Origin of Cultivated Plants

The cultivated form of Solanum melongena has not hitherto been found wild, but most botanists are agreed in regarding Solanum insanum, Roxburgh, and S. incanum, Linnæus, as belonging to the same species. Other synonyms are sometimes added, the result of a study made by Nees von Esenbeck from numerous specimens.[1432 - Trans. of Linn. Soc., xvii. p. 48; Baker, Fl. of Maurit., p. 215.]S. insanum appears to have been lately found wild in the Madras presidency and at Tong-dong in Burmah. The publication of the article on the Solanaceæ in the Flora of British India, will probably give more precise information on this head.

Red Pepper—Capsicum. In the best botanical works the genus Capsicum is encumbered with a number of cultivated forms, which have never been found wild, and which differ especially in their duration (which is often variable), or in the form of the fruit, a character which is of little value in plants cultivated for that special organ. I shall speak of the two species most often cultivated, but I cannot refrain from stating my opinion that no capsicum is indigenous to the old world. I believe them to be all of American origin, though I cannot absolutely prove it. These are my reasons.

Fruits so conspicuous, so easily grown in gardens, and so agreeable to the palate of the inhabitants of hot countries, would have been very quickly diffused throughout the old world, if they had existed in the south of Asia, as it has sometimes been supposed. They would have had names in several ancient languages. Yet neither Romans, Greeks, nor even Hebrews were acquainted with them. They are not mentioned in ancient Chinese books.[1433 - Bretschneider, On the Study and Value, etc., p. 17.] The islanders of the Pacific did not cultivate them at the time of Cook’s voyages,[1434 - Forster, De Plantis Escul. Insul., etc.] in spite of their proximity to the Sunda Isles, where Rumphius mentions their very general use. The Arabian physician, Ebn Baithar, who collected in the thirteenth century all that Eastern nations knew about medicinal plants, says nothing about it. Roxburgh knew no Sanskrit name for the capsicums. Later, Piddington mentions a name for C. frutescens, bran-maricha,[1435 - Piddington, Index.] which he says is Sanskrit; but this name, which may be compared to that of black pepper (muricha, murichung), is probably not really ancient, for it has left no trace in the Indian languages which are derived from Sanskrit.[1436 - Piddington, at the word Capsicum.] The wild nature and ancient existence of the capsicum is always uncertain, owing to its very general cultivation; but it seems to me to be more often doubtful in Asia than in South America. The Indian specimens described by the most trustworthy authors nearly all come from the herbaria of the East India Company, in which we never know whether a plant appeared really wild, if it was found far from dwellings, in forests, etc. For the localities in the Malay Archipelago authors often give rubbish-heaps, hedges, etc. We pass to a more particular examination of the two cultivated species.

Annual Capsicum—Capsicum annuum, Linnæus.

This species has a number of different names in European languages,[1437 - Nemnich, Lexicon, gives twelve French and eight German names.] which all indicate a foreign origin and the resemblance of the taste to that of pepper. In French it is often called poivre de Guinée (Guinea pepper), but also poivre du Brézil, d’Inde (Indian, Brazilian pepper), etc., denominations to which no importance can be attributed. Its cultivation was introduced into Europe in the sixteenth century. It was one of the peppers that Piso and Marcgraf[1438 - Piso, p. 107; Marcgraf, p. 39.] saw grown in Brazil under the name quija or quiya. They say nothing as to its origin. The species appears to have been early cultivated in the West Indies, where it has several Carib names.[1439 - Descourtilz, Flore Médicale des Antilles, vi. pl. 423.]

Botanists who have most thoroughly studied the genus Capsicum[1440 - Fingerhuth, Monographia Gen. Capsici, p. 12; Sendtner, in Flora Brasil., vol. x. p. 147.] do not appear to have found in herbaria a single specimen which can be considered wild. I have not been more fortunate. The original home is probably Brazil.

C. grossum, Willdenow, seems to be a variety of the same species. It is cultivated in India under the name kafree murich, and kafree chilly, but Roxburgh did not consider it to be of Indian origin.[1441 - Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., edit. Wall, ii. p. 260; edit. 1832, ii. p. 574.]

Shrubby Capsicum—Capsicum frutescens, Willdenow.

