thirty to fifty

feet high.[1499] The common name is derived from the Indian names

_jaca_, or _tsjaka_.

The species has long been cultivated in southern Asia, from the Punjab

to China, from the Himalayas to the Moluccas. It has not spread into the

small islands more to the east, such as Otahiti, which leads us to

suppose it has not been so long in the archipelago as upon the

continent. In the north-west of India, also, its cultivation does not

perhaps date from a very remote epoch, for the existence of a Sanskrit

name is not absolutely certain. Roxburgh mentions one, _punusa_, but

Piddington does not admit it into his _Index_. The Persians and the

Arabs do not seem to have known the species. Its enormous fruit must,

however, have struck them if the species had been cultivated near their

frontiers. Dr. Bretschneider does not speak of any Artocarpus in his

work on the plants known to the ancient Chinese, whence it may be

inferred that towards China, as in other directions, the jack-fruit was

not diffused at a very early epoch. The first statement as to its

existence in a wild state is given by Rheede in ambiguous terms: “This

tree grows everywhere in Malabar and throughout India.” He perhaps

confounded the planted tree with the wild one. After him, however, Wight

found the species several times in the Indian Peninsula, notably in the

Western Ghauts, with every appearance of a wild and indigenous tree. It

has been extensively planted in Ceylon; but Thwaites, the best authority

for the flora of this island, does not recognize it as wild. Neither is

it wild in the archipelago to the south of India, according to the

general opinion. Lastly, Brandis found it growing in the forests of the

district of Attaran, in Burmah, but, he adds, always in the

neighbourhood of abandoned settlements. Kurz did not find it wild in

British Burmah.[1500]

The species is, therefore, a native of the region lying at the foot of

the western mountains of the Indian Peninsula, and its cultivation in

the neighbourhood is probably not earlier than the Christian era. It was

introduced into Jamaica by Admiral Rodney in 1782, and thence into San

Domingo.[1501] It has also been introduced into Brazil, Mauritius, the

Seychelles, and Rodriguez Island.[1502]

+Date-Palm+—_Phœnix dactylifera_, Linnæus.

The date-palm has existed from prehistoric times in the warm dry zone,

which extends from Senegal to the basin of the Indus, principally

between parallels 15 and 30. It is seen here and there further to the

north, by reason of exceptional circumstances and of the aim which is

proposed in its cultivation. For beyond the limit within which the fruit

ripens every year, there is a zone in which they ripen ill or seldom,

and a further region within which the tree can live, but without

fruiting or even flowering. These limits have been traced by de Martius,

Carl Ritter, and myself.[1503] It is needless to reproduce them here,

the aim of the present work being to study questions of origin.

As regards the date-palm, we can hardly rely on the more or less proved

existence of really wild indigenous individuals. Dates are easily

transported; the stones germinate when sown in damp soil near the source

of a river, and even in the fissures of rocks. The inhabitants of oases

have planted or sown date-palms in favourable localities where the

species perhaps existed before man, and when the traveller comes across

isolated trees, at a distance from dwellings, he cannot know that they

did not spring from stones thrown away by caravans. Botanists admit a

variety, _sylvestris_, that is to say wild, with small and sour fruit;

but it is perhaps the result of recent naturalization in an unfavourable

soil. Historical and philological data are of more value here, though

doubtless from the antiquity of cultivation they can only establish

probabilities.

From Egyptian and Assyrian remains, as well as from tradition and the

most ancient writings, we find that the date-palm grew in abundance in

the region lying between the Euphrates and the Nile. Egyptian monuments

contain fruits and drawings of the tree.[1504] Herodotus, in a more

recent age (fifth century before Christ), mentions the wood of the

date-palms of Babylonia, and still later Strabo used similar expressions

about those of Arabia, whence it seems that the species was commoner

than it is now, and more in the condition of a natural forest tree. On

the other hand, Carl Ritter makes the ingenious observation that the

earliest Hebrew books do not speak of the date-palm as producing a fruit

valued as a food for man. David, about one thousand years before Christ,

and about seven centuries after Moses, does not mention the date palm in

his list of trees to be planted in his gardens. It is true that except

at Jericho dates seldom ripen in Palestine. Later, Herodotus says of the

Babylonian date-palms that only the greater part produced good fruit

which was used for food. This seems to indicate the beginning of a

cultivation perfected by the selection of varieties and of the transport

of male flowers into the middle of the branches of female trees, but it

perhaps signifies also that Herodotus was ignorant of the existence of

the male plant.

