Origin of Cultivated Plants

Desvaux studied the specific question, and in a really remarkable work, published in 1814,[1519 - Desvaux, Journ. Bot., iv. p. 5.] he gives it as his opinion that all the bananas cultivated for their fruits are of the same species. In this species he distinguishes forty-four varieties, which he arranges in two groups; the large-fruited bananas (seven to fifteen inches long), and the small-fruited bananas (one to six inches), commonly called fig bananas. R. Brown, in 1818, in his work on the Plants of the Congo, p. 51, maintains also that no structural difference in the bananas cultivated in Asia and those in America prevents us from considering them as belonging to the same species. He adopts the name Musa sapientum, which appears to me preferable to that of M. paradisiaca adopted by Desvaux, because the varieties with small fertile fruit appear to be nearer the condition of the wild Musæ found in Asia.

Brown remarks on the question of origin that all the other species of the genus Musa belong to the old world; that no one pretends to have found in America, in a wild state, varieties with fertile fruit, as has happened in Asia; lastly, that Piso and Marcgraf considered that the banana was introduced into Brazil from Congo. In spite of the force of these three arguments, Humboldt, in his second edition of his essay upon New Spain (ii. p. 397), does not entirely renounce his opinion. He says that the traveller Caldcleugh[1520 - Caldcleugh, Trav. in S. Amer., 1825, i. p. 23.] found among the Puris the tradition that a small species of banana was cultivated on the borders of the Prato long before they had any communications with the Portuguese. He adds that words which are not borrowed ones are found in American languages to distinguish the fruit of the Musa; for instance, paruru in Tamanac, etc., arata in Maypur. I have also read in Stevenson’s travels[1521 - Stevenson, Trav. in S. Amer., i. p. 328.] that beds of the leaves of the two bananas commonly cultivated in America have been found in the huacas or Peruvian tombs anterior to the conquest; but as this traveller also says that he saw beans[1522 - Ibid., p. 363.] in these huacas, a plant which undoubtedly belongs to the old world, his assertions are not very trustworthy.

Boussingault[1523 - Boussingault, C. r. Acad. Sc. Paris, May 9, 1836.] thought that the platano arton at least was of American origin, but he gives no proof. Meyen, who had also been in America, adds no argument to those which were already known;[1524 - Meyen, Pflanzen Geog., 1836, p. 383.] nor does the geographer Ritter,[1525 - Ritter, Erdk., iv. p. 870.] who simply reproduces the facts about America, given by Humboldt.

On the other hand, the botanists who have more recently visited America have no hesitation as to the Asiatic origin. I may name Seemann for the Isthmus of Panama, Ernst for Venezuela, and Sagot for Guiana.[1526 - Seemann, Bot. of the Herald, p. 213; Ernst, in Seemann’s Journ. of Bot., 1867, p. 289; Sagot, Journ. de la Soc. d’Hort. de Fr., 1872, p. 226.] The two first insist upon the absence of names for the banana in the languages of Peru and Mexico. Piso knew no Brazilian name. Martius[1527 - Martius, Eth. Sprachenkunde Amer., p. 123.] has since indicated, in the Tupi language of Brazil, the names pacoba or bacoba. This same word bacove is used, according to Sagot, by the French in Guiana. It is perhaps derived from the name bala, or palan, of Malabar, from an introduction by the Portuguese, subsequent to Piso’s voyage.

The antiquity and wild character of the banana in Asia are incontestable facts. There are several Sanskrit names.[1528 - Roxburgh and Wallich, Fl. Ind., ii. p. 485; Piddington, Index.] The Greeks, Latins, and Arabs have mentioned it as a remarkable Indian fruit tree. Pliny[1529 - Pliny, Hist., lib. xii. cap. 6.] speaks of it distinctly. He says that the Greeks of the expedition of Alexander saw it in India, and he quotes the name pala which still persists in Malabar. Sages reposed beneath its shade and ate of its fruit. Hence the botanical name Musa sapientum. Musa is from the Arabic mouz or mauwz, which we find as early as the thirteenth century in Ebn Baithar. The specific name paradisiaca comes from the ridiculous hypothesis which made the banana figure in the story of Eve and of Paradise.

