CHAPTER V.

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 basins[1564] 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 Triana[1570] 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, Blume[1575] 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

India[1578] 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. Boissier[1580] found it to the north of Damascus in

Anti-Lebanon, and he saw specimens of it brought from Mesopotamia, but

he could not be sure that they were found wild. There is the same doubt

about branches gathered in Arabia, which have been mentioned by some

writers. Pliny and Galen[1581] 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_, Mœnch; _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. Bosc[1586] says that Olivier found the bean wild

in Persia; I do not find this confirmed in Olivier’s _Voyage_, and as a

rule Bosc seems to have been too ready to believe that Olivier found a

good many of our cultivated plants in the interior of Persia. He says it

of buckwheat and of oats, which Olivier does not mention.

The only indication besides that of Lerche which I find in floras is a

very different locality. Munby mentions the bean as wild in Algeria, at

Oran. He adds that it is rare. No other author, to my knowledge, has

spoken of it in northern Africa. Cosson, who knows the flora of Algeria

better than any one, assures me he has not seen or received any specimen

of the wild bean from the north of Africa. I have ascertained that there

is no specimen in Munby’s[1587] 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 Cyrenaica, 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 Chang-kien’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 _Iliad_[1591] 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] Herodotus[1599] 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_, Mœnch.

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 botanist[1606] saw it in the provinces

to the south of the Caucasus, “cultivated and nearly wild here and there

round villages.” Another[1607] 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 sometimes[1617] 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. Reynier[1624] 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 says[1628] that the latter is grown in the Morea at the

present day; but Heldreich says[1629] 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] Gussone[1634] is very

positive for Sicily—“on barren and sandy hills, and in meadows (_in

herbidis_)” Lastly, Grisebach[1635] found it in Turkey in Europe, near

Ruskoï, and d’Urville[1636] 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 Ascherson[1641] say that it is only

cultivated in Egypt. Hartmann saw it wild in Upper Egypt.[1642]

Unger[1643] mentions it among the cultivated specimens of the ancient

Egyptians, but he gives neither specimen nor drawing. Wilkinson[1644]

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. Darwin[1651] 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-pea[1656] 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.

Kæmpfer[1664] 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 botanists[1667] 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] Junghuhn[1669] 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.” Loureiro[1678]

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 names[1682] 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 Tree+[1685]—_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

Gasparin[1686] 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 highlands 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 Hœfer 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’s[1693] 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 Phœnicians.

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 Wittmack[1702] 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 Crescenzio[1707] 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. Rochebrune[1709]

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. Molina[1711] 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

Tournefort[1713] (_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 _Leguminosœ_ of the genera _Lathyrus_, _Vicia_,

etc. Durante gives the Greek _arachos_ as the synonym for his _araco_,

whereby we see the etymology. Père Feuillée[1715] 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; _Phaseo lunatus macrocarpus_; Bentham, _Ph. inamœnus_, 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 Ascherson[1721] do not mention it for Abyssinia, Nubia, or Egypt.

Oliver[1722] 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 Ascherson[1733] 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_

(λοβος), 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_ (Λοβιον) 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. Loureiro[1741] 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 Senegambia[1742] described

it as “cultivated and probably wild” in Galam. Lastly, Schweinfurth and

Ascherson[1743] 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_,

Mœnch.

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

Bretschneider[1747] 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 _buchweitzen_[1749] (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 Moquin[1763] 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 time[1771] 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 Targioni[1774] 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 Heer[1780] 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 agreste_[1787]) 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 says[1789] 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 Diodorus[1791] 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 says[1801] that he recognized this wheat amongst seeds taken

from the sarcophagi of ancient mummies, but he had not seen the ears.

Unger[1802] thinks it was cultivated by the ancient Egyptians, yet he

gives no proof founded on drawings or specimens. The fact that no Hebrew

or Armenian name[1803] 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

Delile[1804] 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] Strœbel and Pigorini said they

found wheat with _grano grosso duro_ (_T. turgidum_), in the

lake-dwellings of Parmesan.[1808] For the rest, Heer[1809] 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. Pliny[1811] 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 Algeria[1815] 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. Alefeld[1818] 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 Vilmorin[1819] 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 think[1824] that

the Greeks first called spelt _olyra_, afterwards _zeia_, names which we

find in Herodotus and Homer. Dioscorides[1825] 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

suppose[1830] 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. Vilmorin[1838] 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.

Heer[1839] 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. bœoticum_, 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 Bieberstein[1843] 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 bœoticum_, Boissier,

which grows wild in the plains of Bœotia[1846] 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

says[1848] 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. Willdenow[1855] 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.

Theophrastus[1856] 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.

Willdenow[1859] 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 Pictet[1863]

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.

Bretschneider[1864] 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. Kunth[1874] 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

remark[1881] 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 Galen[1882] 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

Nemnich[1888] 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 said[1893] that the traveller Olivier saw oats wild in

Persia, but he does not mention the fact in his work. Besides, several

annual species nearly resembling oats may deceive the traveller. I

cannot discover either in books or herbaria the existence of really wild

oats either in Europe or Asia, and Bentham has assured me that there are

no such specimens in the herbarium at Kew; but certainly the half-wild

or naturalized condition is more frequent in the Austrian states from

Dalmatia to Transylvania[1894] 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. Unger[1899] 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 botanists[1901] 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] 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 says[1906] that it inhabits

India, and most authors repeat this; but Anglo-Indian botanists[1907]

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 says[1910] 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 Egypt[1919] 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_.

Ainslie[1924] 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 Aitchison[1927] gives the

species as only cultivated in the north-west of India. The Australian

plant which Robert Brown said belonged to this species belongs to

another.[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 _Graminœ Austriacœ_ (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

phrase[1934] 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

Testament[1938] 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. Herodotus[1944] spoke of a “tree-millet” in the plains of

Assyria. It might be the species in question, but it is not possible to

prove it.

The Greeks and Romans were not acquainted with it, not at least before

the Roman empire, but it is possible that this was the millet, seven

feet high, which Pliny mentions[1945] as having been introduced from

India in his lifetime.

We must probably seek its origin in tropical Africa, where the species

is generally cultivated. Sir William Hooker[1946] 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 Egypt[1947] 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 Japan[1949] 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, Royle[1952] 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 Loureiro[1957] 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_, _arunya_[1958] whence

come, probably, several names in modern Indian languages, and _oruza_ or

_oruzon_ of the ancient Greeks, _rouz_ or _arous_ of the Arabs.

Theophrastus[1959] 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 Garamantes[1963] 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. Thomson[1967] 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

discovery[1973] 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 Matthiole[1976] 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 travellers[1977] 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’Herbelot[1981] 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

Roxburgh[1985] 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 Bretschneider[1987] 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. Hance[1988] 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-Hilaire[1994] 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_.

Lindley[1995] 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_. Heer[2003] 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 Dioscorides[2005] 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 time[2006] 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 Ages[2008] 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 _chashchâsh_,[2009]

and in Arabic. Another Persian name is _kouknar_.[2010] These names, and

others I could quote, very different from the _maikôn_ (Μήκων) 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_ (Οπος). The Arabs

converted it into _afiun_,[2014] and spread it eastwards even to China.

Flückiger and Hanbury[2015] 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 Roxburgh[2021]

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.