To the west of Egypt the date-palm had probably existed for centuries

or for thousands of years when Herodotus mentioned them. He speaks of

Libya. There is no historical record with respect to the oases in the

Sahara, but Pliny[1505] mentions the date-palm in the Canaries.

The names of the species bear witness to its great antiquity both in

Asia and in Africa, seeing they are numerous and very different. The

Hebrews called the date-palm _tamar_, and the ancient Egyptians

_beq_.[1506] The complete difference between these words, both very

ancient, shows that these peoples found the species indigenous and

perhaps already named in Western Asia and in Egypt. The number of

Persian, Arabic, and Berber names is incredible.[1507] Some are derived

from the Hebrew word, others from unknown sources. They often apply to

different states of the fruit, or to different cultivated varieties,

which again shows ancient cultivation in different countries. Webb and

Berthelot have not discovered a name for the date-palm in the language

of the Guanchos, and this is much to be regretted. The Greek name,

_phœnix_, refers simply to Phœnicia and the Phœnicians, possessors of

the date-palm.[1508] The names _dactylus_ and _date_ are derivations of

_dachel_ in a Hebrew dialect.[1509] No Sanskrit name is known, whence it

may be inferred that the plantations of the date-palm in Western India

are not very ancient. The Indian climate does not suit the

species.[1510] The Hindustani name _khurma_ is borrowed from the

Persian.

Further to the East the date-palm remained long unknown. The Chinese

received it from Persia, in the third century of our era, and its

cultivation was resumed at different times, but they have now abandoned

it.[1511] As a rule, beyond the arid region which lies between the

Euphrates and the south of the Atlas and the Canaries, the date-palm has

not succeeded in similar latitudes, or at least it has not become an

important culture. It might be grown with success in Australia and at

the Cape, but the Europeans who have colonized these regions are not

satisfied, like the Arabs, with figs and dates for their staple food. I

think, in fine, that in times anterior to the earliest Egyptian

dynasties the date-palm already existed, wild or sown here and there by

wandering tribes, in a narrow zone extending from the Euphrates to the

Canaries, and that its cultivation began later as far as the north-west

of India on the one hand and the Cape de Verde Islands[1512] on the

other, so that the natural area has remained very nearly the same for

about five thousand years. What it was previously, palæontological

discoveries may one day reveal.

+Banana+—_Musa sapientum_ and _M. paradisiaca_, Linnæus; _M. sapientum_,

Brown.

The banana or bananas were generally considered to be natives of

Southern Asia, and to have been carried into America by Europeans, till

Humboldt threw doubts upon their purely Asiatic origin. In his work on

New Spain[1513] he quoted early authors who assert that the banana was

cultivated in America before the conquest.

He admits, on Oviedo’s authority,[1514] its introduction by Father

Thomas of Berlangas from the Canaries into San Domingo in 1516, whence

it was introduced into other islands and the mainland.[1515] He

recognizes the absence of any mention of the banana in the accounts of

Columbus, Alonzo Negro, Pinzon, Vespuzzi, and Cortez. The silence of

Hernandez, who lived half a century after Oviedo, astonishes him and

appears to him a remarkable carelessness; “for,” he says,[1516] “it is a

constant tradition in Mexico and on the whole of the mainland that the

_platano arton_, and the _dominico_ were cultivated long before the

Spanish conquest.” The author who has most carefully noted the different

epochs at which American agriculture has been enriched by foreign

products, the Peruvian Garcilasso de la Vega,[1517] says distinctly that

at the time of the Incas, maize, quinoa, the potato, and, in the warm

and temperate regions, bananas formed the staple food of the natives.

