Origin of Cultivated Plants

White Mulberry—Morus alba, Linnæus.

The mulberry tree, which is most commonly used in Europe for rearing silkworms, is Morus alba. Its very numerous varieties have been carefully described by Seringe,[725 - Seringe, Description et Culture des Mûriers.] and more recently by Bureau.[726 - Bureau, in De Candolle, Prodromus, xvii. p. 238.] That most widely cultivated in India, Morus indica, Linnæus (Morus alba, var. Indica, Bureau), is wild in the Punjab and in Sikkim, according to Brandis, inspector-general of forests in British India.[727 - Brandis, Forest Flora of North-West and Central India, 1874, p. 408. This variety has black fruit, like that of Morus nigra.] Two other varieties, serrata and cuspidata, are also said to be wild in different provinces of Northern India.[728 - Bureau, ibid., from the specimens of several travellers.] The Abbé David found a perfectly wild variety in Mongolia, described under the name of mongolica by Bureau; and Dr. Bretschneider[729 - Bretschneider, Study and Value, etc., p. 12.] quotes a name yen, from ancient Chinese authors, for the wild mulberry.

It is true he does not say whether this name applies to the white mulberry, pe-sang, of the Chinese plantations.[730 - This name occurs in the Pent-sao, according to Ritter, Erdkunde, xvii. p. 489.] The antiquity of its culture in China,[731 - Platt says (Zeitschrift d. Gesellsch. Erdkunde, 1871, p. 162) that its cultivation dates from 4000 years B.C.] and in Japan, and the number of different varieties grown there, lead us to believe that its original area extended eastward as far as Japan; but the indigenous flora of Southern China is little known, and the most trustworthy authors do not affirm that the plant is indigenous in Japan. Franchet and Savatier[732 - Franchet and Savatier, Enum. Plant. Jap., i. p. 433.] say that it is “cultivated from time immemorial, and become wild here and there.” It is worthy of note also that the white mulberry appears to thrive especially in mountainous and temperate countries, whence it may be argued that it was formerly introduced from the north of China into the plains of the south. It is known that birds are fond of the fruit, and bear the seeds to great distances and into uncultivated ground, and this makes it difficult to discover its really original habitat.

This facility of naturalization doubtless explains the presence in successive epochs of the white mulberry in Western Asia and the south of Europe. This must have occurred especially after the monks brought the silkworm to Constantinople under Justinian in the sixth century, and as the culture of silkworms was gradually propagated westwards. However, Targioni has proved that only the black mulberry, M. nigra, was known in Sicily and Italy when the manufacture of silk was introduced into Sicily in 1148, and two centuries later into Tuscany.[733 - Ant. Targioni, Cenni Storici sull’ Introduzione di Varie Piante nell’ Agricoltura Toscana, p. 188.] According to the same author, the introduction of the white mulberry into Tuscany dates at the earliest from the year 1340. In like manner the manufacture of silk may have begun in China, because the silkworm is natural to that country; but it is very probable that the tree grew also in the north of India, where so many travellers have found it wild. In Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, I am inclined to believe that it was naturalized at a very early epoch, rather than to share Grisebach’s opinion that it is indigenous in the basin of the Caspian Sea. Boissier does not give it as wild in that region.[734 - Boissier, Fl. Orient., iv. p. 1153.] Buhse[735 - Buhse, Aufzählung der Transcaucasien und Persien Pflanzen, p. 203.] found it in Persia, near Erivan and Bashnaruschin, and he adds, “naturalized in abundance in Ghilan and Masenderan.” Ledebour,[736 - Ledebour, Fl. Ross., iii. p. 643.] in his Russian flora, mentions numerous localities round the Caucasus, but he does not specify whether the species is wild or naturalized. In the Crimea, Greece, and Italy, it exists only in a cultivated state.[737 - Steven, Verseichniss d. Taurisch. Halbins, p. 313; Heldreich, Pflanzen des Attischen Ebene, p. 508; Bertoloni, Fl. Ital., x. p. 177; Caruel, Fl. Toscana, p. 171.] A variety, tatarica, often cultivated in the south of Russia, has become naturalized near the Volga.[738 - Bureau, de Cand., Prodr., xvii. p. 238.]

