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 Spain1513 he quoted early authors who assert that the banana was cultivated in America before the conquest.
He admits, on Oviedo’s authority,1514 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 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 “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 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 Acosta1518 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.
Desvaux studied the specific question, and in a really remarkable work, published in 1814,1519 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 Caldcleugh1520 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 travels1521 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 beans1522 in these huacas, a plant which undoubtedly belongs to the old world, his assertions are not very trustworthy.
Boussingault1523 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 nor does the geographer Ritter,1525 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 The two first insist upon the absence of names for the banana in the languages of Peru and Mexico. Piso knew no Brazilian name. Martius1527 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 The Greeks, Latins, and Arabs have mentioned it as a remarkable Indian fruit tree. Pliny1529 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 Egyptians1530 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 Pacific1531 and to the west coast of Africa;1532 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 in the form of Musa sapientum. Rumphius1534 describes a wild variety with small fruits in the Philippine Isles. Loureiro1535 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 Blanco also mentions a wild banana in the Philippines,1537 but his description is vague. Finlayson1538 found the banana wild in abundance in the little island of Pulo Ubi at the southern extremity of Siam. Thwaites1539 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 Thomson1540 found it wild at Khasia.
The facts are quite different in America. The wild banana has been seen nowhere except in Barbados,1541 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 plantain1542 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. Piso1543 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 He says,1545 “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 Espagnolle1546 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 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 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
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 which the Portuguese turned into ananas. The Spanish called it pinas, because the shape resembles the fruit of a species of pine.1551 All early writers on America mention it.1552 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. Rheede1553 in the seventeenth century was persuaded of this; but Rumphius1554 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. Royle1555 says that the pine-apple was introduced into Bengal in 1594. Kircher1556 says that the Chinese cultivated it in the seventeenth century, but it was believed to have been brought to them from Peru.
Clusius1557 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 in India,1559 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 Veraguas1560 near Panama, in the upper Orinoco valley,1561 in Guiana1562 and the province of Bahia.1563
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 basins1564 and of their tributaries up to four hundred feet of altitude. It is also said to grow wild in Trinidad, which lies near the mouth of the Orinoco.1565 I find no proof that it is indigenous in Guiana, although it seems probable. Many early writers indicate that it was both wild and cultivated at the time of the discovery of America from Panama to Guatemala and Campeachy; but from the numerous quotations collected by Sloane,1566 it is to be feared that its wild character was not sufficiently verified. Modern botanists are not very explicit on this head, and in general they only mention the cacao as cultivated in these regions and in the West India Islands. G. Bernoulli,1567 who had resided in Guatemala, only says, “wild and cultivated throughout tropical America;” and Hemsley,1568 in his review of the plants of Mexico and Central America, made in 1879 from the rich materials of the Kew herbarium, gives no locality where the species is indigenous. It was perhaps introduced into Central America and into the warm regions of Mexico by the Indians before the discovery of America. Cultivation may have naturalized it here and there, as is said to be the case in Jamaica.1569 In support of this hypothesis, it must be observed that Triana1570 indicates the cacao as only cultivated in the warm regions of New Granada, a country situated between Panama and the Orinoco valley.
However this may be, the species was grown in Central America and Yucatan at the time of the discovery of America. The seeds were sent into the highlands of Mexico, and were even used as money, so highly were they valued. The custom of drinking chocolate was general. The name of this excellent drink is Mexican. The Spaniards carried the cacao from Acapulco to the Philippine Isles in 1674 and 1680,1571 where it succeeded wonderfully. It is also cultivated in the Sunda Isles. I imagine it would succeed on the Guinea and Zanzibar coasts, but it is of no use to attempt to grow it in countries which are not very hot and very damp.
Another species, Theobroma bicolor, Humboldt and Bonpland, is found growing with the common cacao in American plantations. It is not so much prized. On the other hand, it does not require so high a temperature, and can live at an altitude of nearly three thousand feet in the valley of the Magdalena. It abounds in a wild state in New Granada.1572 Bernoulli asserts that it is only cultivated in Guatemala, though the inhabitants call it mountain cacao.
Litchi—Nephelium Litchi, Cambessides.