This species, taller and with a more woody stock than C. annuum, is generally cultivated in the warm regions of both hemispheres. The great part of our so-called Cayenne pepper is made from it, but this name is given also to the product of other peppers. Roxburgh, the author who is most attentive to the origin of Indian plants, does not consider it to be wild in India. Blume says it is naturalized in the Malay Archipelago in hedges.[1442 - Blume, Bijdr., ii. p. 704.] In America, on the contrary, where its culture is ancient, it has been several times found wild in forests, apparently indigenous. De Martius brought it from the banks of the Amazon, Pœppig from the province of Maynas in Peru, and Blanchet from the province of Bahia.[1443 - Sendtner, in Fl. Bras., x. p. 143.] So that its area extends from Bahia to Eastern Peru, which explains its diffusion over South America generally.

Tomato—Lycopersicum esculentum, Miller.

The tomato, or love apple, belongs to a genus of the Solaneæ, of which all the species are American.[1444 - Alph. de Candolle, Prodr., xiii. part 1, p. 26.] It has no name in the ancient languages of Asia, nor even in modern Indian languages.[1445 - Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., edit. 1832, vol. i. p. 565; Piddington, Index.] It was not cultivated in Japan in the time of Thunberg, that is to say a century ago, and the silence of ancient writers on China on this head shows that it is of recent introduction there. Rumphius[1446 - Rumphius, Amboin, v. p. 416.] had seen it in gardens in the Malay Archipelago. The Malays called it tomatte, but this is an American name, for C. Bauhin calls the species tumatle Americanorum. Nothing leads us to suppose it was known in Europe before the discovery of America.

The first names given to it by botanists in the sixteenth century indicate that they received the plant from Peru.[1447 - Mala Peruviana, Pomi del Peru, in Bauhin’s Hist., iii. p. 621.] It was cultivated on the continent of America before it was grown in the West India Islands, for Sloane does not mention it in Jamaica, and Hughes[1448 - Hughes, Barbados, p. 148.] says it was brought to Barbados from Portugal hardly more than a century ago. Humboldt considered that the cultivation of the tomato was of ancient date in Mexico.[1449 - Humboldt, Espagne, edit. 2, vol. ii. p. 472.] I notice, however, that the earliest work on the plants of this country (Hernandez, Historia) makes no mention of it. Neither do the early writers on Brazil, Piso and Marcgraf, speak of it, although the species is now cultivated throughout tropical America. Thus by the process of exhaustion we return to the idea of a Peruvian origin, at least for its cultivation.

De Martius[1450 - Fl. Brasil., vol. x. p. 126.] found the plant wild in the neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro and Para, but it had perhaps escaped from gardens. I do not know of any botanist who has found it really wild in the state in which it is familiar to us, with the fruit more or less large, lumpy, and with swelled sides; but this is not the case with the variety with small spherical fruit, called L. cerasiforme in some botanical works, and considered in others (and rightly so, I think[1451 - The proportions of the calyx and the corolla are the same as those of the cultivated tomato, but they are different in the allied species S. Humboldtii, of which the fruit is also eaten, according to Humboldt, who found it wild in Venezuela.]) as belonging to the same species. This variety is wild on the sea-shore of Peru,[1452 - Ruiz and Pavon, Flor. Peruv., ii. p. 37.] at Tarapoto, in Eastern Peru,[1453 - Spruce, n. 4143, in Boissier’s herbarium.] and on the frontiers of Mexico and of the United States towards California.[1454 - Asa Gray, Bot. of Califor., i. p. 538.] It is sometimes naturalized in clearings near gardens.[1455 - Baker, Fl. of Maurit., p. 216.] It is probably in this manner that its area has extended north and south from Peru.

Avocado, or Alligator Pear—Persea gratissima, Gærtner.

The avocado pear is one of the most highly prized of tropical fruits. It belongs to the order Laurineæ. It is like a pear containing one large stone, as is well shown in Tussac’s illustrations, Flore des Antilles, iii. pl. 3, and in the Botanical Magazine, pl. 4580. The common names are absurd. The origin of that of alligator is unknown; avocado is a corruption of the Mexican ahuaca, or aguacate. The botanical name Persea has nothing to do with the persea of the Greeks, which was a Cordia. Clusius,[1456 - Clusius, Historia, p. 2.] writing in 1601, says that the avocado pear is an American fruit tree introduced into a garden in Spain; but as it is widely spread in the colonies of the old world, and has here and there become almost wild,[1457 - For instance in Madeira, according to Grisebach, Fl. of Brit. W. Ind., p. 280; in Mauritius, the Seychelles and Rodriguez, according to Baker, Flora of Mauritius, p. 290.] it is possible to make mistakes as to its origin. This tree did not exist in the gardens of British India at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It had been introduced into the Sunda Isles[1458 - It is not in Rumphius.] in the middle of the eighteenth century, and in 1750 into Mauritius and Bourbon.[1459 - Aublet, Guyane, i. p. 364.]