If the white mulberry did not originally exist in Persia and in the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea, it must have penetrated there a long while ago. I may quote in proof of this the name tut, tutti, tuta, which is Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and Tartar. There is a Sanskrit name, tula,[739 - Roxburgh, Fl. Ind.; Piddington, Index.] which must be connected with the same root as the Persian name; but no Hebrew name is known, which is a confirmation of the theory of a successive extension towards the west of Asia.

I refer those of my readers who may desire more detailed information about the introduction of the mulberry and of silkworms to the able works of Targioni and Ritter, to which I have already referred. Recent discoveries made by various botanists have permitted me to add more precise data than those of Ritter on the question of origin, and if there are some apparent contradictions in our opinions on other points, it is because the famous geographer has considered a number of varieties as so many different species, whereas botanists, after a careful examination, have classed them together.

Black Mulberry—Morus nigra, Linnæus.

This tree is more valued for its fruit than for its leaves, and on that account I should have included it in the list of fruit trees; but its history can hardly be separated from that of the white mulberry. Moreover, its leaves are employed in many countries for the feeding of silkworms, although the silk produced is of inferior quality.

The black mulberry is distinguished from the white by several characters independently of the black colour of the fruit, which occurs also in a few varieties of the M. alba.[740 - Reichenbach gives good figures of both species in his Icones Fl. Germ., 657, 658.] It has not a great number of varieties like the latter, which argues a less ancient and a less general cultivation and a narrower primitive area.

Greek and Latin authors, even the poets, have mentioned Morus nigra, which they compare to Ficus sycomorus, and which they even confounded originally with this Egyptian tree.

Commentators for the last two centuries have quoted a number of passages which leave no doubt on this head, but which are devoid of interest in themselves.[741 - Fraas, Syn. Fl. Class., p. 236; Lenz, Bot. der Alten Gr. und Röm., p. 419; Ritter, Erdkunde, xvii. p. 482; Hehn, Culturpflanzen, edit. 3, p. 336.] They furnish no proof touching the origin of the species, which is presumably Persian, unless we are to take seriously the fable of Pyramus and Thisbe, of which the scene was in Babylonia, according to Ovid.

Botanists have not yet furnished any certain proof that this species is indigenous in Persia. Boissier, who is the most learned in the floras of the East, contents himself with quoting Hohenacker as the discoverer of M. nigra in the forests of Lenkoran, on the south coast of the Caspian Sea, and he adds, “probably wild in the north of Persia near the Caspian Sea.”[742 - Boissier, Fl. Orient., iv. p. 1153 (published 1879).] Ledebour, in his Russian flora, had previously indicated, on the authority of different travellers, the Crimea and the provinces south of the Caucasus;[743 - Ledebour, Fl. Ross., iii. p. 641.] but Steven denies the existence of the species in the Crimea except in a cultivated state.[744 - Steven, Verseichniss d. Taur. Halb. Pflan., p. 313.] Tchihatcheff and Koch found the black mulberry in high wild districts of Armenia. It is very probable that in the region to the south of the Caucasus and of the Caspian Sea Morus nigra is wild and indigenous rather than naturalized. What leads me to this belief is (1) that it is not known, even in a cultivated state, in India, China, or Japan; (2) that it has no Sanskrit name; (3) that it was so early introduced into Greece, a country which had intercourse with Armenia at an early period.[745 - Tchihatcheff, trans. of Grisebach’s Végétation du Globe, i. 424.]

Morus nigra spread so little to the south of Persia, that no certain Hebrew name is known for it, nor even a Persian name distinct from that of Morus alba. It was widely cultivated in Italy until the superiority of the white mulberry for the rearing of silkworms was recognized. In Greece the black mulberry is still the most cultivated.[746 - Heldreich, Nutzpflanzen Griechenlands, p. 19.] It has become naturalized here and there in these countries and in Spain.[747 - Bertoloni, Flora Ital., x. p. 179; Viviani, Fl. Dalmat., i. p. 220; Willkomm and Lange, Prodr. Fl. Hisp., i. p. 250.]

American Aloe—Agave Americana, Linnæus.