He describes the _Musa_ of the valleys in the Andes; he even

distinguishes the rarer species, with a small fruit and a sweet aromatic

flavour, the _dominico_, from the common banana or _arton_. Father

Acosta[1518] asserts also, although less positively, that the _Musa_ was

cultivated by the Americans before the arrival of the Spaniards. Lastly,

Humboldt adds from his own observation, “On the banks of the Orinoco, of

the Cassiquaire or of the Beni, between the mountains of Esmeralda and

the banks of the river Carony, in the midst of the thickest forests,

almost everywhere that Indian tribes are found who have had no relations

with European settlements, we meet with plantations of Manioc and

bananas.” Humboldt suggests the hypothesis that several species or

constant varieties of the Banana have been confounded, some of which are

indigenous to the new world.

Desvaux studied the specific question, and in a really remarkable work,

published in 1814,[1519] he gives it as his opinion that all the bananas

cultivated for their fruits are of the same species. In this species he

distinguishes forty-four varieties, which he arranges in two groups; the

large-fruited bananas (seven to fifteen inches long), and the

small-fruited bananas (one to six inches), commonly called fig bananas.

R. Brown, in 1818, in his work on the _Plants of the Congo_, p. 51,

maintains also that no structural difference in the bananas cultivated

in Asia and those in America prevents us from considering them as

belonging to the same species. He adopts the name _Musa sapientum_,

which appears to me preferable to that of _M. paradisiaca_ adopted by

Desvaux, because the varieties with small fertile fruit appear to be

nearer the condition of the wild _Musæ_ found in Asia.

Brown remarks on the question of origin that all the other species of

the genus _Musa_ belong to the old world; that no one pretends to have

found in America, in a wild state, varieties with fertile fruit, as has

happened in Asia; lastly, that Piso and Marcgraf considered that the

banana was introduced into Brazil from Congo. In spite of the force of

these three arguments, Humboldt, in his second edition of his essay upon

New Spain (ii. p. 397), does not entirely renounce his opinion. He says

that the traveller Caldcleugh[1520] found among the Puris the tradition

that a small species of banana was cultivated on the borders of the

Prato long before they had any communications with the Portuguese. He

adds that words which are not borrowed ones are found in American

languages to distinguish the fruit of the _Musa_; for instance, _paruru_

in Tamanac, etc., _arata_ in Maypur. I have also read in Stevenson’s

travels[1521] that beds of the leaves of the two bananas commonly

cultivated in America have been found in the _huacas_ or Peruvian tombs

anterior to the conquest; but as this traveller also says that he saw

beans[1522] in these _huacas_, a plant which undoubtedly belongs to the

old world, his assertions are not very trustworthy.

Boussingault[1523] thought that the _platano arton_ at least was of

American origin, but he gives no proof. Meyen, who had also been in

America, adds no argument to those which were already known;[1524] nor

does the geographer Ritter,[1525] who simply reproduces the facts about

America, given by Humboldt.

On the other hand, the botanists who have more recently visited America

have no hesitation as to the Asiatic origin. I may name Seemann for the

Isthmus of Panama, Ernst for Venezuela, and Sagot for Guiana.[1526] The

two first insist upon the absence of names for the banana in the

languages of Peru and Mexico. Piso knew no Brazilian name. Martius[1527]

has since indicated, in the Tupi language of Brazil, the names _pacoba_

or _bacoba_. This same word _bacove_ is used, according to Sagot, by the

French in Guiana. It is perhaps derived from the name _bala_, or

_palan_, of Malabar, from an introduction by the Portuguese, subsequent

to Piso’s voyage.

The antiquity and wild character of the banana in Asia are incontestable

facts. There are several Sanskrit names.[1528] The Greeks, Latins, and

Arabs have mentioned it as a remarkable Indian fruit tree. Pliny[1529]

speaks of it distinctly. He says that the Greeks of the expedition of

Alexander saw it in India, and he quotes the name _pala_ which still

persists in Malabar. Sages reposed beneath its shade and ate of its

fruit. Hence the botanical name _Musa sapientum_. _Musa_ is from the

Arabic _mouz_ or _mauwz_, which we find as early as the thirteenth

century in Ebn Baithar. The specific name _paradisiaca_ comes from the

ridiculous hypothesis which made the banana figure in the story of Eve

and of Paradise.

It is a curious fact that the Hebrews and the ancient Egyptians[1530]

did not know this Indian plant. It is a sign that it did not exist in

India from a very remote epoch, but was first a native of the Malay

Archipelago.

