Chapter V: Plants Cultivated for Their Seeds (4)

So bad a habit, like the use of tobacco or absinth, is sure to spread. It is becoming gradually introduced into the countries which have frequent relations with China. It is to be hoped that it will not attack so large a proportion of the peoples of other countries as in Amoy, where the proportion of opium-smokers are as fifteen to twenty of the adult population.[2017]

+Arnotto+, or +Anatto+—_Bisca orellana_, Linnæus.

The dye, called _rocou_ in French, _arnotto_ in English, is extracted from the pulp which encases the seed. The inhabitants of the West India Islands, of the Isthmus of Darien, and of Brazil, used it at the time of the discovery of America to stain their bodies red, and the Mexicans in painting.[2018] The arnotto, a small tree of the order Bixaceæ, grows wild in the West Indies,[2019] and over a great part of the continent of America between the tropics. Herbaria and floras abound in indications of locality, but do not generally specify whether the species is cultivated, wild, or naturalized. I note, however, that it is said to be indigenous by Seemann on the north-west coast of Mexico and Panama, by Triana in New Granada, by Meyer in Dutch Guiana, and by Piso and Claussen in Brazil.[2020] With such a vast area, it is not surprising that the species has many names in American languages; that of the Brazilians, _urucu_, is the origin of _rocou_.

It was not very necessary to plant this tree in order to obtain its product; nevertheless Piso relates that the Brazilians, in the sixteenth century, were not content with the wild plant, and in Jamaica, in the seventeenth century, the plantations of Bixa were common. It was one of the first species transported from America to the south of Asia and to Africa. It has become so entirely naturalized, that Roxburgh[2021] believed it to be indigenous in India.

+Cotton+—_Gossypium herbaceum_, Linnæus.

When, in 1855, I sought the origin of the cultivated cottons,[2022] there was still great uncertainty as to the distinction of the species. Since then two excellent works have appeared in Italy, upon which we can rely; one by Parlatore,[2023] formerly director of the botanical gardens at Florence, the other by Todaro,[2024] of Palermo. These two works are illustrated with magnificent coloured plates. Nothing better can be desired for the cultivated cottons. On the other hand, our knowledge of the true species, I mean of those which exist naturally in a wild state, has not increased as much as it might. However, the definition of species seems fairly accurate in the works of Dr. Masters,[2025] whom I shall therefore follow. This author agrees with Parlatore in admitting seven well-known species and two doubtful, while Todaro counts fifty-four, of which only two are doubtful, reckoning as species forms with some distinguishing character, but which originated and are preserved by cultivation.

The common names of the cottons give no assistance; they are even calculated to lead us completely astray as to the origin of the species. A cotton called Siamese comes from America; another is called Brazilian or Ava cotton, according to the fancy or the error of cultivators.

We will first consider _Gossypium herbaceum_, an ancient species in Asiatic plantations, and now the commonest in Europe and in the United States. In the hot countries whence it came, its stem lasts several years, but out of the tropics it becomes annual from the effect of the winter’s cold. The flower is generally yellow, with a red centre; the cotton yellow or white, according to the variety. Parlatore examined in herbaria several wild specimens, and cultivated others derived from wild plants of the Indian Peninsula. He also admits it to be indigenous in Burmah and in the Indian Archipelago, from the specimens of collectors, who have not perhaps been sufficiently careful to verify its wild character.

Masters regards as undoubtedly wild in Sindh a form which he calls _Gossypium Stocksii_, which he says is probably the wild condition of _Gossypium herbaceum_, and of other cottons cultivated in India for a long time. Todaro, who is not given to uniting many forms in a single species, nevertheless admits the identity of this variety with the common _G. herbaceum_. The yellow colour of the cotton is then the natural condition of the species. The seed has not the short down which exists between the longer hairs in the cultivated _G. herbaceum_.

Cultivation has probably extended the area of the species beyond the limits of the primitive habitation. This is, I imagine, the case in the Sunda Islands and the Malay Peninsula, where certain individuals appear more or less wild. Kurz,[2026] in his Burmese flora, mentions _G. herbaceum_, with yellow or white cotton, as cultivated and also as wild in desert places and waste ground.

The herbaceous cotton is called _kapase_ in Bengali, _kapas_ in Hindustani, which shows that the Sanskrit word _karpassi_ undoubtedly refers to this species.[2027] It was early cultivated in Bactriana, where the Greeks had noticed it at the time of the expedition of Alexander. Theophrastus speaks of it[2028] in such a manner as to leave no doubt. The tree-cotton of the Isle of Tylos, in the Persian Gulf, of which he makes mention further on,[2029] was probably also _G. herbaceum_; for Tylos is not far from India, and in such a hot climate the herbaceous cotton becomes a shrub. The introduction of a cotton plant into China took place only in the ninth or tenth century of our era, which shows that probably the area of _G. herbaceum_ was originally limited to the south and east of India. The knowledge and perhaps the cultivation of the Asiatic cotton was propagated in the Græco-Roman world after the expedition of Alexander, but before the first centuries of the Christian era.[2030] If the _byssos_ of the Greeks was the cotton plant, as most scholars think, it was cultivated at Elis, according to Pausanias and Pliny;[2031] but Curtius and C. Ritter[2032] consider the word _byssos_ as a general term for threads, and that it was probably applied in this case to fine linen. It is evident that the cotton was never, or very rarely, cultivated by the ancients. It is so useful that it would have become common if it had been introduced into a single locality—in Greece, for instance. It was afterwards propagated on the shores of the Mediterranean by the Arabs, as we see from the name _qutn_ or _kutn_,[2033] which has passed into the modern languages of the south of Europe as _cotone_, _coton_, _algodon_. Eben el Awan, of Seville, who lived in the twelfth century, describes its cultivation as it was practised in his time in Sicily, Spain, and the East.[2034]

_Gossypium herbaceum_ is the species most cultivated in the United States.[2035] It was probably introduced there from Europe. It was a new cultivation a hundred years ago, for a bale of North American cotton was confiscated at Liverpool in 1774, on the plea that the cotton-plant did not grow there.[2036] The silky cotton (_sea island_) is another species, American, of which I shall presently speak.