It is a curious fact that the Hebrews and the ancient Egyptians[1530 - Unger, ubi supra, and Wilkinson, ii. p. 403, do not mention it. The banana is now cultivated in Egypt.] did not know this Indian plant. It is a sign that it did not exist in India from a very remote epoch, but was first a native of the Malay Archipelago.

There is an immense number of varieties of the banana in the south of Asia, both on the islands and on the continent; the cultivation of these varieties dates in India, in China, and in the archipelago, from an epoch impossible to realize; it even spread formerly into the islands of the Pacific[1531 - Forster, Plant. Esc., p. 28.] and to the west coast of Africa;[1532 - Clusius, Exot., p. 229; Brown, Bot. Congo, p. 51.] lastly, the varieties bore distinct names in the most separate Asiatic languages, such as Chinese, Sanskrit, and Malay. All this indicates great antiquity of culture, consequently a primitive existence in Asia, and a diffusion contemporary with or even anterior to that of the human races.

The banana is said to have been found wild in several places. This is the more worthy of attention since the cultivated varieties seldom produce seed, and are multiplied by division, so that the species can hardly have become naturalized from cultivation by sowing itself. Roxburgh had seen it in the forests of Chittagong,[1533 - Roxburgh, Corom., tab. 275; Fl. Ind.] in the form of Musa sapientum. Rumphius[1534 - Rumphius, Amb., v. p. 139.] describes a wild variety with small fruits in the Philippine Isles. Loureiro[1535 - Loureiro, Fl. Coch., p. 791.] probably speaks of the same form by the name M. seminifera agrestis, which he contrasts with M. seminifera domestica, which is wild in Cochin-China.[1536 - Loureiro, Fl. Coch., p. 791.] Blanco also mentions a wild banana in the Philippines,[1537 - Blanco, Flora, 1st edit., p. 247.] but his description is vague. Finlayson[1538 - Finlayson, Journey to Siam, 1826, p. 86, according to Ritter, Erdk., iv. p. 878.] found the banana wild in abundance in the little island of Pulo Ubi at the southern extremity of Siam. Thwaites[1539 - Thwaites, Enum. Pl. Cey., p. 321.] saw the variety M. sapientum in the rocky forests of the centre of Ceylon, and does not hesitate to pronounce it the original stock of the cultivated bananas. Sir Joseph Hooker and Thomson[1540 - Aitchison, Catal. of Punjab, p. 147.] found it wild at Khasia.

The facts are quite different in America. The wild banana has been seen nowhere except in Barbados,[1541 - Hughes, Barb., p. 182; Maycock, Fl. Barb., p. 396.] but here it is a tree of which the fruit does not ripen, and which is, consequently, in all probability the result of cultivated varieties of which the seed is not abundant. Sloane’s wild plantain[1542 - Sloane, Jamaica, ii. p. 148.] appears to be a plant very different to the musa. The varieties which are supposed to be possibly indigenous in America are only two, and as a rule far fewer varieties are grown than in Asia. The culture of the banana may be said to be recent in the greater part of America, for it dates from but little more than three centuries. Piso[1543 - Piso, edit. 1648, Hist. Nat., p. 75.] says positively that it was imported into Brazil, and has no Brazilian name. He does not say whence it came. We have seen that, according to Oviedo, the species was brought to San Domingo from the Canaries. This fact and the silence of Hernandez, generally so accurate about the useful plants, wild or cultivated, in Mexico, convince me that at the time of the discovery of America the banana did not exist in the whole of the eastern part of the continent.

Did it exist, then, in the western part on the shores of the Pacific? This seems very unlikely when we reflect that communication was easy between the two coasts towards the isthmus of Panama, and that before the arrival of the Europeans the natives had been active in diffusing throughout America useful plants like the manioc, maize, and the potato. The banana, which they have prized so highly for three centuries, which is so easily multiplied by suckers, and whose appearance must strike the least observant, would not have been forgotten in a few villages in the depths of the forest or upon the littoral.