In America its actual area in a wild state is of uncommon extent. The species has been found in forests, on the banks of rivers, and on the sea-shore from Mexico and the West Indies as far as the Amazon.[1460 - Meissner, in de Candolle, Prodromus, vol. xv. part 1, p. 52; and Flora Brasil., vol. v. p. 158. For Mexico, Hernandez, p. 89; for Venezuela and Para, Nees, Laurineæ, p. 129; for Eastern Peru, Pœppig, Exsicc., seen by Meissner.] It has not always occupied this vast region. P. Browne says distinctly that the avocado pear was introduced from the Continent into Jamaica, and Jacquin held the same opinion as regards the West India Islands generally.[1461 - P. Browne, Jamaica, p. 214; Jacquin, Obs., i. p. 38.] Piso and Marcgraf do not mention it for Brazil, and Martius gives no Brazilian name.

At the time of the discovery of America, the species was certainly wild and cultivated in Mexico, according to Hernandez. Acosta[1462 - Acosta, Hist. Nat. des Indes., edit. 1598, p. 176.] says it was cultivated in Peru under the name of palto, which was that of a people of the eastern part of Peru, among whom it was abundant.[1463 - Laet, Hist. Nouv. Monde, i. pp. 325, 341.] I find no proof that it was wild upon the Peruvian littoral.

Papaw—Carica Papaya, Linnæus; Papaya vulgaris, de Candolle.

The papaw is a large herbaceous plant rather than a tree. It has a sort of juicy trunk terminated by a tuft of leaves, and the fruit, which is like a melon, hangs down under the leaves.[1464 - See the fine plates in Tussac’s Flore des Antilles, iii. p. 45, pls. 10 and 11. The papaw belongs to the small family of the Papayaceæ, fused by some botanists into the Passifloræ, and by others into the Bixaceæ.] It is now grown in all tropical countries, even as far as thirty to thirty-two degrees of latitude. It is easily naturalized outside plantations. This is one reason why it has been said, and people still say that it is a native of Asia or of Africa, whereas Robert Brown and I proved in 1848 and 1855 its American origin.[1465 - R. Brown, Bot. of Congo, p. 52; A. de Candolle, Géogr. Bot. Rais., p. 917.] I repeat the arguments against its supposed origin in the eastern hemisphere.

The species has no Sanskrit name. In modern Indian languages it bears names derived from the American word papaya, itself a corruption of the Carib ababai.[1466 - Sagot, Journ. de la Soc. Centr. d’Hortic. de France, 1872.] Rumphius[1467 - Rumphius, Amboin, i. p. 147.] says that the inhabitants of the Malay Archipelago considered it as an exotic plant introduced by the Portuguese, and gave it names expressing its likeness to other species or its foreign extraction. Sloane,[1468 - Sloane, Jamaica, p. 165.] in the beginning of the eighteenth century, quotes several of his contemporaries, who mention that it was taken from the West Indies into Asia and Africa. Forster had not seen it in the plantations of the Pacific Isles at the time of Cook’s voyages. Loureiro,[1469 - Loureiro, Fl. Coch., p. 772.] in the middle of the eighteenth century, had seen it in cultivation in China, Cochin-China, and Zanzibar. So useful and so striking a plant would have been spread throughout the old world for thousands of years if it had existed there. Everything leads to the belief that it was introduced on the coasts of Africa and Asia after the discovery of America.

All the species of the family are American. This one seems to have been cultivated from Brazil to the West Indies, and in Mexico before the arrival of the Europeans, since the earliest writers on the productions of the new world mention it.[1470 - Marcgraf, Brasil., p. 103, and Piso, p. 159, for Brazil; Ximenes in Marcgraf and Hernandez, Thesaurus, p. 99, for Mexico; and the last for St. Domingo and Mexico.]