+Tree-Cotton+—_Gossypium arboreum_, Linnæus.

This species is taller and of longer duration than the herbaceous cotton; the lobes of the leaf are narrower, the bracts less divided or entire. The flower is usually pink, with a red centre. The cotton is always white.

According to Anglo-Indian botanists, this is not, as it was supposed, an Indian species, and is even rarely cultivated in India. It is a native of tropical Africa. It has been seen wild in Upper Guinea, in Abyssinia, Sennaar, and Upper Egypt.[2037] So great a number of collectors have brought it from these countries, that there is no room for doubt; but cultivation has so diffused and mixed this species with others that it has been described under several names in works on Southern Asia.

Parlatore attributed to _G. arboreum_ some Asiatic specimens of _G. herbaceum_, and a plant but little known which Forskal found in Arabia. He suspected from this that the ancients had known _G. arboreum_ as well as _G. herbaceum_. Now that the two species are better distinguished, and that the origin of both is known, this does not seem probable. They knew the herbaceous cotton through India and Persia, while the tree-cotton can only have come to them through Egypt. Parlatore himself has given a most interesting proof of this. Until his work appeared in 1866, it was not certain to what species belonged some seeds of the cotton plant which Rosellini found in a vase among the monuments of ancient Thebes.[2038] These seeds are in the Florence museum. Parlatore examined them carefully, and declares them to belong to _Gossypium arboreum_.[2039] Rosellini is certain he was not imposed upon, as he was the first to open both the tomb and the vase. No archæologist has since seen or read signs of the cotton plant in the ancient times of Egyptian civilization. How is it that a plant so striking, remarkable for its flowers and seed, was not described nor preserved habitually in the tombs if it were cultivated? How is it that Herodotus, Dioscorides, and Theophrastus made no mention of it when writing of Egypt? The cloths in which all the mummies are wrapt, and which were formerly supposed to be cotton, are always linen according to Thompson and many other observers who are familiar with the use of the microscope. Hence I conclude that if the seeds found by Rosellini were really ancient they were a rarity, an exception to the common custom, perhaps the product of a tree cultivated in a garden, or perhaps they came from Upper Egypt, a country where we know the tree-cotton to be wild. Pliny[2040] does not say that cotton was cultivated in Lower Egypt; but here is a translation of his very remarkable passage, which is often quoted. “The upper part of Egypt, towards Arabia, produces a shrub which some call _gossipion_ and others _xylon_, whence the name _xylina_ given to the threads obtained from it. It is low-growing, and bears a fruit like that of the bearded nut, and from the interior of this is taken a wool for weaving. None is comparable to this in softness and whiteness.” Pliny adds, “The cloth made from it is used by preference for the dress of the Egyptian priests.” Perhaps the cotton destined to this purpose was sent from Upper Egypt, or perhaps the author, who had not seen the fabrication, and did not possess a microscope, was mistaken in the nature of the sacerdotal raiment, as were our contemporaries who handled the grave-cloths of hundreds of mummies before suspecting that they were not cotton. Among the Jews, the priestly robes were commanded to be of linen, and it is not likely that their custom was different to that of the Egyptians.

Pollux,[2041] born in Egypt a century later than Pliny, expresses himself clearly about the cotton plant, of which the thread was used by his countrymen; but he does not say whence the shrub came, and we cannot tell whether it was _Gossypium arboreum_ or _G. herbaceum_. It does not even appear whether the plant was cultivated in Lower Egypt, or if the cotton came from the more southern region. In spite of these doubts, it may be suspected that a cotton plant, probably that of Upper Egypt, had recently been introduced into the Delta. The species which Prosper Alpin had seen cultivated in Egypt in the sixteenth century was the tree-cotton. The Arabs, and afterwards Europeans, preferred and transported into different countries the herbaceous cotton rather than the tree-cotton, which yields a poorer product and requires more heat.

Regarding the two cottons of the old world, I have made as little use as possible of arguments based upon Greek names, such as βυσσος, σινδον, ξυλον, Οθων etc., or Sanskrit names, and their derivatives, as _carbasa_, _carpas_, or Hebrew names, _schesch_, _buz_, which are doubtfully attributed to the cotton tree. This has been a fruitful subject of discussion,[2042] but the clearer distinction of species and the discovery of their origin greatly diminishes the importance of these questions—to naturalists, at least, who prefer facts to words. Moreover, Reynier, and after him C. Ritter, arrived in their researches at a conclusion which we must not forget: that these same names were often applied by ancient peoples to different plants and tissues—to linen and cotton, for example. In this case as in others, modern botany explains ancient words where words and the commentaries of philologists may mislead.

+Barbados Cotton+—_Gossypium barbadense_, Linnæus.