This ligneous plant, of the order of Amaryllidaceæ, has been cultivated from time immemorial in Mexico under the names maguey or metl, in order to extract from it, at the moment when the flower stem is developed, the wine known as pulque. Humboldt has given a full description of this culture,[748 - Humboldt, Nouvelle Espagne, ed. 2, p. 487.] and he tells us elsewhere[749 - Humboldt, in Kunth, Nova Genera, i. p. 297.] that the species grows in the whole of South America as far as five thousand feet of altitude. It is mentioned[750 - Grisebach, Fl. of Brit. W. Ind. Is., p. 582.] in Jamaica, Antigua, Dominica, and Cuba, but it must be observed that it multiplies easily by suckers, and that it is often planted far from dwellings to form fences or to extract from it the fibre known as pite, and this makes it difficult to ascertain its original habitat. Transported long since into the countries which border the Mediterranean, it occurs there with every appearance of an indigenous species, although there is no doubt as to its origin.[751 - Alph. de Candolle, Géogr. Bot. Raisonnée, p. 739; H. Hoffmann, in Regel’s Gartenflora, 1875, p. 70.] Probably, to judge from the various uses made of it in Mexico before the arrival of the Europeans, it came originally from thence.

Sugar-Cane—Saccharum officinarum, Linnæus.

The origin of the sugar-cane, of its cultivation, and of the manufacture of sugar, are the subject of a very remarkable work by the geographer, Karl Ritter.[752 - K. Ritter, Ueber die Geographische Verbreitung des Zuckerrohrs, in 4to, 108 pages (according to Pritzel, Thes. Lit. Bot.); Die Cultur des Zuckerrohrs, Saccharum, in Asien, Geogr. Verbreitung, etc., etc., in 8vo, 64 pages, without date. This monograph is full of learning and judgment, worthy of the best epoch of German science, when English or French authors were quoted by all authors with as much care as Germans.] I need not follow his purely agricultural and economical details; but for that which interests us particularly, the primitive habitat of the species, he is the best guide, and the facts observed during the last forty years for the most part support or confirm his opinions.

The sugar-cane is cultivated at the present day in all the warm regions of the globe, but a number of historical facts testify that it was first grown in Southern Asia, whence it spread into Africa, and later into America. The question is, therefore, to discover in what districts of the continent, or in which of the southern islands of Asia, the plant exists, or existed at the time it was first employed.

Ritter has followed the best methods of arriving at a solution. He notes first that all the species known in a wild state, and undoubtedly belonging to the genus Saccharum, grow in India, except one in Egypt.[753 - Kunth, Enum. Plant. (1838), vol. i. p. 474. There is no more recent descriptive work on the family of the Gramineæ, nor the genus Saccharum.] Five species have since been described, growing in Java, New Guinea, Timor, and the Philippine Isles.[754 - Miquel, Floræ Indiæ Batavæ, 1855, vol. iii. p. 511.] The probabilities are all in favour of an Asiatic origin, to judge from the data furnished by geographical botany.

Unfortunately no botanist had discovered at the time when Ritter wrote, or has since discovered, Saccharum officinarum wild in India, in the adjacent countries or in the archipelago to the south of Asia. All Anglo-Indian authors, Roxburgh, Wallich, Royle, etc., and more recently Aitchison,[755 - Aitchison, Catalogue of Punjab and Sindh Plants, 1869, p. 173.] only mention the plant as a cultivated one. Roxburgh, who was so long a collector in India, says expressly, “where wild I do not know.” The family of the Gramineæ has not yet appeared in Sir Joseph Hooker’s flora. For the island of Ceylon, Thwaites does not even mention the cultivated plant.[756 - Thwaites, Enum. PI. Zeyloniæ.] Rumphius, who has carefully described its cultivation in the Dutch colonies, says nothing about the home of the species. Miquel, Hasskarl, and Blanco mention no wild specimen in Sumatra, Java, or the Philippine Isles. Crawfurd tried to discover it, but failed to do so.[757 - Crawfurd, Indian Archip., i. p. 475.] At the time of Cook’s voyage Forster found the sugar-cane only as a cultivated plant in the small islands of the Pacific.[758 - Forster, De Plantis Esculentis.] The natives of New Caledonia cultivate a number of varieties of the sugar-cane, and use it constantly, sucking the syrup from the cane; but Vieillard[759 - Vieillard, Annales des Sc. Nat., 4th series, vol. xvi. p. 32.] takes care to say, “From the fact that isolated plants of Saccharum officinarum are often found in the middle of the bush and even on the mountains, it would be wrong to conclude that the plant is indigenous; for these specimens, poor and weak, only mark the site of old plantations, or are sprung from fragments of cane left by the natives, who seldom travel without a piece of cane in the hand.” In 1861, Bentham, who had access to the rich herbarium of Kew, says, in his Flora of Hongkong, “We have no authentic and certain proof of a locality where the common sugar-cane is wild.”