The seed of this species and of the two following is covered with a fleshy excrescence, very sweet and scented, which is eaten with tea.
Like most of the Sapindaceæ, the nepheliums are trees. This one has been cultivated in the south of China, India, and the Malay Archipelago from a date of which we cannot be certain. Chinese authors living at Pekin only knew the Litchi late in the third century of our era.1573 Its introduction into Bengal took place at the end of the eighteenth century.1574 Every one admits that the species is a native of the south of China, and, Blume1575 adds, of Cochin-China and the Philippine Isles, but it does not seem that any botanist has found it in a truly wild state. This is probably because the southern part of China towards Siam has been little visited. In Cochin-China and in Burmah and at Chittagong the Litchi is only cultivated.1576
Longan—Nephelium longana, Cambessides.
This second species, very often cultivated in Southern Asia, like the Litchi, is wild in British India, from Ceylon and Concan as far as the mountains to the east of Bengal, and in Pegu.1577 The Chinese introduced it into the Malay Archipelago some centuries ago.
Rambutan—Nephelium lappaceum, Linnæus.
It is said to be wild in the Indian Archipelago, where it must have been long cultivated, to judge from the number of its varieties. A Malay name, given by Blume, signifies wild tree. Loureiro says it is wild in Cochin-China and Java. Yet I find no confirmation for Cochin-China in modern works, nor even for the islands. The new flora of British India1578 indicates it at Singapore and Malacca without affirming that it is indigenous, on which head the labels in herbaria commonly tell us nothing. Certainly the species is not wild on the continent of Asia, in spite of the vague expressions of Blume and Miquel,1579 but it is more probably a native of the Malay Archipelago.
In spite of the reputation of the nepheliums, of which the fruit can be exported, it does not appear that these trees have been introduced into the tropical colonies of Africa and America except into a few gardens as curiosities.
Pistachio Nut—Pistacia vera, Linnæus.
The pistachio, a shrub belonging to the order Anacardiaceæ, grows naturally in Syria. Boissier1580 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 Galen1581 knew that the species was a Syrian one. The former tells us that the plant was introduced into Italy by Vitellius at the end of the reign of Tiberius, and thence into Spain by Flavius Pompeius.
There is no reason to believe that the cultivation of the pistachio was ancient even in its primitive country, but it is practised in our own day in the East, as well as in Sicily and Tunis. In the south of France and Spain it is of little importance.
Broad Bean—Faba vulgaris, Mœnch; Vicia faba, Linnæus.
Linnæus, in his best descriptive work, Hortus cliffortianus, admits that the origin of this species is obscure, like that of most plants of ancient cultivation. Later, in his Species, which is more often quoted, he says, without giving any proof, that the bean “inhabits Egypt.” Lerche, a Russian traveller at the end of the last century, found it wild in the Mungan desert of the Mazanderan, to the south of the Caspian Sea.1582 Travellers who have collected in this region have sometimes come across it,1583 but they do not mention it in their writings,1584 excepting Ledebour,1585 and the quotation on which he relies is not correct. Bosc1586 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’s1587 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 give the bean as cultivated.
This plant alone constitutes the genus Faba. We cannot, therefore, call in the aid of any botanical analogy to discover its origin. We must have recourse to the history of its cultivation and to the names of the species to find out the country in which it was originally indigenous.
We must first eliminate an error which came from a wrong interpretation of Chinese works. Stanislas Julien believed that the bean was one of the five plants which the Emperor Chin-nong commanded, 4600 years ago, to be sown every year with great solemnity.1589 Now, according to Dr. Bretschneider,1590 who is surrounded at Pekin with every possible resource for arriving at the truth, the seed similar to a bean which the emperors sow in the enjoined ceremony is that of Dolichos soja, and the bean was only introduced into China from Western Asia a century before the Christian era, at the time of 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 Iliad1591 already mentions the bean as a cultivated plant, and Virchow found some beans in the excavations at Troy.1592 The Latins called it faba. We find nothing in the works of Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Pliny, etc., which leads us to believe the plant indigenous in Greece or Italy. It was early known, because it was an ancient Roman rite to put beans in the sacrifices to the goddess Carna, whence the name Fabariæ Calendæ.1593 The Fabii perhaps took their name from faba, and the twelfth chapter of the eighteenth book of Pliny shows, without the possibility of a doubt, the antiquity and importance of the bean in Italy.