I admit that the opinion of Garcilasso, descendant of the Incas, an author who lived from 1530 to 1568, has a certain importance when he says that the natives knew the banana before the conquest. However, the expressions of another writer, extremely worthy of attention, Joseph Acosta, who had been in Peru, and whom Humboldt quotes in support of Garcilasso, incline me to adopt the contrary opinion.[1544 - Humboldt quotes the Spanish edition of 1608. The first edition is of 1591. I have only been able to consult the French translation of Regnault, published in 1598, and which is apparently accurate.] He says,[1545 - Acosta, trans., lib. iv. cap. 21.] “The reason the Spaniards called it plane (for the natives had no such name) was that, as in the case of their trees, they found some resemblance between them.” He goes on to show how different was the plane (Platanus) of the ancients. He describes the banana very well, and adds that the tree is very common in the Indies (i. e. America), “although they (the Indians) say that its origin is Ethiopia… There is a small white species of plantain (banana), very delicate, which is called in Espagnolle[1546 - That is probably Hispaniola or San Domingo; for if he had meant the Spanish language, it would have been translated by castillan and without the capital letter.]dominico. There are others coarser and larger, and of a red colour. There are none in Peru, but they are imported thither from the Indies,[1547 - This is probably a misprint for Andes, for the word Indes has no sense. The work says (p. 166) that pine-apples do not grow in Peru, but that they are brought thither from the Andes, and (p. 173) that the cacao comes from the Andes. It seems to have meant hot regions. The word Andes has since been applied to the chain of mountains by a strange and unfortunate transfer.] as into Mexico from Cuernavaca and the other valleys. On the continent and in some of the islands there are great plantations of them which form dense thickets.” Surely it is not thus that the author would express himself were he writing of a fruit tree of American origin. He would quote American names and customs; above all, he would not say that the natives regarded it as a plant of foreign origin. Its diffusion in the warm regions of Mexico may well have taken place between the epoch of the conquest and the time when Acosta wrote, since Hernandez, whose conscientious researches go back to the earliest times of the Spanish dominion in Mexico (though published later in Rome), says not a word of the banana.[1548 - I have read through the entire work, to make sure of this fact.] Prescott the historian saw ancient books and manuscripts which assert that the inhabitants of Tumbez brought bananas to Pizarro when he disembarked upon the Peruvian coast, and he believes that its leaves were found in the huacas, but he does not give his proofs.[1549 - Prescott, Conquest of Peru. The author has consulted valuable records, among others a manuscript of Montesinos of 1527; but he does not quote his authorities for each fact, and contents himself with vague and general indications, which are very insufficient.]

As regards the argument of the modern native plantations in regions of America, remote from European settlements, I find it hard to believe that tribes have remained absolutely isolated, and have not received so useful a tree from colonized districts.

Briefly, then, it appears to me most probable that the species was early introduced by the Spanish and Portuguese into San Domingo and Brazil, and I confess that this implies that Garcilasso was in error with regard to Peruvian traditions. If, however, later research should prove that the banana existed in some parts of America before the advent of the Europeans, I should be inclined to attribute it to a chance introduction, not very ancient, the effect of some unknown communication with the islands of the Pacific, or with the coast of Guinea, rather than to believe in the primitive and simultaneous existence of the species in both hemispheres. The whole of geographical botany renders the latter hypothesis improbable, I might almost say impossible, to admit, especially in a genus which is not divided between the two worlds.

In conclusion, I would call attention to the remarkable way in which the distribution of varieties favours the opinion of a single species – an opinion adopted, purely from the botanical point of view, by Roxburgh, Desvaux, and R. Brown. If there were two or three species, one would probably be represented by the varieties suspected to be of American origin, the other would belong, for instance, to the Malay Archipelago or to China, and the third to India. On the contrary all the varieties are geographically intermixed, and the two which are most widely diffused in America differ sensibly the one from the other, and each is confounded with or approaches very nearly to Asiatic varieties.

Pine-Apple—Ananassa sativa, Lindley; Bromelia Ananas, Linnæus.

In spite of the doubts of a few writers, the pine-apple must be an American plant, early introduced by Europeans into Asia and Africa.

Nana was the Brazilian name,[1550 - Marcgraf, Brasil., p. 33.] which the Portuguese turned into ananas. The Spanish called it pinas, because the shape resembles the fruit of a species of pine.[1551 - Oviedo, Ramusio’s trans., iii. p. 113; Jos. Acosta, Hist. Nat. des Indes, French trans., p. 166.] All early writers on America mention it.[1552 - Thevet, Piso, etc.; Hernandez, Thes., p. 341.] Hernandez says that the pine-apple grows in the warm regions of Haiti and Mexico. He mentions a Mexican name, matzatli. A pine-apple was brought to Charles V., who mistrusted it, and would not taste it.