There is an immense number of varieties of the banana in the south of

Asia, both on the islands and on the continent; the cultivation of these

varieties dates in India, in China, and in the archipelago, from an

epoch impossible to realize; it even spread formerly into the islands of

the Pacific[1531] and to the west coast of Africa;[1532] lastly, the

varieties bore distinct names in the most separate Asiatic languages,

such as Chinese, Sanskrit, and Malay. All this indicates great antiquity

of culture, consequently a primitive existence in Asia, and a diffusion

contemporary with or even anterior to that of the human races.

The banana is said to have been found wild in several places. This is

the more worthy of attention since the cultivated varieties seldom

produce seed, and are multiplied by division, so that the species can

hardly have become naturalized from cultivation by sowing itself.

Roxburgh had seen it in the forests of Chittagong,[1533] in the form of

_Musa sapientum_. Rumphius[1534] describes a wild variety with small

fruits in the Philippine Isles. Loureiro[1535][1536] probably speaks of

the same form by the name _M. seminifera agrestis_, which he contrasts

with _M. seminifera domestica_, which is wild in Cochin-China. Blanco

also mentions a wild banana in the Philippines,[1537] but his

description is vague. Finlayson[1538] found the banana wild in abundance

in the little island of Pulo Ubi at the southern extremity of Siam.

Thwaites[1539] saw the variety _M. sapientum_ in the rocky forests of

the centre of Ceylon, and does not hesitate to pronounce it the original

stock of the cultivated bananas. Sir Joseph Hooker and Thomson[1540]

found it wild at Khasia.

The facts are quite different in America. The wild banana has been seen

nowhere except in Barbados,[1541] but here it is a tree of which the

fruit does not ripen, and which is, consequently, in all probability the

result of cultivated varieties of which the seed is not abundant.

Sloane’s _wild plantain_[1542] appears to be a plant very different to

the _musa_. The varieties which are supposed to be possibly indigenous

in America are only two, and as a rule far fewer varieties are grown

than in Asia. The culture of the banana may be said to be recent in the

greater part of America, for it dates from but little more than three

centuries. Piso[1543] says positively that it was imported into Brazil,

and has no Brazilian name. He does not say whence it came. We have seen

that, according to Oviedo, the species was brought to San Domingo from

the Canaries. This fact and the silence of Hernandez, generally so

accurate about the useful plants, wild or cultivated, in Mexico,

convince me that at the time of the discovery of America the banana did

not exist in the whole of the eastern part of the continent.

Did it exist, then, in the western part on the shores of the Pacific?

This seems very unlikely when we reflect that communication was easy

between the two coasts towards the isthmus of Panama, and that before

the arrival of the Europeans the natives had been active in diffusing

throughout America useful plants like the manioc, maize, and the potato.

The banana, which they have prized so highly for three centuries, which

is so easily multiplied by suckers, and whose appearance must strike the

least observant, would not have been forgotten in a few villages in the

depths of the forest or upon the littoral.

I admit that the opinion of Garcilasso, descendant of the Incas, an

author who lived from 1530 to 1568, has a certain importance when he

says that the natives knew the banana before the conquest. However, the

expressions of another writer, extremely worthy of attention, Joseph

Acosta, who had been in Peru, and whom Humboldt quotes in support of

Garcilasso, incline me to adopt the contrary opinion.[1544] He

says,[1545] “The reason the Spaniards called it _plane_ (for the natives

had no such name) was that, as in the case of their trees, they found

some resemblance between them.” He goes on to show how different was the

_plane_ (_Platanus_) of the ancients. He describes the banana very well,

and adds that the tree is very common in the Indies (_i.e._ America),

“although they (the Indians) say that its origin is Ethiopia.... There

is a small white species of plantain (banana), very delicate, which is

called in Espagnolle[1546] _dominico_. There are others coarser and

larger, and of a red colour. There are none in Peru, but they are

imported thither from the Indies,[1547] as into Mexico from Cuernavaca

and the other valleys. On the continent and in some of the islands there

are great plantations of them which form dense thickets.” Surely it is

not thus that the author would express himself were he writing of a

fruit tree of American origin. He would quote American names and

customs; above all, he would not say that the natives regarded it as a

plant of foreign origin. Its diffusion in the warm regions of Mexico may

well have taken place between the epoch of the conquest and the time

when Acosta wrote, since Hernandez, whose conscientious researches go

back to the earliest times of the Spanish dominion in Mexico (though

published later in Rome), says not a word of the banana.[1548] Prescott

the historian saw ancient books and manuscripts which assert that the

inhabitants of Tumbez brought bananas to Pizarro when he disembarked

upon the Peruvian coast, and he believes that its leaves were found in

the _huacas_, but he does not give his proofs.[1549]

As regards the argument of the modern native plantations in regions of

America, remote from European settlements, I find it hard to believe

that tribes have remained absolutely isolated, and have not received so

useful a tree from colonized districts.