The word faba recurs in several of the Aryan languages of Europe, but with modifications which philologists alone can recognize. We must not forget, however, Adolphe Pictet’s very just remark,1594 that in the cases of the seeds of cereals and leguminous plants the names of one species are often transferred to another, or that certain names were sometimes specific and sometimes generic. Several seeds of like form were called kuamos by the Greeks; several different kinds of haricot bean (Phaseolus, Dolichos) bear the same name in Sanskrit, and faba in ancient Slav, bobu in ancient Prussian, babo in Armorican, fav, etc., may very well have been used for peas, haricot beans, etc. In our own day the phrase coffee-bean is used in the trade. It has been rightly supposed that when Pliny speaks of fabariæ islands, where beans were found in abundance, he alludes to a species of wild pea called botanically Pisum maritimum.
The ancient inhabitants of Switzerland and of Italy in the age of bronze cultivated a small-fruited variety of Faba vulgaris.1595 Heer calls it Celtica nana, because it is only six to nine millimetres long, whereas our modern field bean is ten to twelve millimetres. He has compared the specimens from Montelier on Lake Morat, and St. Peter’s Islands on Lake Bienne, with others of the same epoch from Parma. Mortellet found, in the contemporary lake-dwellings on the Lake Bourget, the same small bean, which is, he says, very like a variety cultivated in Spain at the present day.1596
The bean was cultivated by the ancient Egyptians.1597 It is true that hitherto no beans have been found in the sarcophagi, or drawings of the plant seen on the monuments. The reason is said to be that the plant was reckoned unclean.1598 Herodotus1599 says, “The Egyptians never sow the bean in their land, and if it grows they do not eat it either cooked or raw. The priests cannot even endure the sight of it; they imagine that this vegetable is unclean.” The bean existed then in Egypt, and probably in cultivated places, for the soil which would suit it was as a rule under cultivation. Perhaps the poor population and that of certain districts did not share the prejudices of the priests; we know that the superstitions varied with the nomes. Plutarch and Diodorus Siculus mention the cultivation of the bean in Egypt, but they wrote five hundred years later than Herodotus.
The word pol occurs twice in the Old Testament;1600 it has been translated bean because of the traditions preserved by the Talmud, and of the Arabic name foul, fol, or ful, which is that of the bean. The first of the two verses shows that the Hebrews were acquainted with the bean one thousand years before Christ.
Lastly, I shall mention a sign of the ancient existence of the bean in the north of Africa. This is the Berber name ibiou, in the plural iabouen, used by the Kabyles of the province of Algiers.1601 It has no resemblance to the Semitic name, and dates perhaps from a remote antiquity. The Berbers formerly inhabited Mauritania, where Pliny asserts that the species was wild. It is not known whether the Guanchos (the Berber people of the Canaries) knew the bean. I doubt whether the Iberians had it, for their supposed descendants, the Basques, use the name baba,1602 answering to the Roman faba.
We judge from these facts that the bean was cultivated in Europe in prehistoric terms. It was introduced into Europe probably by the western Aryans at the time of their earliest migrations (Pelasgians, Kelts, Slavs). It was taken to China later, a century before the Christian era, and still later into Japan, and quite recently into India.
Its wild habitat was probably twofold some thousands of years ago, one of the centres being to the south of the Caspian, the other in the north of Africa. This kind of area, which I have called disjunctive, and to which I formerly paid a good deal of attention,1603 is rare in dicotyledons, but there are examples in those very countries of which I have just spoken.1604 It is probable that the area of the bean has long been in process of diminution and of extinction. The nature of the plant is in favour of this hypothesis, for its seed has no means of dispersing itself, and rodents or other animals can easily make prey of it. Its area in Western Asia was probably less limited at one time, and that in Africa in Pliny’s day was more or less extensive. The struggle for existence which was going against this plant, as against maize, would have gradually isolated it and caused it to disappear, if man had not saved it by cultivation.