I do not know, however, why Ritter and every one else has neglected an assertion of Loureiro, in his Flora of Cochin-China,[760 - Loureiro, Cochin-Ch., edit. 2, vol. i. p. 66.] “Habitat, et colitur abundantissime in omnibus provinciis regni Cochin-Chinensis: simul in aliquibus imperii sinensis, sed minori copia.” The word habitat, separated by a comma from the rest, is a distinct assertion. Loureiro could not have been mistaken about the Saccharum officinarum, which he saw cultivated all about him, and of which he enumerates the principal varieties. He must have seen plants wild, at least in appearance. They may have spread from some neighbouring plantation, but I know nothing which makes it unlikely that the plant should be indigenous in this warm moist district of the continent of Asia.

Forskal[761 - Forskal, Fl. Ægypto-Arabica, p. 103.] mentions the species as wild in the mountains of Arabia, under a name which he believes to be Indian. If it came from Arabia, it would have spread into Egypt long ago, and the Hebrews would have known it.

Roxburgh had received in the botanical gardens of Calcutta in 1796, and had introduced into the plantations in Bengal, a Saccharum to which he gave the name of S. sinense, and of which he published an illustration in his great work Plantæ Coromandelianæ, vol. iii. pl. 232. It is perhaps only a form of S. officinarum, and moreover, as it is only known in a cultivated state, it tells nothing about the primitive country either of this or of any other variety.

A few botanists have asserted that the sugar-cane flowers more often in Asia than in America or Africa, and even that it produces seed[762 - Macfadyen, On the Botanical Characters of the Sugar-Cane, in Hooker’s Bot. Miscell., i. p. 101; Maycock, Fl. Barbad., p. 50.] on the banks of the Ganges, which they regard as a proof that it is indigenous. Macfadyen says so without giving any proof. It was an assertion made to him in Jamaica by some traveller; but Sir W. Hooker adds in a note, “Dr. Roxburgh, in spite of his long residence on the banks of the Ganges, has never seen the seeds of the sugar-cane.” It rarely flowers, and still more rarely bears fruit, as is commonly the case with plants propagated by buds or suckers, and if any variety of sugar-cane were disposed to seed, it would probably be less productive of sugar and would soon be abandoned. Rumphius, a better observer than many modern botanists, has given a good description of the cultivated cane in the Dutch colonies, and makes an interesting remark.[763 - Rumphius, Amboin, vol. v. p. 186.] “It never produces flowers or fruit unless it has remained several years in a stony place.” Neither he, nor any one else to my knowledge, has described or drawn the seed. The flower, on the contrary, has often been figured, and I have a fine specimen from Martinique.[764 - Hehn, No. 480.] Schacht is the only person who has given a good analysis of the flower, including the pistil; he had not seen the seed ripe.[765 - Schacht, Madeira und Teneriffe, tab. i.] De Tussac,[766 - Tussac, Flore des Antilles, i. p. 153, pl. 23.] who gives a poor analysis, speaks of the seed, but he only saw it young in the ovary.