At the time of the discovery of America, the Spaniards found the cultivation and use of cotton established from the West India Islands to Peru, and from Mexico to Brazil. The fact is proved by all the historians of the epoch. But it is still very difficult to tell what were the species of these American cottons and in what countries they were indigenous. The botanical distinction of the American species or varieties is in the last degree confused. Authors, even those who have seen large collections of growing cotton plants, are not agreed as to the characters. They are also embarrassed by the difficulty of deciding which of the specific names of Linnæus should be retained, for the original definitions are insufficient. The introduction of American seed into African and Asiatic plantations has given rise to further complications, as botanists in Java, Calcutta, Bourbon, etc., have often described American forms as species under different names. Todaro admits ten American species; Parlatore reduced them to three, which answer, he says, to _Gossypium hirsutum_, _G. barbadense_, and _G. religiosum_ of Linnæus; lastly, Dr. Masters unites all the American forms into a single species which he calls _G. barbadense_, giving as the chief character that the seed bears only long hairs, whereas the species of the old world have a short down underneath the longer hairs.[2043] The flower is yellow, with a red centre. The cotton is white or yellow. Parlatore strove to include fifty or sixty of the cultivated forms under one or other of the three heads he admits, from the study of plants in gardens or herbaria. Dr. Masters mentions but few synonyms, and it is possible that certain forms with which he is not acquainted do not come under the definition of his single species.

Where there is such confusion it would be the best course for botanists to seek with care the _Gossypia_, which are wild in America, to constitute the one or more species solely upon these, leaving to the cultivated species their strange and often absurd and misleading names. I state this opinion because with regard to no other genus of cultivated plants have I felt so strongly that natural history should be based upon natural facts, and not upon the artificial products of cultivation. If we start from this point of view, which has the merit of being a truly scientific method, we find unfortunately that our knowledge of the cottons indigenous in America is still in a very elementary state. At most we can name only one or two collectors who have found _Gossypia_ really identical with or very similar to certain cultivated forms.

We can seldom trust early botanists and travellers on this head. The cotton plant grows sometimes in the neighbourhood of plantations, and becomes more or less naturalized, as the down on the seeds facilitates accidental transport. The usual expression of early writers—such a cotton plant _grows_ in such a country—often means a cultivated plant. Linnæus himself in the eighteenth century often says of a cultivated species, “_habitat_,” and he even says it sometimes without good ground.[2044] Hernandez, one of the most accurate among sixteenth-century authors, is quoted as having described and figured a wild _Gossypium_ in Mexico, but the text suggests some doubts as to the wild condition of this plant,[2045] which Parlatore believes to be _G. hirsutum_, Linnæus. Hemsley,[2046] in his catalogue of Mexican plants, merely says of a _Gossypium_ which he calls barbadense, “wild and cultivated.” He gives no proof of the former condition. Macfadyen[2047] mentions three forms wild and cultivated in Jamaica. He attributes specific names to them, and adds that they possibly all may be included in Linnæus’ _G. hirsutum_. Grisebach[2048] admits that one species, _G. barbadense_, is wild in the West Indies. As to the specific distinctions, he declares himself unable to establish them with certainty.

With regard to New Grenada, Triana[2049] describes a _Gossypium_ which he calls _G. barbadense_, Linnæus, and which he says is “cultivated and half wild along the Rio Seco, in the province of Bogota, and in the valley of the Cauca near Cali;” and he adds a variety, _hirsutum_, growing (he does not say whether spontaneously or no) along the Rio Seco. I cannot discover any similar assertion for Peru, Guiana, and Brazil;[2050] but the flora of Chili, published by Cl. Gay,[2051] mentions a _Gossypium_, “almost wild in the province of Copiapo,” which the writer attributes to the variety _G. peruvianum_, Cavanilles. Now, this author does not say the plant is wild, and Parlatore classes it with _G. religiosum_, Linnæus.

An important variety of cultivation is that of the cotton with long silky down, called by Anglo-Americans _sea island_, or _long staple cotton_, which Parlatore ranks with _G. barbadense_, Linnæus. It is considered to be of American origin, but no one has seen it wild.

In conclusion, if historical records are positive in all that concerns the use of cotton in America from a time far earlier than the arrival of Europeans, the natural wild habitation of the plant or plants which yield this product is yet but little known. We become aware on this occasion of the absence of floras of tropical America, similar to those of the Dutch and English colonies of Asia and Africa.

+Mandubi+, +Pea-nut+, +Monkey-nut+—_Arachis hypogæa_, Linnæus.

Nothing is more curious than the manner in which this leguminous plant matures its fruits. It is cultivated in all hot countries, either for the seed, or for the oil contained in the cotyledons.[2052] Bentham has given, in his _Flora of Brazil_, in folio, vol. xv. pl. 23, complete details of the plant, in which may be seen how the flower-stalk bends downwards and plunges the pod into the earth to ripen.

The origin of the species was disputed for a century, even by those botanists who employ the best means to discover it. It is worth while to show how the truth was arrived at, as it may serve as a guide in similar cases. I will quote, therefore, what I wrote in 1855,[2053] giving in conclusion new proofs which allow no possibility of further doubt.

“Linnæus[2054] said of the _Arachis_, ‘it inhabits Surinam Brazil, and Peru.’ As usual with him, he does not specify whether the species was wild or cultivated in these countries. In 1818, R. Brown[2055] writes: ‘It was probably introduced from China into the continent of India, Ceylon, and into the Malay Archipelago, where, in spite of its now general cultivation, it is thought not to be indigenous, particularly from the names given to it. I consider it not improbable that it was brought from Africa into different parts of equatorial America, although, however, it is mentioned in some of the earliest writings on this continent, particularly on Peru and Brazil. According to Sprengel, it is mentioned by Theophrastus as cultivated in Egypt, but it is not at all evident that the _Arachis_ is the plant to which Theophrastus alludes in the quoted passage. If it had been formerly cultivated in Egypt it would probably still exist in that country, whereas it does not occur in Forskal’s catalogue nor in Delile’s more extended flora. There is nothing very unlikely,’ continues Brown, ‘in the hypothesis that the _Arachis_ is indigenous both in Africa and America; but if it is considered as existing originally in one of these continents only, it is more probable that it was brought from China through India to Africa, than that it took the contrary direction.’ My father in 1825, in the _Prodromus_ (ii. p. 474), returned to Linnæus’ opinion, and admitted without hesitation the American origin. “Let us reconsider the question” (I said in 1855) “with the aid of the discoveries of modern science.