The plant which most nearly resembles the bean is Vicia narbonensis. Authors who do not admit the genus Faba, of which the characters are not very distinct from those of Vicia, place these two species in the same section. Now, Vicia narbonensis is wild in the Mediterranean basin and in the East as far as the Caucasus, in the north of Persia, and in Mesopotamia.1605 Its area is continuous, but this renders the hypothesis I mentioned above probable by analogy.
Lentil—Ervum lens, Linnæus; Lens esculenta, Mœnch.
The plants which most nearly resemble the lentil are classed by authors now in the genus Ervum, now in a distinct genus Lens, and sometimes in the genus Cicer; but the species of these ill-defined groups all belong to the Mediterranean basin or to Western Asia. This throws some light on the origin of the cultivated plant. Unfortunately, the lentil is no longer to be found in a wild state, at least with certainty. The floras of the south of Europe, of Northern Africa, of the East, and of India always mention it as cultivated, or as growing in fields after or with other cultivated species. A botanist1606 saw it in the provinces to the south of the Caucasus, “cultivated and nearly wild here and there round villages.” Another1607 indicates it vaguely in the south of Russia, but more recent floras fail to confirm this.
The history and names of this plant may give clearer indications of its origin. It has been cultivated in the East, in the Mediterranean basin and even in Switzerland, from prehistoric time. According to Herodotos, Theophrastus, etc., the ancient Egyptians used it largely. If their monuments give no proof of this, it was probably because the lentil was, like the bean, considered common and coarse. The Old Testament mentions it three times, by the name adaschum or adaschim, which must certainly mean lentil, for the Arabic name is ads,1608 or adas.1609 The red colour of Esau’s famous mess of pottage has not been understood by most authors. Reynier,1610 who had lived in Egypt, confirms the explanation given formerly by Josephus; the lentils were red because they were hulled. It is still the practice in Egypt, says Reynier, to remove the husk or outer skin from the lentil, and in this case they are a pale red. The Berbers have the Semitic name adès for the lentil.1611
The Greeks cultivated the species—fakos or fakai. Aristophanes mentions it as an article of food of the poor.1612 The Latins called it lens, a name whose origin is unknown, which is evidently allied to the ancient Slav lesha, Illyrian lechja, Lithuanian lenszic.1613 The difference between the Greek and Latin names shows that the species perhaps existed in Greece and Italy before it was cultivated. Another proof of ancient existence in Europe is the discovery of lentils in the lake-dwellings of St. Peter’s Island, Lake of Bienne,1614 which are of the age of bronze. The species may have been introduced from Italy.
According to Theophrastus,1615 the inhabitants of Bactriana (the modern Bokkara) did not know the fakos of the Greeks. Adolphe Pictet quotes a Persian name, mangu or margu, but he does not say whether it is an ancient name, existing, for instance, in the Zend Avesta. He admits several Sanskrit names for the lentil, masura, renuka, mangalya, etc., while Anglo-Indian botanists, Roxburgh and Piddington, knew none.1616 As these authors mention an analogous name in Hindustani and Bengali, mussour, we may suppose that masura signifies lentil, while mangu in Persian recalls the other name mangalya. As Roxburgh and Piddington give no name in other Indian languages, it may be supposed that the lentil was not known in this country before the invasion of the Sanskrit-speaking race. Ancient Chinese works do not mention the species; at least, Dr. Bretschneider says nothing of them in his work published in 1870, nor in the more detailed letters which he has since written to me.
The lentil appears to have existed in western temperate Asia, in Greece, and in Italy, where its cultivation was first undertaken in very early prehistoric time, when it was introduced into Egypt. Its cultivation appears to have been extended at a less remote epoch, but still hardly in historic time, both east and west, that is into Europe and India.
Chick-Pea—Cicer arietinum, Linnæus.