In default of precise information as to the native country of the species, accessory means, linguistic and historical, of proving an Asiatic origin, are of some interest. Ritter gives them carefully; I will content myself with an epitome. The Sanskrit name of the sugar-cane was ikshu, ikshura, or ikshava, but the sugar was called sarkara, or sakkara, and all its names in our European languages of Aryan origin, beginning with the ancient ones – Greek, for example – are clearly derived from this. This is an indication of Asiatic origin, and that the produce of the cane was of ancient use in the southern regions of Asia with which the ancient Sanskrit-speaking nation may have had commercial dealings. The two Sanskrit words have remained in Bengali under the forms ik and akh.[767 - Piddington, Index.] But in other languages beyond the Indus, we find a singular variety of names, at least when they are not akin to that of the Aryans; for instance: panchadara in Telinga, kyam in Burmese, mia in the dialect of Cochin-China, kan and tche, or tsche, in Chinese; and further south, among the Malays, tubu or tabu for the plant, and gula for the product. This diversity proves the great antiquity of its cultivation in those regions of Asia in which botanical indications point out the origin of the species.

The epoch of its introduction into different countries agrees with the idea that its origin was in India, Cochin-China, or the Malay Archipelago.

The Chinese were not acquainted with the sugar-cane at a very remote period, and they received it from the West. Ritter contradicts those authors who speak of a very ancient cultivation, and I find most positive confirmation of his opinion in Dr. Bretschneider’s pamphlet, drawn up at Pekin with the aid of all the resources of Chinese literature.[768 - Bretschneider, On the Study and Value, etc., pp. 45-47.] “I have not been able to discover,” he says, “any allusion to the sugar-cane in the most ancient Chinese books (the five classics).” It appears to have been mentioned for the first time by the authors of the second century before Christ. The first description of it appears in the Nan-fang-tsao-mu-chuang, in the fourth century: “The chê chê, kan-chê (kan, sweet, chê, bamboo) grows,” it says, “in Cochin-China. It is several inches in circumference, and resembles the bamboo. The stem, broken into pieces, is eatable and very sweet. The sap which is drawn from it is dried in the sun. After a few days it becomes sugar (here a compound Chinese character), which melts in the mouth… In the year 286 (of our era) the kingdom of Funan (in India, beyond the Ganges) sent sugar as a tribute.” According to the Pent-Sao, an emperor who reigned from 627 to 650 A.D., sent a man into the Indian province of Behar to learn how to manufacture sugar.

There is nothing said in these works of the plant growing wild in China; on the contrary, the origin in Cochin-China, indicated by Loureiro, finds an unexpected confirmation. It seems to me most probable that its primitive range extended from Bengal to Cochin-China. It may have included the Sunda Isles and the Moluccas, whose climate is very similar; but there are quite as many reasons for believing that it was early introduced into these from Cochin-China or the Malay peninsula.

The propagation of the sugar-cane from India westward is well known. The Greco-Roman world had a vague idea of the reed (calamus) which the Indians delighted to chew, and from which they obtained sugar.[769 - See the quotations from Strabo, Dioscorides, Pliny, etc., in Lenz, Botanik der Alten Griechen und Römer, 1859, p. 267; Fingerhut, in Flora, 1839, vol. ii. p. 529; and many other authors.] On the other hand, the Hebrew writings do not mention sugar;[770 - Rosenmüller, Handbuch der Bibl. Alterth.] whence we may infer that the cultivation of the sugar-cane did not exist west of the Indus at the time of the Jewish captivity at Babylon. The Arabs in the Middle Ages introduced it into Egypt, Sicily, and the south of Spain,[771 - Calendrier Rural de Harib, written in the tenth century for Spain, translated by Dureau de la Malle in his Climatologie de l’Italie et de l’Andalousie, p. 71.] where it flourished until the abundance of sugar in the colonies caused it to be abandoned. Don Henriquez transported the sugar-cane from Sicily to Madeira, whence it was taken to the Canaries in 1503.[772 - Von Buch, Canar. Ins.] Hence it was introduced into Brazil in the beginning of the sixteenth century.[773 - Piso, Brésil, p. 49.] It was taken to St. Domingo about 1520, and shortly afterwards to Mexico;[774 - Humboldt, Nouv. Espagne, ed. 2, vol. iii. p. 34.] to Guadeloupe in 1644, to Martinique about 1650, to Bourbon when the colony was founded.[775 - Not. Stat. sur les Col. Franc., i. pp. 207, 29, 83.] The variety known as Otahiti, which is not, however, wild in that island, and which is also called Bourbon, was introduced into the French and English colonies at the end of the last and the beginning of the present century.[776 - Macfadyen, in Hooker, Bot. Miscell., i. p. 101; Maycock, Fl. Barbad., p. 50.]