Marcgraf had often seen the male plant (always commoner than the female) in the forests of Brazil, while the female plants were in gardens. Clusius, who was the first to give an illustration of the plant, says[1471 - Clusius, Curæ Posteriores, pp. 79, 80.] that his drawing was made in 1607, in the bay of Todos Santos (province of Bahia). I know of no modern author who has confirmed the habitation in Brazil. Martius does not mention the species in his dictionary of the names of fruits in the language of the Tupis.[1472 - Martius, Beitr. z. Ethnogr., ii. p. 418.] It is not given as wild in Guiana and Columbia. P. Browne[1473 - P. Browne, Jamaica, edit. 2, p. 360. The first edition is of 1756.] asserts, on the other hand, that it is wild in Jamaica, and before his time Ximenes and Hernandez said the same for St. Domingo and Mexico. Oviedo[1474 - The passage of Oviedo is translated into English by Correa de Mello and Spruce, in their paper on the Proceedings of the Linnæan Society, x. p. 1.] seems to have seen the papaw in Central America, and he gives the common name olocoton for Nicaragua. Yet Correa de Mello and Spruce, in their important article on the Papayaceæ, after having botanized extensively in the Amazon region, in Peru and elsewhere, consider the papaw as a native of the West Indies, and do not think it is anywhere wild upon the Continent. I have seen[1475 - De Candolle, Prodr., xv. part 1, p. 414.] specimens from the mouth of the river Manatee in Florida, from Puebla in Mexico, and from Columbia, but the labels had no remark as to their wild character. The indications, it will be noticed, are numerous for the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and for the West Indies. The habitation in Brazil which lies apart is very doubtful.

Fig—Ficus carica, Linnæus.

The history of the fig presents a close analogy with that of the olive in point of origin and geographical limits. Its area as a wild species may have been extended by the dispersal of the seeds as cultivation spread. This seems probable, as the seeds pass intact through the digestive organs of men and animals. However, countries may be cited where the fig has been cultivated for a century at least, and where no such naturalization has taken place. I am not speaking of Europe north of the Alps, where the tree demands particular care and the fruit ripens with difficulty, even the first crop, but of India for instance, the Southern States of America, Mauritius, and Chili, where, to judge from the silence of compilers of floras, the instances of quasi-wildness are rare. In our own day the fig tree grows wild, or nearly wild, over a vast region of which Syria is about the centre; that is to say, from the east of Persia, or even from Afghanistan, across the whole of the Mediterranean region as far as the Canaries.[1476 - Boissier, Fl. Orient., iv. p. 1154; Brandis, Forest Flora of India, p. 418; Webb and Berthelot, Hist. Nat. des Canaries, Botanique, iii. p. 257.] From north to south this zone varies in width from the 25th to the 40th or 42nd parallel, according to local circumstances. As a rule, the fig stops like the olive at the foot of the Caucasus and the mountains of Europe which limit the Mediterranean basin, but it grows nearly wild on the south-west coast of France, where the winter is very mild.[1477 - Count Solms Laubach, in a learned discussion (Herkunft, Domestication, etc., des Feigenbaums, in 4to, 1882), has himself observed facts of this nature already indicated by various authors. He did not find the seed provided with embryos (p. 64), which he attributes to the absence of the insect (Blastophaga), which generally lives in the wild fig, and facilitates the fertilization of one flower by another in the interior of the fruit. It is asserted, however, that fertilization occasionally takes place without the intervention of the insect.]

We turn to historical and philological records to see whether the area was more limited in antiquity. The ancient Egyptians called the fig teb,[1478 - Chabas, Mélanges Egyptol., 3rd series (1873), vol. ii. p. 92.] and the earliest Hebrew books speak of the fig, whether wild or cultivated, under the name teenah,[1479 - Rosenmuller, Bibl. Alterth., i. p. 285; Reynier, Écon. Publ. des Arabes et des Juifs, p. 470.] which leaves its trace in the Arabic tin.[1480 - Forskal, Fl. Ægypto-Arab., p. 125. Lagarde (Revue Critique d’Histoire, Feb. 27, 1882) says that this Semitic name is very ancient.] The Persian name is quite different, unjir; but I do not know if it dates from the Zend. Piddington’s Index has a Sanskrit name, udumvara, which Roxburgh, who is very careful in such matters, does not give, and which has left no trace in modern Indian languages, to judge from four names quoted by authors. The antiquity of its existence east of Persia appears to me doubtful, until the Sanskrit name is verified. The Chinese received the fig tree from Persia, but only in the eighth century of our era.[1481 - Bretschneider, in Solms, ubi supra, p. 51.] Herodotus[1482 - Herodotus, i. 71.] says the Persians did not lack figs, and Reynier, who has made careful researches into the customs of this ancient people, does not mention the fig tree. This only proves that the species was not utilized and cultivated, but it perhaps existed in a wild state.