“_Arachis hypogœa_ was the only species of this singular genus known. Six other species, all Brazilian, have since been discovered.[2056] Thus, applying the rule of probability of which Brown first made great use, we incline _à priori_ to the idea of an American origin. We must remember that Maregraf[2057] and Piso[2058] describe and figure the plant as used in Brazil, under the name _mandubi_, which seems to be indigenous. They quote Monardes, a writer of the end of the sixteenth century, as having indicated it in Peru under a different name, _anchic_. Joseph Acosta[2059] merely mentions an American name, _mani_, and speaks of it with other species which are not of foreign origin in America. The _Arachis_ was not ancient in Guiana, in the West Indies, and in Mexico. Aublet[2060] mentions it as a cultivated plant, not in Guiana, but in the Isle of France. Hernandez does not speak of it. Sloane[2061] had seen it only in a garden, grown from seeds brought from Guinea. He says that the slave-dealers feed the negroes with it on their passage from Africa, which indicates a then very general cultivation in Africa. Pison, in his second edition (1638, p. 256), not in that of 1648, gives a figure of a similar fruit imported from Africa into Brazil under the name _mandobi_, very near to the name of the Arachis, _mandubi_. From the three leaflets of the plant it would seem to be the _Voandzeia_, so often cultivated; but the fruit seems to me to be longer than in this genus, and it has two or three seeds instead of one or two. However this may be, the distinction drawn by Piso between these two subterranean seeds, the one Brazilian, the other African, tends to show that the _Arachis_ is Brazilian.

“The antiquity and the generality of its cultivation in Africa is, however, an argument of some force, which compensates to a certain degree its antiquity in Brazil, and the presence of six other _Arachis_ in the same country. I would admit its great value if the _Arachis_ had been known to the ancient Egyptians and to the Arabs; but the silence of Greek, Latin, and Arab authors, and the absence of the species in Egypt in Forskal’s time, lead me to think that its cultivation in Guinea, Senegal,[2062] and the east coast of Africa[2063] is not of very ancient date. Neither has it the marks of a great antiquity in Asia. No Sanskrit name for it is known,[2064] but only a Hindustani one. Rumphius[2065] says that it was imported from Japan into several islands of the Indian Archipelago. It would in that case have borne only foreign names, like the Chinese name, for instance, which signifies only ‘earth-bean.’ At the end of the last century it was generally cultivated in China and Cochin-China. Yet, in spite of Rumphius’s theory of an introduction into the islands from China or Japan, I see that Thunberg does not speak of it in his _Japanese Flora_. Now, Japan has had dealings with China for sixteen centuries, and cultivated plants, natives of one of the two countries, were commonly early introduced into the other. It is not mentioned by Forster among the plants employed in the small islands of the Pacific. All these facts point to an American, I might even say a Brazilian, origin. None of the authors I have consulted mentions having seen the plant wild, either in the old or the new world. Those who indicate it in Africa or Asia are careful to say the plant is cultivated. Marcgraf does not say so, writing of Brazil, but Piso says the species is planted.”

Seeds of _Arachis_ have been found in the Peruvian tombs at Ancon,[2066] which shows some antiquity of existence in America, and supports the opinion I expressed in 1855. Dr. Bretschneider’s study of Chinese works[2067] oversets Brown’s hypothesis. The _Arachis_ is not mentioned in the ancient works of this country, nor even in the _Pent-sao_, published in the sixteenth century. He adds that he believes the plant was only introduced in the last century.

All the recent floras of Asia and Africa mention the species as a cultivated one, and most authors believe it to be of American origin. Bentham, after satisfying himself that it had not been found wild in America or elsewhere, adds that it is perhaps a form derived from one of the six other species wild in Brazil, but he does not say which. This is probable enough, for a plant provided with an efficacious and very peculiar manner of germinating does not seem of a nature to become extinct. It would have been found wild in Brazil in the same condition as the cultivated plant, if the latter were not a product of cultivation. Works on Guiana and other parts of America mention the species as a cultivated one; Grisebach[2068] says, moreover, that in several of the West India islands it becomes naturalized from cultivation.

A genus of which all the well-known species are thus placed in a single region of America can scarcely have a species common to both hemispheres; it would be too great an exception to the law of geographical botany. But then how did the species (or cultivated variety) pass from the American continent to the old world? This is hard to guess, but I am inclined to believe that the first slave-ships carried it from Brazil to Guinea, and the Portuguese from Brazil into the islands to the south of Asia, in the end of the fifteenth century.

+Coffee+—_Coffea arabica_, Linnæus.

This shrub, belonging to the family of the Rubiaceæ, is wild in Abyssinia,[2069] in the Soudan,[2070] and on the coasts of Guinea and Mozambique.[2071] Perhaps in these latter localities, so far removed from the centre, it may be naturalized from cultivation. No one has yet found it in Arabia, but this may be explained by the difficulty of penetrating into the interior of the country. If it is discovered there it will be hard to prove it wild, for the seeds, which soon lose their faculty of germinating, often spring up round the plantations and naturalize the species. This has occurred in Brazil and the West India Islands,[2072] where it is certain that the coffee plant was never indigenous.