The works of the Greeks, Romans, and Arabs make no allusion to this species, which was evidently introduced into the old world after the discovery of America. Rheede[1553 - Rheede, Hort. Malab., xi. p. 6.] in the seventeenth century was persuaded of this; but Rumphius[1554 - Rumphius, Amboin, v. p. 228.] disputed it later, because he said the pine-apple was cultivated in his time in every part of India, and was found wild in Celebes and elsewhere. He notices, however, the absence of an Asiatic name. That given by Rheede for Malabar is evidently taken from a comparison with the jack-fruit, and is in no sense original. It is doubtless a mistake on the part of Piddington to attribute a Sanskrit name to the pine-apple, as the name anarush seems to be a corruption of ananas. Roxburgh knew of none, and Wilson’s dictionary does not mention the word anarush. Royle[1555 - Royle, Ill., p. 376.] says that the pine-apple was introduced into Bengal in 1594. Kircher[1556 - Kircher, Chine Illustrée, trans. of 1670, p. 253.] says that the Chinese cultivated it in the seventeenth century, but it was believed to have been brought to them from Peru.

Clusius[1557 - Clusius, Exotic., cap. 44.] in 1599 had seen leaves of the pine-apple brought from the coast of Guinea. This may be explained by an introduction there subsequent to the discovery of America. Robert Brown speaks of the pine-apple among the plants cultivated in Congo; but he considers the species to be an American one.

Although the cultivated pine-apple bears few seeds or none at all, it occasionally becomes naturalized in hot countries. Examples are quoted in Mauritius, the Seychelles, and Rodriguez Island,[1558 - Baker, Fl. of Maurit.] in India,[1559 - Royle, ubi supra.] in the Malay Archipelago, and in some parts of America, where it was probably not indigenous – the West Indies, for instance.

It has been found wild in the warm regions of Mexico (if we may trust the phrase used by Hernandez), in the province of Veraguas[1560 - Seemann, Bot. of the Herald, p. 215.] near Panama, in the upper Orinoco valley,[1561 - Humboldt, Nouv. Esp., 2nd edit., ii. p. 478.] in Guiana[1562 - Gardeners’ Chronicle, 1881, vol. i. p. 657.] and the province of Bahia.[1563 - Martius, letter to A. de Candolle, Géogr. Bot. Rais., p. 927.]

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 - Humboldt, Voy., ii. p. 511; Kunth, in Humboldt and Bonpland, Nova Genera, v. p. 316; Martius, Ueber den Cacao, in Büchner, Repert. Pharm.] 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 - Schach, in Grisebach, Flora of Brit. W. Ind. Is., p. 91.] 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 - Sloane, Jamaica, ii. p. 15.] 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 - G. Bernoulli. Uebersicht der Arten von Theobroma, p. 5.] who had resided in Guatemala, only says, “wild and cultivated throughout tropical America;” and Hemsley,[1568 - Hemsley, Biologia Centrali Americana, part ii. p. 133.] 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 - Grisebach, ubi supra.] In support of this hypothesis, it must be observed that Triana[1570 - Triana and Planchon, Prodr. Fl. Novo Granatensis, p. 208.] 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 - Blanco, Fl. de Filipinas, edit. 2, p. 420.] 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 - Kunth, in Humboldt and Bonpland, ubi supra; Triana, ubi supra.] 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 - Bretschneider, letter of Aug. 23, 1881.] Its introduction into Bengal took place at the end of the eighteenth century.[1574 - Roxburgh, Fl. Indica, ii. p. 269.] Every one admits that the species is a native of the south of China, and, Blume[1575 - Blume, Rumphia, iii. p. 106.] 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 - Loureiro, Flora Coch., p. 233; Kurz, Forest Fl. of Brit. Burmah, p. 293.]