The processes of cultivation and preparation of the sugar are described in a number of works, among which the following may be recommended: de Tussac, Flore des Antilles, 3 vols., Paris; vol. i. pp. 151-182; and Macfadyen, in Hooker’s Botanical Miscellany, 1830, vol. i. pp. 103-116.

CHAPTER III.

PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FLOWERS, OR FOR THE ORGANS WHICH ENVELOP THEM

Clove—Caryophyllus aromaticus, Linnæus.

The clove used for domestic purposes is the calix and flower-bud of a plant belonging to the order of Myrtaceæ. Although the plant has been often described and very well drawn from cultivated specimens, some doubt remains as to its nature when wild. I spoke of it in my Geographical Botany in 1855, but it does not appear that the question has made any further progress since then, which induces me to repeat here what I said then.

“The clove must have come originally from the Moluccas,” as Rumphius asserts,[777 - ii. p. 3.] for its cultivation was limited two centuries ago to a few little islands in this archipelago. I cannot, however, find any proof that the true clove tree, with peduncles and aromatic buds, has been found in a wild state. Rumphius[778 - ii. tab. 3.] considers that a plant of which he gives a description, and a drawing under the name Caryophyllum sylvestre, belongs to the same species, and this plant is wild throughout the Moluccas. A native told him that the cultivated clove trees degenerate into this form, and Rumphius himself found a plant of C. sylvestre in a deserted plantation of cultivated cloves. Nevertheless plate 3 differs from plate 1 of the cultivated clove in the shape of the leaves and of the teeth of the calix. I do not speak of plate 2, which appears to be an abnormal form of the cultivated clove. Rumphius says that C. sylvestre has no aromatic properties; now, as a rule, the aromatic properties are more developed in the wild plants of a species than in the cultivated plants. Sonnerat[779 - Sonnerat, Voy. Nouv. Guin., tab. 119, 120.] also publishes figures of the true clove and of a spurious clove found in a small island near the country of the Papuans. It is easy to see that his false clove differs completely by its blunt leaves from the true clove, and also from the two species of Rumphius. I cannot make up my mind to class all these different plants, wild and cultivated, together, as all authors have done.[780 - Thunberg, Diss., ii. p. 326; De Candolle, Prodr., iii. p. 262; Hooker, Bot. Mag., tab. 2749; Hasskarl, Cat. Hort. Bogor. Alt., p. 261.] It is especially necessary to exclude plate 120 of Sonnerat, which is admitted in the Botanical Magazine. An historical account of the cultivation of the clove, and of its introduction into different countries, will be found in the last-named work, in the Dictionnaire d’Agriculture, and in the dictionaries of natural history.

If it be true, as Roxburgh says,[781 - Roxburgh, Flora Indica, edit. 1832, vol. ii. p. 194.] that the Sanskrit language had a name, luvunga, for the clove, the trade in this spice must date from a very early epoch, even supposing the name to be more modern than the true Sanskrit. But I doubt its genuine character, for the Romans would have known of a substance so easily transported, and it does not appear that it was introduced into Europe before the discovery of the Moluccas by the Portuguese.

Hop—Humulus Lupulus, Linnæus.

The hop is wild in Europe from England and Sweden as far south as the mountains of the Mediterranean basin, and in Asia as far as Damascus, as the south of the Caspian Sea, and of Eastern Siberia,[782 - Alph. de Candolle, in Prodromus, vol. xvi., sect. 1, p. 29; Boissier, Fl. Orient., iv. p. 1152; Hohenacker, Enum. Plant. Talysch, p. 30; Buhse Aufzählung Transcaucasien, p. 202.] but it is not found in India, the north of China, or the basin of the river Amur.[783 - An erroneous transcription of what Asa Gray (Botany of North. United States, edit. 5) says of the hemp, wrongly attributed to the hop in Prodromus, and repeated in the French edition of this work, should be corrected. Humulus Lupulus is indigenous in the east of the United States, and also in the island of Yeso, according to a letter from Maximowicz. – Author’s Note, 1884.]