Fifteen species of the genus Cicer are known, all of Western Asia or Greece, except one, which is Abyssinian. It seems, therefore, most probable that the cultivated species comes from the tract of land lying between Greece and the Himalayas, vaguely termed the East. The species has not been found undoubtedly wild. All the floras of the south of Europe, of Egypt, and of Western Asia as far as the Caucasus and India, give it as a cultivated species, or growing in fields and cultivated grounds. It has sometimes1617 been indicated in the Crimea, and to the north, and especially to the south of the Caucasus, as nearly wild; but well-informed modern authors do not think so.1618 This quasi-wildness can only point to its origin in Armenia and the neighbouring countries. The cultivation and the names of the species may perhaps throw some light on the question.
The Greeks cultivated this species of pea as early as Homer’s time, under the name of erebinthos,1619 and also of krios,1620 from the resemblance of the pea to the head of a ram. The Latins called it cicer, which is the origin of all the modern names in the south of Europe. The name exists also among the Albanians, descendants of the Pelasgians, under the form kikere.1621 The existence of such widely different names shows that the plant was very early known, and perhaps indigenous, in the south-east of Europe.
The chick-pea has not been found in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, Savoy, and Italy. In the first-named locality its absence is not singular; the climate is not hot enough. A common name among the peoples of the south of the Caucasus and of the Caspian Sea is, in Georgian, nachuda; in Turkish and Armenian, nachius, nachunt; in Persian, nochot.1622 Philologists can tell if this is a very ancient name, and if it has any connection with the Sanskrit chennuka.
The chick-pea is so frequently cultivated in Egypt from the earliest times of the Christian era,1623 that it is supposed to have been also known to the ancient Egyptians. There is no proof to be found in the drawings or stores of grain in their monuments, but it may be supposed that this pea, like the bean and the lentil, was considered common or unclean. Reynier1624 thought that the ketsech, mentioned by Isaiah in the Old Testament, was perhaps the chick-pea; but this name is generally attributed, though without certainty, to Nigella sativa or Vicia sativa.1625 As the Arabs have a totally different name for the chick-pea, omnos, homos, which recurs in the Kabyl language as hammez,1626 it is not likely that the ketsech of the Jews was the same plant. These details lead me to suspect that the species was unknown to the ancient Egyptians and to the Hebrews. It was perhaps introduced among them from Greece or Italy towards the beginning of our era.
It is of more ancient introduction into India, for there is a Sanskrit name, and several others, analogous or different, in modern Indian languages.1627 Bretschneider does not mention the species in China.
I do not know of any proof of antiquity of culture in Spain, yet the Castilian name garbanzo, used also by the Basques under the form garbantzua, and by the French as garvance, being neither Latin nor Arabic, may date from an epoch anterior to the Roman conquest.
Botanical, historical, and philological data agree in indicating a habitation anterior to cultivation in the countries to the south of the Caucasus and to the north of Persia. The western Aryans (Pelasgians, Hellenes) perhaps introduced the plant into Southern Europe, where, however, there is some probability that it was also indigenous. The western Aryans carried it into India. Its area perhaps extended from Persia to Greece, and the species now exists only in cultivated ground, where we do not know whether it springs from a stock originally wild or from cultivated plants.
Lupin—Lupinus albus, Linnæus.
The ancient Greeks and Romans cultivated this leguminous plant to bury it as a green manure, and also for the sake of the seeds, which are a good fodder for cattle, and which are also used by man. The expressions of Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Cato, Varro, Pliny, etc., quoted by modern writers, refer to the culture or to the medical properties of the seeds, and do not show whether the species was the white lupin, L. albus, or the blue-flowered lupin, L. hirsutus, which grows wild in the south of Europe. Fraas says1628 that the latter is grown in the Morea at the present day; but Heldreich says1629 that L. albus grows in Attica. As this is the species which has been long cultivated in Italy, it is probable that it is the lupin of the ancients. It was much grown in the eighteenth century, especially in Italy,1630 and de l’Ecluse settles the question of the species, as he calls it Lupinus sativus albo flore.1631 The antiquity of its cultivation in Spain is shown by the existence of four different common names, according to the province; but the plant is only found cultivated or nearly wild in fields and sandy places.1632 The species is indicated by Bertoloni in Italy, on the hills of Sarzana. Yet Caruel does not believe it to be wild here, any more than in other parts of the peninsula.1633 Gussone1634 is very positive for Sicily—“on barren and sandy hills, and in meadows (in herbidis)” Lastly, Grisebach1635 found it in Turkey in Europe, near Ruskoï, and d’Urville1636 saw it in abundance, in a wood near Constantinople. Castagne confirms this in a manuscript catalogue in my possession. Boissier does not mention any locality in the East; the species does not exist in India, but Russian botanists have found it to the south of the Caucasus, though we do not know with certainty if it was really wild.1637 Other localities will perhaps be found between Sicily, Macedonia, and the Caucasus.