The use of coffee seems to be very ancient in Abyssinia. Shehabeddin Ben, author of an Arab manuscript of the fifteenth century (No. 944 of the Paris Library), quoted in John Ellis’s excellent work,[2073] says that coffee had been used in Abyssinia from time immemorial. Its use, even as a drug, had not spread into the neighbouring countries, for the crusaders did not know it, and the celebrated physician Ebn Baithar, born at Malaga, who had travelled over the north of Africa and Syria at the beginning of the thirteenth century of the Christian era, does not mention coffee.[2074] In 1596 Bellus sent to de l’Ecluse some seeds from which the Egyptians extracted the drink _cavé_.[2075] Nearly at the same time Prosper Alpin became acquainted with coffee in Egypt itself. He speaks of the plant as the “arbor _bon_, cum fructu suo _buna_.” The name _bon_ recurs also in early authors under the forms _bunnu_, _buncho_, _bunca_.[2076] The names _cahue_, _cahua_, _chaubé_,[2077] _cavé_,[2078] refer rather in Egypt and Syria to the prepared drink, whence the French word _café_. The name _bunnu_, or something similar, is certainly the primitive name of the plant which the Abyssinians still call _boun_.[2079]

If the use of coffee is more ancient in Abyssinia than elsewhere, that is no proof that its cultivation is very ancient. It is very possible that for centuries the berries were sought in the forests, where they were doubtless very common. According to the Arabian author quoted above, it was a mufti of Aden, nearly his contemporary, who, having seen coffee drunk in Persia, introduced the practice at Aden, whence it spread to Mocha, into Egypt, etc. He says that the coffee plant grew in Arabia.[2080] Other fables or traditions exist, according to which it was always an Arabian priest or a monk who invented the drink,[2081] but they all leave us in uncertainty as to the date of the first cultivation of the plant. However this may be, the use of coffee having been spread first in the east, afterwards in the west, in spite of a number of prohibitions and absurd conflicts,[2082] its production became important to the colonies. Boerhave tells us that the Burgermeister of Amsterdam, Nicholas Witsen, director of the East India Company, urged the Governor of Batavia, Van Hoorn, to import coffee berries from Arabia to Batavia. This was done, and in 1690 Van Hoorn sent some living plants to Witsen. These were placed in the Botanical Gardens of Amsterdam, founded by Witsen, where they bore fruit. In 1714, the magistrates of the town sent a flourishing plant covered with fruit to Louis XIV., who placed it in his garden at Marly. Coffee was also grown in the hothouses of the king’s garden in Paris. One of the professors of this establishment, Antoine de Jussieu, had already published in 1713, in the _Mémoires de l’Académie des Sciences_, an interesting description of the plant from one which Pancras, director of the Botanical Garden at Amsterdam, had sent to him.

The first coffee plants grown in America were introduced into Surinam by the Dutch in 1718. The Governor of Cayenne, de la Motte-Aigron, having been at Surinam, obtained some plants in secret and multiplied them in 1725.[2083] The coffee plant was introduced into Martinique by de Clieu,[2084] a naval officer, in 1720, according to Deleuze;[2085] in 1723, according to the _Notices Statistiques sur les Colonies Françaises_.[2086] Thence it was introduced into the other French islands, into Guadaloupe, for instance, in 1730.[2087] Sir Nicholas Lawes first grew it in Jamaica.[2088] From 1718 the French East India Company had sent plants of Mocha coffee to Bourbon;[2089] others say[2090] that it was even in 1717 that a certain Dufougerais-Grenier had coffee plants brought from Mocha into this island. It is known how the cultivation of this shrub has been extended in Java, Ceylon, the West Indies, and Brazil. Nothing prevents it from spreading in nearly all tropical countries, especially as the coffee plant thrives on sloping ground and in poor soils where other crops cannot flourish. It corresponds in tropical agriculture to the vine in Europe and tea in China.

Further details may be found in the volume published by H. Welter[2091] on the economical and commercial history of coffee. The author adds an interesting chapter on the various fair or very bad substitutes used for a commodity which it is impossible to overrate in its natural condition.

+Liberian Coffee+—_Coffea liberica_, Hiern.[2092]

Plants of this species have for some years been sent from the Botanical Gardens at Kew into the English colonies. It grows wild in Liberia, Angola, Golungo Alto,[2093] and probably in several other parts of western tropical Africa.

It is of stronger growth than the common coffee, and the berries, which are larger, yield an excellent product. The official reports of Kew Gardens by the learned director, Sir Joseph Hooker, show the progress of this introduction, which is very favourably received, especially in Dominica.

+Madia+—_Madia sativa_, Molina.

The inhabitants of Chili before the discovery of America cultivated this annual species of the Composite family, for the sake of the oil contained in the seed. Since the olive has been extensively planted, the madia is despised by the Chilians, who only complain of the plant as a weed which chokes their gardens.[2094] The Europeans began to cultivate it with indifferent success, owing to its bad smell.

The madia is indigenous in Chili and also in California.[2095] There are other examples of this disjunction of habitation between the two countries.[2096]

+Nutmeg+—_Myristica fragrans_, Houttuyn.

The nutmeg, a little tree of the order _Myristiceœ_, is wild in the Moluccas, principally in the Banda Islands.[2097] It has long been cultivated there, to judge from the considerable number of its varieties. Europeans have received the nutmeg by the Asiatic trade since the Middle Ages, but the Dutch long possessed the monopoly of its cultivation. When the English owned the Moluccas at the end of the last century, they carried live nutmeg trees to Bencoolen and into Prince Edward’s Islands.[2098] It afterwards spread to Bourbon, Mauritius, Madagascar, and into some of the colonies of tropical America, but with indifferent success from a commercial point of view.

+Sesame+—_Sesamum indicum_, de Candolle; _S. indicum_ and _S. orientale_, Linnæus.

Sesame has long been cultivated in the hot regions of the old world for the sake of the oil extracted from the seeds.