The Greeks called the wild fig erineos, and the Latins caprificus. Homer mentions a fig tree in the Iliad which grew near Troy.[1483 - Lenz, Botanik der Griechen, p. 421, quotes four lines of Homer. See also Hehn, Culturpflanzen, edit. 3, p. 84.] Hehn asserts[1484 - Hehn, Culturpflanzen, edit. 3, p. 513.] that the cultivated fig cannot have been developed from the wild fig, but all botanists hold a contrary opinion;[1485 - No importance should be attached to the exaggerated divisions made by Gasparini in Ficus carica, Linnæus. Botanists who have studied the fig tree since his time retain a single species, and name several varieties of the wild fig. The cultivated forms are numberless.] and, without speaking of floral details on which they rely, I may say that Gussone obtained from the same seeds plants of the form caprificus, and other varieties.[1486 - Gussone, Enum. Plant. Inarimensium, p. 301.] The remark made by several scholars as to the absence of all mention of the cultivated fig sukai in the Iliad, does not therefore prove the absence of the fig tree in Greece at the time of the Trojan war. Homer mentions the sweet fig in the Odyssey, and that but vaguely. Hesiod, says Hehn, does not mention it, and Archilochus (700 B.C.) is the first to mention distinctly its cultivation by the Greeks of Paros. According to this, the species grew wild in Greece, at least in the Archipelago, before the introduction of cultivated varieties of Asiatic origin. Theophrastus and Dioscorides mention wild and cultivated figs.[1487 - For the history of the fig tree and an account of the operation (of doubtful utility) which consists in planting insect-bearing Caprifici among the cultivated trees (caprification), see Solms’ work.]

Romulus and Remus, according to tradition, were nursed at the foot of a fig tree called ruminalis, from rumen, breast or udder.[1488 - Pliny, Hist., lib. xv. cap. 18.] The Latin name, ficus, which Hehn derives, by an effort of erudition, from the Greek sukai,[1489 - Hehn, Culturpflanzen, edit. 3, p. 513.] also argues an ancient existence in Italy, and Pliny’s opinion is positive on this head. The good cultivated varieties were of later introduction. They came from Greece, Syria, and Asia Minor. In the time of Tiberius, as now, the best figs came from the East.

We learnt at school how Cato exhibited to the assembled senators Carthaginian figs, still fresh, as a proof of the proximity of the hated country. The Phœnicians must have transported good varieties to the coast of Africa and their other colonies on the Mediterranean, even as far as the Canaries, where, however, the wild fig may have already existed.

For the Canaries we have a proof in the Guanchos words, arahormaze and achormaze, green figs, taharemenen and tehahunemen, dried figs. Webb and Berthelot,[1490 - Webb and Berthelot, Hist. Nat. des Canaries Ethnogr., p. 186; Phytogr., iii. p. 257.] who quote these names, and who admit the common origin of the Guanchos and Berbers, would have noted with pleasure the existence among the Touaregs, a Berber people, of the word tahart, fig tree,[1491 - Duveyrier, Les Touaregs du Nord., p. 193.] and in the French-Berber dictionary, published since their time, the names tabeksist, green fig, and tagrourt, fig tree. These old names, of more ancient and local origin than Arabic, bear witness to a very ancient habitation in the north of Africa as far as the Canaries.

The result of our inquiry shows, then, that the prehistoric area of the fig tree covered the middle and southern part of the Mediterranean basin from Syria to the Canaries.

We may doubt the antiquity of the fig in the south of France, but a curious fact deserves mention. Planchon found in the quaternary tufa of Montpellier, and de Saporta[1492 - Planchon, Étude sur les tufs de Montpellier, p. 63; de Saporta, La flore des tufs quaternaires en Provence, in Comptes rendus de la 32e Session du Congrès Scientifique de France; Bull. Soc. Geolog., 1873-74, p. 442.] in those of Aygalades near Marseilles, and in the quaternary strata of La Celle near Paris, leaves and even fruit of the wild Ficus carica, with teeth of Elephas primigenius, and leaves of plants of which some no longer exist, and others, like Laurus canariensis, have survived in the Canaries. So that the fig tree perhaps existed in its modern form in this remote epoch. It is possible that it perished in the south of France, as it certainly did at Paris, and reappeared later in a wild state in the southern region. Perhaps the fig trees which Webb and Berthelot had seen as old plants in the wildest part of the Canaries were descended from those which existed in the fourth epoch.