Egyptian Lupin—Lupinus termis, Forskal.
This species of lupin, so nearly allied to L. albus that it has sometimes been proposed to unite them,1638 is largely cultivated in Egypt and even in Crete. The most obvious difference is that the upper part of the flowers of L. termis is blue. The stem is taller than that of L. albus. The seeds are used like those of the common lupin, after they have been steeped to get rid of their bitterness.
L. termis is wild in sandy soil and mountainous districts, in Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica;1639 in Syria and Egypt, according to Boissier;1640 but Schweinfurth and Ascherson1641 say that it is only cultivated in Egypt. Hartmann saw it wild in Upper Egypt.1642 Unger1643 mentions it among the cultivated specimens of the ancient Egyptians, but he gives neither specimen nor drawing. Wilkinson1644 says only that it has been found in the tombs.
No lupin is grown in India, nor is there any Sanskrit name; its seeds are sold in bazaars under the name tourmus (Royle, Ill., p. 194).
The Arabic name, termis or termus, is also that of the Greek lupin, termos. It may be inferred that the Greeks had it from the Egyptians. As the species was known to the ancient Egyptians, it seems strange that it has no Hebrew name;1645 but it may have been introduced into Egypt after the departure of the Israelites.
Field-Pea—Pisum arvense, Linnæus.
This pea is grown on a large scale for the seed, and also sometimes for fodder. Although its appearance and botanical characters allow of its being easily distinguished from the garden-pea, Greek and Roman authors confounded them, or are not explicit about them. Their writings do not prove that it was cultivated in their time. It has not been found in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, France, and Italy. Bobbio has a legend (A.D. 930), in which it is said that the Italian peasants called a certain seed herbilia, whence it has been supposed to be the modern rubiglia or the Pisum sativum of botanists.1646 The species is cultivated in the East, and as far as the north of India.1647 It is of recent cultivation in the latter country, for there is no Sanskrit name, and Piddington gives only one name in one of the modern languages.
Whatever may be the date of the introduction of its culture, the species is undoubtedly wild in Italy, not only in hedges and near cultivated ground, but also in forests and wild mountainous districts.1648 I find no positive indication in the floras that it grows in like manner in Spain, Algeria, Greece, and the East. The plant is said to be indigenous in the south of Russia, but sometimes its wild character is doubtful, and sometimes the species itself is not certain, from a confusion with Pisum sativum and P. elatius. Of all Anglo-Indian botanists, only Royle admits it to be indigenous in the north of India.
Garden-Pea—Pisum sativum, Linnæus.
The pea of our kitchen gardens is more delicate than the field-pea, and suffers from frost and drought. Its natural area, previous to cultivation, was probably more to the south and more restricted. It has not hitherto been found wild, either in Europe or in the west of Asia, whence it is supposed to have come. Bieberstein’s indication of the species in the Crimea is not correct, according to Steven, who was a resident in the country.1649 Perhaps botanists have overlooked its habitation; perhaps the plant has disappeared from its original dwelling; perhaps also it is a mere modification, effected by culture, of Pisum arvense. Alefeld held the latter opinion,1650 but he has published too little on the subject for us to be able to conclude anything from it. He only says that, having cultivated a great number of varieties both of the field and garden pea, he concludes that they belong to the same species. Darwin1651 learnt through a third person that Andrew Knight had crossed the field-pea with a garden variety known as the Prussian pea, and that the product was fertile. This would certainly be a proof of specific unity, but further observation and experiment is required. In the mean time, in the search for geographic origin, etc., I am obliged to consider the two forms separately.