The order _Pedalineœ_ to which this annual belongs is composed of several genera distributed through the tropical parts of Asia, Africa, and America. Each genus has only a small number of species. Sesamum, in the widest sense of the name,[2099] has ten, all African except perhaps the cultivated species whose origin we are about to seek. The latter forms alone the true genus Sesamum, which is a section in Bentham and Hooker’s work. Botanical analogy points to an African origin, but the area of a considerable number of plants is known to extend from the south of Asia into Africa. Sesame has two _races_, the one with black, the other with white seed, and several varieties differing in the shape of the leaf. The difference in the colour of the seeds is very ancient, as in the case of the poppy.

The seeds of sesame often sow themselves outside plantations, and more or less naturalize the species. This has been observed in regions very remote one from the other; for instance, in India, the Sunda Isles, Egypt, and even in the West India Islands, where its cultivation is certainly of modern introduction.[2100] This is perhaps the reason that no author asserts he has found it in a wild state except Blume,[2101] a trustworthy observer, who mentions a variety with redder flowers than usual growing in the mountains of Java. This is doubtless an indication of origin, but we need others to establish a proof. I shall seek them in the history of its cultivation. The country where this began should be the ancient habitation of the species, or have had dealings with this ancient habitation.

That its cultivation dates in Asia from a very early epoch is clear from the diversity of names. Sesame is called in Sanskrit _tila_,[2102] in Malay _widjin_, in Chinese _moa_ (Rumphius) or _chi-ma_ (Bretschneider), in Japanese _koba_.[2103] The name _sesam_ is common to Greek, Latin, and Arabic, with trifling variations of letter. Hence it might be inferred that its area was very extended, and that the cultivation of the plant was begun independently in several different countries. But we must not attribute too much importance to such an argument. Chinese works seem to show that sesame was not introduced into China before the Christian era. The first certain mention of it occurs in a book of the fifth or sixth century, entitled _Tsi-min-yao-chou_.[2104] Before this there is confusion between the name of this plant and that of flax, of which the seed also yields an oil, and which is not very ancient in China.[2105]

Theophrastus and Dioscorides say that the Egyptians cultivated a plant called sesame for the oil contained in its seed, and Pliny adds that it came from India.[2106] He also speaks of a sesame wild in Egypt from which oil was extracted, but this was probably the castor-oil plant.[2107] It is not proved that the ancient Egyptians before the time of Theophrastus cultivated sesame. No drawing or seeds have been found in the monuments. A drawing from the tomb of Rameses III. show the custom of mixing small seeds with flour in making pastry, and in modern times this is done with sesame seeds, but others are also used, and it is not possible to recognize in the drawing those of the sesame in particular.[2108] If the Egyptians had known the species at the time of the Exodus, eleven hundred years before Theophrastus, there would probably have been some mention of it in the Hebrew books, because of the various uses of the seed and especially of the oil. Yet commentators have found no trace of it in the Old Testament. The name _semsem_ or _simsim_ is clearly Semitic, but only of the more recent epoch of the Talmud,[2109] and of the agricultural treatise of Alawwam,[2110] compiled after the Christian era began. It was perhaps a Semitic people who introduced the plant and the name _semsem_ (whence the _sesam_ of the Greeks) into Egypt after the epoch of the great monuments and of the Exodus. They may have received it with the name from Babylonia, where Herodotus says[2111] that sesame was cultivated.

An ancient cultivation in the Euphrates valley agrees with the existence of a Sanskrit name, _tila_, the _tilu_ of the Brahmans (Rheede, _Malabar_, i., ix., pp 105-107), a word of which there are traces in several modern languages of India, particularly in Ceylon.[2112] Thus we are carried back to India in accordance with the origin of which Pliny speaks, but it is possible that India itself may have received the species from the Sunda Isles before the arrival of the Aryan conquerors. Rumphius gives three names for the sesame in these islands, very different one from the other, and from the Sanskrit word, which supports the theory of a more ancient existence in the archipelago than on the continent.

In conclusion, from the fact that the sesame is wild in Java, and from historical and philological arguments, the plant seems to have had its origin in the Sunda Isles, It was introduced into India and the Euphrates valley two or three thousand years ago, and into Egypt at a less remote epoch, from 1000 to 500 B.C. It was transported from the Guinea coast to Brazil by the Portuguese,[2113] but it is unknown how long it has been cultivated in the rest of Africa.

+Castor-oil Plant+—_Ricinus communis_, Linnæus.

The most modern works and those in highest repute consider the south of Asia to be the original home of this _Euphorbiacea_; sometimes they indicate certain varieties in Africa or America without distinguishing the wild from the cultivated plant. I have reason to believe that the true origin is to be found in tropical Africa, in accordance with the opinion of Ball.[2114]

The difficulties with which the question is attended arise from the antiquity of cultivation in different countries, from the facility with which the plant sows itself and becomes naturalized on rubbish-heaps and in waste ground, lastly from the diversity of its forms, which have often been described as species. This latter point need not detain us, for Dr. J. Müller’s careful monograph[2115] proves the existence of sixteen varieties, scarcely hereditary, which pass one into the other by many transitions, and constitute, therefore, but one species.

The number of varieties is the sign of a very ancient cultivation. They differ more or less as to capsules, seeds, inflorescence, etc. Moreover, they are small trees in hot countries, but they do not endure frost, and become annuals north of the Alps and in similar regions. They are in such cases planted in gardens for ornament, while in the tropics, and even in Italy, they are grown for the sake of the oil contained in the seed. This oil, which is more or less purgative, is used for lamps in Bengal and elsewhere.