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 - Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., ii. p. 271; Thwaites, Enum. Zeyl., p. 58; Hiern, in Fl. of Brit. Ind., i. p. 688.] 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 - Hiern, in Fl. of Brit. Ind., i. p. 687.] 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 - Blume, Rumphia, iii. p. 103; Miquel, Fl. Indo-Batava, i. p. 554.] 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 - Bossier, Fl. Orient., ii. p. 5.] 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 - Pliny, Hist. Nat., lib. xiii. cap. 15; lib. xv. cap. 22; Galen, De Alimentis, lib. ii. cap. 30.] 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 - Lerche, Nova Acta Acad. Cesareo-Leopold, vol. v., appendix, p. 203, published in 1773. Maximowicz, in a letter of Feb. 24, 1882, tells me that Lerche’s specimen exists in the herbarium of the Imperial Garden at St. Petersburgh. It is in flower, and resembles the cultivated bean in all points excepting height, which is about half a foot. The label mentions the locality and its wild character without other remarks.] Travellers who have collected in this region have sometimes come across it,[1583 - There are Transcaucasian specimens in the same herbarium, but taller, and they are not said to be wild.] but they do not mention it in their writings,[1584 - Marschall Bieberstein, Flora Caucaso-Taurica; C. A. Meyer, Verzeichniss; Hohenacker, Enum. Plant. Talysch; Boissier, Fl. Orient., p. 578, Buhse and Boissier, Plant. Transcaucasiæ.] excepting Ledebour,[1585 - Ledebour, Fl. Ross., i. p. 664, quotes de Candolle, Prodromus, ii. p. 354; now Seringe wrote the article Faba in Prodromus, in which the south of the Caspian is indicated, probably on Lerche’s authority.] and the quotation on which he relies is not correct. Bosc[1586 - Dict. d’Agric., v. p. 512.] 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 - Munby, Catal. Plant. in Alger. sponte nascent., edit. 2, p. 12.] herbarium, now at Kew. As the Arabs grow the bean on a large scale, it may perhaps be met with accidentally outside cultivated plots. It must not be forgotten, however, that Pliny (lib. xviii. c. 12) speaks of a wild bean in Mauritania, but he adds that it is hard and cannot be cooked, which throws doubt upon the species. Botanists who have written upon Egypt and Cyrenaïca, especially the more recent,[1588 - Schweinfurth and Ascherson, Aufzählung, p. 256; Rohlfs, Kufra.] 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 - Loiscleur Deslongchamps, Consid. sur les Céréales, part i. p. 29.] Now, according to Dr. Bretschneider,[1590 - Bretschneider, Study and Value, etc., pp. 7, 15.] who is surrounded at Pekin with every possible resource for arriving at the truth, the seed similar to a bean which the emperors sow in the enjoined ceremony is that of Dolichos soja, and the bean was only introduced into China from Western Asia a century before the Christian era, at the time of Changkien’s embassy. Thus falls an assertion which it is hard to reconcile with other facts, for instance with the absence of an ancient cultivation of the bean in India, and of a Sanskrit name, or even of any modern Indian name.

The ancient Greeks were acquainted with the bean, which they called kuamos, and sometimes kuamos ellenikos, to distinguish it from that of Egypt, which was the seed of a totally different aquatic species, Nelumbium. The Iliad[1591 - Iliad, 13, v. 589.] already mentions the bean as a cultivated plant, and Virchow found some beans in the excavations at Troy.[1592 - Wittmack, Sitz. bericht Vereins, Brandenburg, 1879.] 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 - Novitius Dictionnarium, at the word Faba.] 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 - Origines Indo-Européennes, edit. 2, vol. i. p. 353.] 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, Pflanzen der Pfahlbauten, p. 22, figs. 44-47.] 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 - Perrin, Étude Préhistorique sur la Savoie, p. 2.]

The bean was cultivated by the ancient Egyptians.[1597 - Delile, Plant. Cult. en Égypte, p. 12; Reynier, Économie des Égyptiens et Carthaginois, p. 340; Unger, Pflan. d. Alt. Ægyp., p. 64; Wilkinson, Man. and Cus. of Anc. Egyptians, p. 402.] 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 - Reynier, ubi supra, tries to discover the reason of this.] Herodotus[1599 - Herodotus, Histoire, Larcher’s trans., vol. ii. p. 32.] 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 - 2 Sam. xvii. 28; Ezek. iv. 9.] 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.