Bread-Fruit—Artocarpus incisa, Linnæus.

The bread-fruit tree was cultivated in all the islands of the Asiatic Archipelago, and of the great oceans near the equator, from Sumatra to the Marquesas Isles, when first Europeans began to visit them. Its fruit is constituted, like the pine-apple, of an assemblage of bracts and fruits welded into a fleshy mass, more or less spherical; and as in the pine-apple, the seeds come to nothing in the most productive cultivated varieties.[1493 - See the fine plates published in Tussac’s Flore des Antilles, vol. ii. pls. 2 and 3; and Hooker, Bot. Mag., t. 2869-2871.]

Sonnerat[1494 - Voyages à la Nouvelle Guinée, p. 100.] carried the bread-fruit tree to Mauritius, where the Intendant Poivre took care to spread it. Captain Bligh was commissioned to introduce it into the English West Indian Isles. The mutiny of his crew prevented his succeeding the first time, but a second attempt proved more fortunate. In January, 1793, he landed 153 plants at St. Vincent, whence the species has been diffused into several parts of tropical America.[1495 - Hooker, ubi supra.]

Rumphius[1496 - Rumphius, Herb. Amboin, i. p. 112, pl. 33.] saw the species wild in several of the Sunda Isles. Modern authors, less careful, or acquainted only with cultivated species, say nothing on this head. Seemann[1497 - Flora Vitiensis, p. 255.] says for the Fiji Isles, “cultivated, and to all appearance wild in some places.” On the continent of Asia it is not even cultivated, as the climate is not hot enough.

The bread-fruit is evidently a native of Java, Amboyna, and the neighbouring islands; but the antiquity of its cultivation in the whole of the archipelago, proved by the number of varieties, and the facility of propagating it by buds and suckers, prevent us from knowing its history accurately. In the islands to the extreme east, like Otahiti, certain fables and traditions point to an introduction which is not very ancient, and the absence of seeds confirms this.[1498 - Seemann, Fl. Vit., p. 255; Nadeaud, Enum. des Pl. Indig. de Taiti, p. 44; Idem, Pl. usuelles des Taitiens, p. 24.]

Jack-Fruit—Artocarpus integrifolia, Linnæus.

The jack-fruit, larger than the bread-fruit, for it sometimes weighs as much as eighty pounds, hangs from the branches of a tree thirty to fifty feet high.[1499 - See Tussac’s plates, Flore des Antilles, pl. 4; and Hooker, Bot. Mag., t. 2833, 2834.] The common name is derived from the Indian names jaca, or tsjaka.

The species has long been cultivated in southern Asia, from the Punjab to China, from the Himalayas to the Moluccas. It has not spread into the small islands more to the east, such as Otahiti, which leads us to suppose it has not been so long in the archipelago as upon the continent. In the north-west of India, also, its cultivation does not perhaps date from a very remote epoch, for the existence of a Sanskrit name is not absolutely certain. Roxburgh mentions one, punusa, but Piddington does not admit it into his Index. The Persians and the Arabs do not seem to have known the species. Its enormous fruit must, however, have struck them if the species had been cultivated near their frontiers. Dr. Bretschneider does not speak of any Artocarpus in his work on the plants known to the ancient Chinese, whence it may be inferred that towards China, as in other directions, the jack-fruit was not diffused at a very early epoch. The first statement as to its existence in a wild state is given by Rheede in ambiguous terms: “This tree grows everywhere in Malabar and throughout India.” He perhaps confounded the planted tree with the wild one. After him, however, Wight found the species several times in the Indian Peninsula, notably in the Western Ghauts, with every appearance of a wild and indigenous tree. It has been extensively planted in Ceylon; but Thwaites, the best authority for the flora of this island, does not recognize it as wild. Neither is it wild in the archipelago to the south of India, according to the general opinion. Lastly, Brandis found it growing in the forests of the district of Attaran, in Burmah, but, he adds, always in the neighbourhood of abandoned settlements. Kurz did not find it wild in British Burmah.[1500 - Rheede, Malabar, iii. p. 18; Wight, Icones, ii. No. 678; Brandis, Forest Flora of India, p. 426; Kurz, Forest Flora of Brit. Burmah, p. 432.]