In no country has the species been found wild with such certainty as in Abyssinia, Sennaar, and the Kordofan. The expressions of authors and collectors are distinct on this head. The castor-oil plant is common in rocky places in the valley of Chiré, near Goumalo, says Quartin Dillon; it is wild in those parts of Upper Sennaar which are flooded during the rains, says Hartmann.[2116] I have a specimen from Kotschy, No. 243, gathered on the northern slope of Mount Kohn, in the Kordofan. The indications of travellers in Mozambique and on the coast of Guinea are not so clear, but it is possible that the natural area of the species covers a great part of tropical Africa. As it is a useful species, and one very conspicuous and easily propagated, the negroes must have early diffused it. However, as we draw near the Mediterranean, it is no longer said to be indigenous. In Egypt, Schweinfurth and Ascherson[2117] say the species is only cultivated and naturalized. Probably in Algeria, Sardinia, and Morocco, and even in the Canaries, where it is principally found in the sand on the sea-shore, it has been naturalized for centuries. I believe this to be the case with specimens brought from Djedda, in Arabia, by Schimper, which were gathered near a cistern. Yet Forskal[2118] gathered the caster-oil plant in the mountains of Arabia Felix, which may signify a wild station. Boissier[2119] indicates it in Beluchistan and the south of Persia, but as “subspontaneous,” as in Syria, Anatolia, and Greece.

Rheede[2120] speaks of the plant as cultivated in Malabar and growing in the sand, but modern Anglo-Indian authors do not allow that it is wild. Some make no mention of the species. A few speak of the facility with which the species becomes naturalized from cultivation. Loureiro had seen it in Cochin-China and in China “cultivated and uncultivated,” which perhaps means escaped from cultivation. Lastly, for the Sunda Islands, Rumphius[2121] is as usual one of the most interesting authorities. The castor-oil plant, he says, grows especially in Java, where it forms immense fields and produces a great quantity of oil. At Amboyna, it is planted here and there, near dwellings and in fields, rather for medicinal purposes. The wild species grows in deserted gardens (_in desertis hortis_); it is doubtless sprung from the cultivated plant (_sine dubio degeneratio domestica_). In Japan the castor-oil plant grows among shrubs and on the slopes of Mount Wuntzen, but Franchet and Savatier add,[2122] “probably introduced.” Lastly, Dr. Bretschneider mentions the species in his work of 1870, p. 20; but what he says here, and in a letter of 1881, does not argue an ancient cultivation in China.

The species is cultivated in tropical America. It becomes easily naturalized in clearings, on rubbish-heaps, etc.; but no botanist has found it in the conditions of a really indigenous plant. Its introduction must have taken place soon after the discovery of America, for a common name, _lamourou_, exists in the West India Islands; and Piso gives another in Brazil, _nhambuguacu_, _figuero inferno_ in Portuguese. I have received the largest number of specimens from Bahia; none are accompanied by the assertion that it is really indigenous.

In Egypt and Western Asia the culture of the species dates from so remote an epoch that it has given rise to mistakes as to its origin. The ancient Egyptians practised it extensively, according to Herodotus, Pliny, Diodorus, etc. There can be no mistake as to the species, as its seeds have been found in the tombs.[2123] The Egyptian name was _kiki_. Theophrastus and Dioscorides mention it, and it is retained in modern Greek,[2124] while the Arabs have a totally different name, _kerua_, _kerroa_, _charua_.[2125]

Roxburgh and Piddington quote a Sanskrit name, _eranda_, _erunda_, which has left descendants in the modern languages of India. Botanists do not say from what epoch of Sanskrit this name dates; as the species belongs to hot climates, the Aryans cannot have known it before their arrival in India, that is at a less ancient epoch than the Egyptian monuments.

The extreme rapidity of the growth of the castor-oil plant has suggested different names in Asiatic language, and that of _Wunderbaum_ in German. The same circumstance, and the analogy with the Egyptian name _kiki_, have caused it to be supposed that the _kikajon_ of the Old Testament,[2126] the growth, it is said, of a single night, was this plant.

I pass a number of common names more or less absurd, as _palma Christi_, _girasole_, in some parts of Italy, etc., but it is worth while to note the origin of the name _castor oil_, as a proof of the English habit of accepting names without examination, and sometimes of distorting them. It appears that in the last century this plant was largely cultivated in Jamaica, where it was once called _agno casto_ by the Portuguese and the Spaniards, being confounded with _Vitex agnus castus_, a totally different plant. From _casto_ the English planters and London traders made _castor_.[2127]

+Walnut+—_Juglans regia_, Linnæus.

Some years ago the walnut tree was known to be wild in Armenia, in the district to the south of the Caucasus and of the Caspian Sea, in the mountains of the north and north-east of India, and in Burmah.[2128] C. Koch[2129] denied that it was indigenous in Armenia and to the south of the Caucasus, but this has been proved by several travellers. It has since been discovered wild in Japan,[2130] which renders it probable that the species exists also in the north of China, as Loureiro and Bunge said,[2131] but without particularizing its wild character. Heldreich[2132] has recently placed it beyond a doubt that the walnut is abundant in a wild state in the mountains of Greece, which agrees with passages in Theophrastus[2133] which had been overlooked. Lastly, Heuffel saw it, also wild, in the mountains of Banat.[2134] Its modern natural area extends, then, from eastern temperate Europe to Japan. It once existed in Europe further to the west, for leaves of the walnut have been found in the quaternary tufa in Provence.[2135] Many species of Juglans existed in our hemisphere in the tertiary and quaternary epochs; there are now ten, at most, distributed throughout North America and temperate Asia.