Botanists who distinguish many species in the genus Pisum, admit eight, all European or Asiatic. Pisum sativum was cultivated by the Greeks in the time of Theophrastus.1652 They called it pisos, or pison. The Albanians, descendants of the Pelasgians, call it pizelle.1653 The Latins had pisum.1654 This uniformity of nomenclature seems to show that the Aryans knew the plant when they arrived in Greece and Italy, and perhaps brought it with them. Other Aryan languages have several names for the generic sense of pea; but it is evident, from Adolphe Pictet’s learned discussion on the subject,1655 that none of these names can be applied to Pisum sativum in particular. Even when one of the modern languages, Slav or Breton, limits the sense to the garden-pea, it is very probable that formerly the word signified field-pea, lentil, or any other leguminous plant.
The garden-pea1656 has been found among the remains in the lake-dwellings of the age of bronze, in Switzerland and Savoy. The seed is spherical, wherein it differs from Pisum arvense. It is smaller than our modern pea. Heer says he found it also among relics of the stone age, at Moosseedorf; but he is less positive, and only gives figures of the less ancient pea of St. Peter’s Island. If the species dates from the stone age in Switzerland, it would be anterior to the immigration of the Aryans.
There is no indication of the culture of Pisum sativum in ancient Egypt or in India. On the other hand, it has long been cultivated in the north of India, if it had, as Piddington says, a Sanskrit name, harenso, and if it has several names very different to this in modern Indian languages.1657 It has been introduced into China from Western Asia. The Pent-sao, drawn up at the end of the sixteenth century, calls it the Mahometan pea.1658 In conclusion: the species seems to have existed in Western Asia, perhaps from the south of the Caucasus to Persia, before it was cultivated. The Aryans introduced it into Europe, but it perhaps existed in Northern India before the arrival of the eastern Aryans. It no longer exists in a wild state, and when it occurs in fields, half-wild, it is not said to have a modified form so as to approach some other species.
Soy—Dolichos soja, Linnæus; Glycine soja, Bentham.
This leguminous annual has been cultivated in China and Japan from remote antiquity. This might be gathered from the many uses of the soy bean and from the immense number of varieties. But it is also supposed to be one of the farinaceous substances called shu in Chinese writings of Confucius’ time, though the modern name of the plant is ta-tou.1659 The bean is nourishing, and contains a large proportion of oil, and preparations similar to butter, oil, and cheese are extracted from it and used in Chinese and Japanese cooking.1660 Soy is also grown in the Malay Archipelago, but at the end of the eighteenth century it was still rare in Amboyna,1661 and Forster did not see it in the Pacific Isles at the time of Cook’s voyages. It is of modern introduction in India, for Roxburgh had only seen the plant in the botanical gardens at Calcutta, where it was brought from the Moluccas.1662 There are no common Indian names.1663 Besides, if its cultivation had been ancient in India, it would have spread westward into Syria and Egypt, which is not the case.
Kæmpfer1664 formerly published an excellent illustration of the soy bean, and it had existed for a century in European botanical gardens, when more extensive information about China and Japan excited about ten years ago a lively desire to introduce it into our countries. In Austria, Hungary, and France especially, attempts have been made on a large scale, of which the results have been summed up in works worthy of consultation.1665 It is to be hoped these efforts may be successful; but we must not digress from the aim of our researches, the probable origin of the species.
Linnæus says, in his Species, “habitat in India,” and refers to Kæmpfer, who speaks of the plant in Japan, and to his own flora of Ceylon, where he gives the plant as cultivated. Thwaites’s modern flora of Ceylon makes no mention of it. We must evidently go further east to find the origin both of the species and of its cultivation. Loureiro says that it grows in Cochin-China and that it is often cultivated in China.1666 I find no proof that it is wild in the latter country, but it may perhaps be discovered, as its culture is so ancient. Russian botanists1667 have only found it cultivated in the north of China and in the basin of the river Amur. It is certainly wild in Japan.1668 Junghuhn1669 found it in Java on Mount Gunung-Gamping, and a plant sent also from Java by Zollinger is supposed to belong to this species, but it is not certain that the specimen was wild.1670 A Malay name, kadelee,1671 a quite different to the Japanese and Chinese common names, is in favour of its indigenous character in Java.