The species is, therefore, a native of the region lying at the foot of the western mountains of the Indian Peninsula, and its cultivation in the neighbourhood is probably not earlier than the Christian era. It was introduced into Jamaica by Admiral Rodney in 1782, and thence into San Domingo.[1501 - Tussac, Flore des Antilles, pl. 4.] It has also been introduced into Brazil, Mauritius, the Seychelles, and Rodriguez Island.[1502 - Baker, Fl. of Maurit., p. 282.]

Date-Palm—Phœnix dactylifera, Linnæus.

The date-palm has existed from prehistoric times in the warm dry zone, which extends from Senegal to the basin of the Indus, principally between parallels 15 and 30. It is seen here and there further to the north, by reason of exceptional circumstances and of the aim which is proposed in its cultivation. For beyond the limit within which the fruit ripens every year, there is a zone in which they ripen ill or seldom, and a further region within which the tree can live, but without fruiting or even flowering. These limits have been traced by de Martius, Carl Ritter, and myself.[1503 - Martius, Gen. et Spec. Palmarum, in folio, vol. iii. p. 257; C. Ritter, Erdkunde, xiii. p. 760; Alph. de Candolle, Géog. Bot. Rais., p. 343.] It is needless to reproduce them here, the aim of the present work being to study questions of origin.

As regards the date-palm, we can hardly rely on the more or less proved existence of really wild indigenous individuals. Dates are easily transported; the stones germinate when sown in damp soil near the source of a river, and even in the fissures of rocks. The inhabitants of oases have planted or sown date-palms in favourable localities where the species perhaps existed before man, and when the traveller comes across isolated trees, at a distance from dwellings, he cannot know that they did not spring from stones thrown away by caravans. Botanists admit a variety, sylvestris, that is to say wild, with small and sour fruit; but it is perhaps the result of recent naturalization in an unfavourable soil. Historical and philological data are of more value here, though doubtless from the antiquity of cultivation they can only establish probabilities.

From Egyptian and Assyrian remains, as well as from tradition and the most ancient writings, we find that the date-palm grew in abundance in the region lying between the Euphrates and the Nile. Egyptian monuments contain fruits and drawings of the tree.[1504 - Unger, Pflanzen d. Alt. Ægypt., p. 38.] Herodotus, in a more recent age (fifth century before Christ), mentions the wood of the date-palms of Babylonia, and still later Strabo used similar expressions about those of Arabia, whence it seems that the species was commoner than it is now, and more in the condition of a natural forest tree. On the other hand, Carl Ritter makes the ingenious observation that the earliest Hebrew books do not speak of the date-palm as producing a fruit valued as a food for man. David, about one thousand years before Christ, and about seven centuries after Moses, does not mention the date palm in his list of trees to be planted in his gardens. It is true that except at Jericho dates seldom ripen in Palestine. Later, Herodotus says of the Babylonian date-palms that only the greater part produced good fruit which was used for food. This seems to indicate the beginning of a cultivation perfected by the selection of varieties and of the transport of male flowers into the middle of the branches of female trees, but it perhaps signifies also that Herodotus was ignorant of the existence of the male plant.

To the west of Egypt the date-palm had probably existed for centuries or for thousands of years when Herodotus mentioned them. He speaks of Libya. There is no historical record with respect to the oases in the Sahara, but Pliny[1505 - Pliny, Hist., lib. vi. cap. 37.] mentions the date-palm in the Canaries.

The names of the species bear witness to its great antiquity both in Asia and in Africa, seeing they are numerous and very different. The Hebrews called the date-palm tamar, and the ancient Egyptians beq.[1506 - Unger, ubi supra.] The complete difference between these words, both very ancient, shows that these peoples found the species indigenous and perhaps already named in Western Asia and in Egypt. The number of Persian, Arabic, and Berber names is incredible.[1507 - See C. Ritter, ubi supra.] Some are derived from the Hebrew word, others from unknown sources. They often apply to different states of the fruit, or to different cultivated varieties, which again shows ancient cultivation in different countries. Webb and Berthelot have not discovered a name for the date-palm in the language of the Guanchos, and this is much to be regretted. The Greek name, phœnix, refers simply to Phœnicia and the Phœnicians, possessors of the date-palm.[1508 - Hehn, Culturpflanzen, edit. 3, p. 234.] The names dactylus and date are derivations of dachel in a Hebrew dialect.[1509 - C. Ritter, ibid., p. 828.] No Sanskrit name is known, whence it may be inferred that the plantations of the date-palm in Western India are not very ancient. The Indian climate does not suit the species.[1510 - According to Roxburgh, Royle, etc.] The Hindustani name khurma is borrowed from the Persian.