The use of the walnut and the planting of the tree may have begun in several of the countries where the species was found, and cultivation extended gradually and slightly its artificial area. The walnut is not one of those trees which sows itself and is easily naturalized. The nature of its fruit is perhaps against this; and, moreover, it needs a climate where the frosts are not severe and the heat moderate. It scarcely passes the northern limit of the vine, and does not extend nearly so far south.

The Greeks, accustomed to olive oil, neglected the walnut until they received from Persia a better variety, called _karuon basilikon_,[2136] or _Persikon_.[2137] The Romans cultivated the walnut from the time of their kings; they considered it of Persian origin.[2138] They had an old custom of throwing nuts in the celebration of weddings.

Archæology confirms these details. The only nuts which have hitherto been found under the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, Savoy, or Italy are confined to a single locality near Parma, called Fontinellato, in a stratum of the iron age.[2139] Now, this metal, very rare at the time of the Trojan war, cannot have come into general use among the agricultural population of Italy until the fifth or sixth century before Christ, an epoch at which even bronze was perhaps still unknown to the north of the Alps. In the station at Lagozza, walnuts have been found in a much higher stratum, and not ancient.[2140] Evidently the walnuts of Italy, Switzerland, and France are not descended from the fossil plants of the quaternary tufa of which I spoke just now.

It is impossible to say at what period the walnut was first planted in India. It must have been early, for there is a Sanskrit name, _akschôda_, _akhoda_, or _akhôta_. Chinese authors say that the walnut was introduced among them from Thibet, under the Han dynasty, by Chang-kien, about the year 140-150 B.C.[2141] This was perhaps a perfected variety. Moreover, it seems probable, from the actual records of botanists, that the wild walnut is rare in the north of China, and is perhaps wanting in the east. The date of its cultivation in Japan is unknown.

The walnut tree and walnuts had an infinite number of names among ancient peoples, which have exercised the science and imagination of philologists,[2142] but the origin of the species is so clear that we need not stay to consider them.

+Areca+—_Areca Catechu_, Linnæus.

The areca palm is much cultivated in the countries where it is a custom to chew betel, that is to say throughout Southern Asia. The nut, or rather the almond which forms the principal part of the seed contained in the fruit, is valued for its aromatic taste; chopped, mixed with lime, and enveloped in a leaf of the pepper-betel, it forms an agreeable stimulant, which produces a flow of saliva and blackens the teeth to the satisfaction of the natives.

The author of the principal work on the order Palmaceæ, de Martius,[2143] says of the origin of this species, “Its country is uncertain (_non constat_); probably the Sunda Isles.” We may find it possible to affirm something positive by referring to more modern authors.

On the continent of India, in Ceylon and Cochin-China, the species is always indicated as cultivated.[2144] So in the Sunda Isles, the Moluccas, etc., to the south of Asia. Blume,[2145] in his work entitled _Rumphia_, says that the “habitat” of the species is the Malay Peninsula, Siam, and the neighbouring islands. Yet he does not appear to have seen the indigenous plants of which he speaks. Dr. Bretschneider[2146] believes that the species is a native of the Malay Archipelago, principally of Sumatra, for he says those islands and the Philippines are the only places where it is found wild. The first of these facts is not confirmed by Miquel, nor the second by Blanco,[2147] who lived in the Philippines. Blume’s opinion appears the most probable, but we must still say with Martius, “The country is not proved.” The existence of a number of Malay names, _pinang_, _jambe_, etc., and of a Sanskrit name, _gouvaka_, as well as very numerous varieties, show the antiquity of cultivation. The Chinese received it, 111 B.C., from the south, with the Malay name, _pin-lang_. The Telinga name, _arek_, is the origin of the botanical name Areca.

+Elæis+—_Elæis guineensis_, Jacquin.

Travellers who visited the coast of Guinea in the first half of the sixteenth century[2148] already noticed this palm, from which the negroes extracted oil by pressing the fleshy part of the fruit. The tree is indigenous on all that coast.[2149] It is also planted, and the exportation of palm-oil is the object of an extensive trade. As it is also found wild in Brazil and perhaps in Guiana,[2150] a doubt arose as to the true origin. It seems the more likely to be American that the only other species which with this one constitutes the genus _Elæis_ belongs to New Granada.[2151] Robert Brown, however, and the authors who have studied the family of palms, are unanimous in their belief that _Elæis guineensis_ was introduced into America by the negroes and slave-traders in the traffic between the Guinea coast and the coast of America. Many facts confirm this opinion. The first botanists who visited Brazil, Piso and Marcgraf and others, do not mention the Elæis. It is only found on the littoral, from Rio di Janeiro to the mouth of the Amazon, never in the interior. It is often cultivated, or has the appearance of a species escaped from the plantations. Sloane,[2152] who explored Jamaica in the seventeenth century, relates that this tree was introduced in his time into a plantation which he names, from the coast of Guinea. It has since become naturalized in some of the West India Islands.[2153]

+Cocoa-nut Palm+—_Cocos nucifera_, Linnæus.

The cocoa-nut palm is perhaps, of all tropical trees, the one which yields the greatest variety of products. Its wood and fibres are utilized in various ways. The sap extracted from the inner part of the inflorescence yields a much-prized alcoholic drink. The shell of the nut forms a vessel, the milk of the half-ripe fruit is a pleasant drink, and the nut itself contains a great deal of oil. It is not surprising that so valuable a tree has been a good deal planted and transported. Besides, its dispersion is aided by natural causes. The woody shell and fibrous envelope of the nut enable it to float in salt water without injury to the germ. Hence the possibility of its transportation to great distances by currents and its naturalization on coasts where the temperature is favourable. Unfortunately, this tree requires a warm, damp climate, such as exists only in the tropics, or in exceptional localities just without them. Nor does it thrive at a distance from the sea.