Briefly, then, it appears to me most probable that the species was early

introduced by the Spanish and Portuguese into San Domingo and Brazil,

and I confess that this implies that Garcilasso was in error with regard

to Peruvian traditions. If, however, later research should prove that

the banana existed in some parts of America before the advent of the

Europeans, I should be inclined to attribute it to a chance

introduction, not very ancient, the effect of some unknown communication

with the islands of the Pacific, or with the coast of Guinea, rather

than to believe in the primitive and simultaneous existence of the

species in both hemispheres. The whole of geographical botany renders

the latter hypothesis improbable, I might almost say impossible, to

admit, especially in a genus which is not divided between the two

worlds.

In conclusion, I would call attention to the remarkable way in which the

distribution of varieties favours the opinion of a single species—an

opinion adopted, purely from the botanical point of view, by Roxburgh,

Desvaux, and R. Brown. If there were two or three species, one would

probably be represented by the varieties suspected to be of American

origin, the other would belong, for instance, to the Malay Archipelago

or to China, and the third to India. On the contrary all the varieties

are geographically intermixed, and the two which are most widely

diffused in America differ sensibly the one from the other, and each is

confounded with or approaches very nearly to Asiatic varieties.

+Pine-Apple+—_Ananassa sativa_, Lindley; _Bromelia Ananas_, Linnæus.

In spite of the doubts of a few writers, the pine-apple must be an

American plant, early introduced by Europeans into Asia and Africa.

_Nana_ was the Brazilian name,[1550] which the Portuguese turned into

_ananas_. The Spanish called it _pinas_, because the shape resembles the

fruit of a species of pine.[1551] All early writers on America mention

it.[1552] Hernandez says that the pine-apple grows in the warm regions

of Haiti and Mexico. He mentions a Mexican name, _matzatli_. A

pine-apple was brought to Charles V., who mistrusted it, and would not

taste it.

The works of the Greeks, Romans, and Arabs make no allusion to this

species, which was evidently introduced into the old world after the

discovery of America. Rheede[1553] in the seventeenth century was

persuaded of this; but Rumphius[1554] disputed it later, because he said

the pine-apple was cultivated in his time in every part of India, and

was found wild in Celebes and elsewhere. He notices, however, the

absence of an Asiatic name. That given by Rheede for Malabar is

evidently taken from a comparison with the jack-fruit, and is in no

sense original. It is doubtless a mistake on the part of Piddington to

attribute a Sanskrit name to the pine-apple, as the name _anarush_ seems

to be a corruption of _ananas_. Roxburgh knew of none, and Wilson’s

dictionary does not mention the word _anarush_. Royle[1555] says that

the pine-apple was introduced into Bengal in 1594. Kircher[1556] says

that the Chinese cultivated it in the seventeenth century, but it was

believed to have been brought to them from Peru.

Clusius[1557] in 1599 had seen leaves of the pine-apple brought from the

coast of Guinea. This may be explained by an introduction there

subsequent to the discovery of America. Robert Brown speaks of the

pine-apple among the plants cultivated in Congo; but he considers the

species to be an American one.

Although the cultivated pine-apple bears few seeds or none at all, it

occasionally becomes naturalized in hot countries. Examples are quoted

in Mauritius, the Seychelles, and Rodriguez Island,[1558] in

India,[1559] in the Malay Archipelago, and in some parts of America,

where it was probably not indigenous—the West Indies, for instance.

It has been found wild in the warm regions of Mexico (if we may trust

the phrase used by Hernandez), in the province of Veraguas[1560] near

Panama, in the upper Orinoco valley,[1561] in Guiana[1562] and the

province of Bahia.[1563]