In spite of the entirely wild appearance of the hop in Europe in districts far from cultivation, it has been sometimes asked if it is not of Asiatic origin.[784 - Hehn, Nutzpflanzen und Hausthiere in ihren Uebergang aus Asien, edit. 3, p. 415.] I do not think this can be proved, nor even that it is likely. The fact that the Greeks and Latins have not spoken of the use of the hop in making beer is easily explained, as they were almost entirely unacquainted with this drink. If the Greeks have not mentioned the plant, it is simply perhaps because it is rare in their country. From the Italian name lupulo it seems likely that Pliny speaks of it with other vegetables under the name lupus salictarius.[785 - Pliny, Hist., bk. 21, c. 15. He mentions asparagus in this connection, and the young shoots of the hop are sometimes eaten in this manner.] That the custom of brewing with hops only became general in the Middle Ages proves nothing, except that other plants were formerly employed, as is still the case in some districts. The Kelts, the Germans, other peoples of the north and even of the south who had the vine, made beer[786 - Tacitus, Germania, cap. 25; Pliny, bk. 18, c. 7; Hehn, Kulturpflanzen, edit. 3, pp. 125-137.] either of barley or of other fermented grain, adding in certain cases different vegetable substances – the bark of the oak or of the tamarisk, for instance, or the fruits of Myrica gale.[787 - Volz, Beitrage zur Culturgeschichte, p. 149.] It is very possible that they did not soon discover the advantages of the hop, and that even after these were recognized, they employed wild hops before beginning to cultivate them. The first mention of hop-gardens occurs in an act of donation made by Pepin, father of Charlemagne, in 768.[788 - Ibid.] In the fourteenth century it was an important object of culture in Germany, but it began in England only under Henry VIII.[789 - Beckmann, Erfindungen, quoted by Volz.]

The common names of the hop only furnish negative indications as to its origin. There is no Sanskrit name,[790 - Piddington, Index; Fick, Wörterb. Indo-Germ. Sprachen, i.; Ursprache.] and this agrees with the absence of the species in the region of the Himalayas, and shows that the early Aryan peoples had not noticed and employed it. I have quoted before[791 - A. de Candolle, Géogr. Bot. Rais., p. 857.] some of the European names, showing their diversity, although some few of them may be derived from a common stock. Hehn, the philologist, has treated of their etymology, and shown how obscure it is, but he has not mentioned the names totally distinct from humle, hopf or hop, and chmeli of the Scandinavian, Gothic, and Slav races; for example, Apini in Lette, Apwynis in Lithuanian, tap in Esthonian, blust in Illyrian,[792 - Dict. MS., compiled from floras, Moritzi.] which have evidently other roots. This variety tends to confirm the theory that the species existed in Europe before the arrival of the Aryan nations. Several different peoples must have distinguished, known, and used this plant successively, which confirms its extension in Europe and in Asia before it was used in brewing.

Carthamine—Carthamus tinctorius, Linnæus.

The composite annual which produces the dye called carthamine is one of the most ancient cultivated species. Its flowers are used for dyeing in red or yellow, and the seeds yield oil.

The grave-cloths which wrap the ancient Egyptian mummies are dyed with carthamine,[793 - Unger, Die Pflanzen des Alten Ægyptens, p. 47.] and quite recently fragments of the plant have been found in the tombs discovered at Deir el Bahari.[794 - Schweinfurth, in a letter to M. Boissier, 1882.] Its cultivation must also be ancient in India, since there are two Sanskrit names for it, cusumbha and kamalottara, of which the first has several derivatives in the modern languages of the peninsula.[795 - Piddington, Index.] The Chinese only received carthamine in the second century B.C., when Chang-kien brought it back from Bactriana.[796 - Bretschneider, Study and Value, etc., p. 15.] The Greeks and Latins were probably not acquainted with it, for it is very doubtful whether this is the plant which they knew as cnikos or cnicus.[797 - See Targioni, Cenni Storici, p. 108.] At a later period the Arabs contributed largely to diffuse the cultivation of carthamine, which they named qorton, kurtum, whence carthamine, or usfur, or ihridh, or morabu,[798 - Forskal, Fl. Ægypt., p. 73; Ebn Baithar, Germ. trans., ii. pp. 196, 293; i. p. 18.] a diversity indicating an ancient existence in several countries of Western Asia or of Africa. The progress of chemistry threatens to do away with the cultivation of this plant as of many others, but it still subsists in the south of Europe, in the East, and throughout the valley of the Nile.[799 - See Gasparin, Cours d’Agric., iv. p. 217.]