Further to the East the date-palm remained long unknown. The Chinese received it from Persia, in the third century of our era, and its cultivation was resumed at different times, but they have now abandoned it.[1511 - Bretschneider, Study and Value, etc., p. 31.] As a rule, beyond the arid region which lies between the Euphrates and the south of the Atlas and the Canaries, the date-palm has not succeeded in similar latitudes, or at least it has not become an important culture. It might be grown with success in Australia and at the Cape, but the Europeans who have colonized these regions are not satisfied, like the Arabs, with figs and dates for their staple food. I think, in fine, that in times anterior to the earliest Egyptian dynasties the date-palm already existed, wild or sown here and there by wandering tribes, in a narrow zone extending from the Euphrates to the Canaries, and that its cultivation began later as far as the north-west of India on the one hand and the Cape de Verde Islands[1512 - According to Schmidt, Fl. d. Cap. – Verd. Isl., p. 168, the date-palm is rare in these islands, and is certainly not wild. Webb and Berthelot, on the contrary, assert that in some of the Canaries it is apparently indigenous (Hist. Nat. des Canaries, Botanique, iii. p. 289).] on the other, so that the natural area has remained very nearly the same for about five thousand years. What it was previously, palæontological discoveries may one day reveal.

Banana—Musa sapientum and M. paradisiaca, Linnæus; M. sapientum, Brown.

The banana or bananas were generally considered to be natives of Southern Asia, and to have been carried into America by Europeans, till Humboldt threw doubts upon their purely Asiatic origin. In his work on New Spain[1513 - Humboldt, Nouvelle Espagne, 1st edit., ii. p. 360.] he quoted early authors who assert that the banana was cultivated in America before the conquest.

He admits, on Oviedo’s authority,[1514 - Oviedo, Hist. Nat., 1556, p. 112. Oviedo’s first work is of 1526. He is the earliest naturalist quoted by Dryander (Bibl. Banks) for America.] its introduction by Father Thomas of Berlangas from the Canaries into San Domingo in 1516, whence it was introduced into other islands and the mainland.[1515 - I have also seen this passage in the translation of Oviedo by Ramusio, vol. iii. p. 115.] He recognizes the absence of any mention of the banana in the accounts of Columbus, Alonzo Negro, Pinzon, Vespuzzi, and Cortez. The silence of Hernandez, who lived half a century after Oviedo, astonishes him and appears to him a remarkable carelessness; “for,” he says,[1516 - Humboldt, Nouvelle Espagne, 2nd edit., p. 385.] “it is a constant tradition in Mexico and on the whole of the mainland that the platano arton, and the dominico were cultivated long before the Spanish conquest.” The author who has most carefully noted the different epochs at which American agriculture has been enriched by foreign products, the Peruvian Garcilasso de la Vega,[1517 - Garcilasso de la Vega, Commentarios Reales, i. p. 282.] says distinctly that at the time of the Incas, maize, quinoa, the potato, and, in the warm and temperate regions, bananas formed the staple food of the natives. He describes the Musa of the valleys in the Andes; he even distinguishes the rarer species, with a small fruit and a sweet aromatic flavour, the dominico, from the common banana or arton. Father Acosta[1518 - Acosta, Hist. Nat. De Indias, 1608, p. 250.] asserts also, although less positively, that the Musa was cultivated by the Americans before the arrival of the Spaniards. Lastly, Humboldt adds from his own observation, “On the banks of the Orinoco, of the Cassiquaire or of the Beni, between the mountains of Esmeralda and the banks of the river Carony, in the midst of the thickest forests, almost everywhere that Indian tribes are found who have had no relations with European settlements, we meet with plantations of Manioc and bananas.” Humboldt suggests the hypothesis that several species or constant varieties of the Banana have been confounded, some of which are indigenous to the new world.