No botanist has found the carthamine in a really wild state. Authors doubtfully assign to it an origin in India or Africa, in Abyssinia in particular, but they have never seen it except in a cultivated state, or with every appearance of having escaped from cultivation.[800 - Boissier, Fl. Orient., iii. p. 710; Oliver, Flora of Trop. Afr., iii. p. 439.]

Mr. Clarke,[801 - Clarke, Compositæ Indicæ, 1876, p. 244.] formerly director of the Botanical Gardens in Calcutta, who has lately studied the Compositæ of India, includes the species only as a cultivated one. The summary of our modern knowledge of the plants of the Nile region, including Abyssinia, by Schweinfurth and Ascherson,[802 - Schweinfurth and Ascherson, Aufzählung, p. 283.] only indicates it as a cultivated species, nor does the list of the plants observed by Rohlfs on his recent journey mention a wild carthamine.[803 - Rohlfs, Kufra, in 8vo, 1881.]

As the species has not been found wild either in India or in Africa, and as it has been cultivated for thousands of years in both countries, the idea occurred to me of seeking its origin in the intermediate region; a method which had been successful in other cases.

Unfortunately, the interior of Arabia is almost unknown. Forskal, who has visited the coasts of Yemen has learnt nothing about the carthamine; nor is it mentioned among the plants of Botta and of Bové. But an Arab, Abu Anifa, quoted by Ebn Baithar, a thirteenth-century writer, expressed himself as follows:[804 - Ebn Baithar, ii. p. 196.]– “Usfur, this plant furnishes a substance used as a dye; there are two kinds, one cultivated and one wild, which both grow in Arabia, of which the seeds are called elkurthum.” Abu Anifa was very likely right.

Saffron—Crocus sativus, Linnæus.

The saffron was cultivated in very early times in the west of Asia. The Romans praised the saffron of Cilicia, which they preferred to that grown in Italy.[805 - Pliny, bk. xxi. c. 6.] Asia Minor, Persia, and Kashmir have been for a long time the countries which export the most. India gets it from Kashmir[806 - Royle, Ill. Himal., p. 372.] at the present day. Roxburgh and Wallich do not mention it in their works. The two Sanskrit names mentioned by Piddington[807 - Index, p. 25.] probably applied to the substance saffron brought from the West, for the name kasmirajamma appears to indicate its origin in Kashmir. The other name is kunkuma. The Hebrew word karkom is commonly translated saffron, but it more probably applies to carthamine, to judge from the name of the latter in Arabic.[808 - According to Forskal, Delile, Reynier, Schweinfurth, and Ascherson.] Besides, the saffron is not cultivated in Egypt or in Arabia. The Greek name is krokos.[809 - Theophrastus, Hist., 1. 6, c. 6.] Saffron, which recurs in all modern European languages, comes from the Arabic sahafaran,[810 - J. Bauhin, Hist., ii. p. 637.]zafran.[811 - Royle, Ill. Himal.] The Spaniards, nearer to the Arabs, call it azafran. The Arabic name itself comes from assfar, yellow.

Trustworthy authors say that C. sativus is wild in Greece[812 - Sibthorp, Prodr.; Fraas, Syn. Fl. Class., p. 292.] and in the Abruzzi mountains in Italy.[813 - J. Gay, quoted by Babington, Man. Brit. Fl.] Maw, who is preparing a monograph of the genus Crocus, based on a long series of observations in gardens and in herbaria, connects with C. sativus six forms which are found wild in mountainous districts from Italy to Kurdistan. None of these, he says,[814 - Maw, in the Gardener’s Chron., 1881, vol. xvi.] are identical with the cultivated variety; but certain forms described under other names (C. Orisnii, C. Cartwrightianus, C. Thomasii), hardly differ from it. These are from Italy and Greece.