I have in my possession specimens from India, Java, Timor, even from China661 and Nubia, which are not said to be taken from cultivated plants, and others from Guiana and the West Indies, which are doubtless furnished by the imported species. Stocks found it indigenous in Beluchistan.662 Roxburgh also considered it to be wild on the Coromandel663 coast, and Thwaites664 mentions it in Ceylon in a manner which seems to show that it is wild there. Clarke665 says, “very common, and cultivated in India, perhaps wild in the eastern part.” It is possible that it spread into India from its original home, as into Amboyna666 in the seventeenth century, and perhaps more recently into the West Indies,667 in the wake of cultivation; for the plant is valued for the scent of its flowers, as well as for the dye, and is easily propagated by seed. There is the same doubt as to whether it is indigenous in Persia, Arabia, and Egypt (an essentially cultivated country), in Nubia, and even in Guinea, where specimens have been gathered.668 It is even possible that the area of this shrub extends from India to Nubia. Such a wide geographical distribution is, however, always somewhat rare. The common names may furnish some indication.
A Sanskrit name, sakachera,669 is attributed to the species, but as it has left no trace in the different modern languages of India, I am inclined to doubt its reality. The Persian name hanna is more widely diffused and retained than any other (hina of the Hindus, henneh and alhenna of the Arabs, kinna of the modern Greeks). That of cypros, used by the Syrians of the time of Dioscorides,670 has not found so much favour. This fact supports the opinion that the species grew originally on the borders of Persia, and that its use as well as its cultivation spread from the East to the West, from Asia into Africa.
Tobacco—Nicotiana Tabacum, Linnæus; and other species of Nicotiana.
At the time of the discovery of America, the custom of smoking, of snuff-taking, or of chewing tobacco was diffused over the greater part of this vast continent. The accounts of the earliest travellers, of which the famous anatomist Tiedemann671 has made a very complete collection, show that the inhabitants of South America did not smoke, but chewed tobacco or took snuff, except in the district of La Plata, Uruguay, and Paraguay, where no form of tobacco was used. In North America, from the Isthmus of Panama and the West Indies as far as Canada and California, the custom of smoking was universal, and circumstances show that it was also very ancient. Pipes, in great numbers and of wonderful workmanship, have been discovered in the tombs of the Aztecs in Mexico672 and in the mounds of the United States; some of them represent animals foreign to North America.673
As the tobacco plant is an annual which gives a great quantity of seeds, it was easy to sow and to cultivate or naturalize them more or less in the neighbourhood of dwellings, but it must be noted that different species of the genus Nicotiana were employed in different parts of America, which shows that they had not all the same origin. Nicotiana Tabacum, commonly cultivated, was the most widely diffused, and sometimes the only one in use in South America and the West Indies. The use of tobacco was introduced into La Plata, Paraguay,674 and Uruguay by the Spaniards, consequently we must look further to the north for the origin of the plant. De Martius does not think it was indigenous in Brazil,675 and he adds that the ancient Brazilians smoked the leaves of a species belonging to their country known to botanists as Nicotiana Langsdorfii. When I went into the question in 1855,676 I had not been able to discover any wild specimens of Nicotiana Tabacum except those sent by Blanchet from the province of Bahia, numbered 3223, a. No author, either before or since that time, has been more fortunate, and I see that Messrs. Flückiger and Hanbury, in their excellent work on vegetable drugs,677 say positively, “The common tobacco is a native of the new world, though not now known in a wild state.” I venture to gainsay this assertion, although the wild nature of a plant may always be disputed in the case of a plant which spreads so easily from cultivation.
We find in herbaria a number of specimens gathered in Peru without indication that they were cultivated or that they grew near plantations. Boissier’s herbarium contains two specimens collected by Pavon, from different localities.678 Pavon says in his flora that the species grows in the moist warm forests of the Peruvian Andes, and that it is cultivated. But—and this is more significant—Edouard André gathered specimens in the republic of Ecquador at Saint Nicholas, on the western slope of the volcano of Corazon in a virgin forest. These he was kind enough to send me. They are evidently the tall variety (four to six feet) of N. Tabacum, with the upper leaves narrow and acuminate, as they are represented in the plates of Hayne and Miller.679 The lower leaves are wanting. The flower, which gives the true characters of the species, is certainly that of N. Tabacum, and it is well known that the height of this plant and the breadth of the leaves vary in cultivation.680 It is very possible that its original country extended north as far as Mexico, as far south as Bolivia, and eastward to Venezuela.
Nicotiana rustica, Linnæus, a species with yellow flowers, very different from Tabacum,681 and which yields a coarse kind of tobacco, was more often cultivated by the Mexicans and the native tribes north of Mexico. I have a specimen brought from California by Douglas in 1837, a time when colonists were still few; but American authorities do not admit that the plant is wild, and Dr. Asa Gray says that it sows itself in waste places.682 This was perhaps the case with the specimens in Boissier’s herbarium, gathered in Peru by Pavon, and which he does not mention in the Peruvian flora. The species grows in abundance about Cordova in the Argentine Republic,683 but from what epoch is unknown. From the ancient use of the plant and the home of the most analogous species, the probabilities are in favour of a Mexican, Texan, or Californian origin.
Several botanists, even Americans, have believed that the species came from the old world. This is certainly a mistake, although the plant has spread here and there even into our forests, and sometimes in abundance,684 having escaped from cultivation. Authors of the sixteenth century spoke of it as a foreign plant introduced into gardens and sometimes spreading from them.685 It occurs in some herbaria under the names of N. tartarica, turcica, or sibirica; but these are garden-grown specimens, and no botanist has found the species in Asia, or on the borders of Asia, with any appearance of wildness.
This leads me to refute a widespread and more persistent error, in spite of what I proved in 1855, namely, that of regarding some species ill described from cultivated specimens as natives of the old world, of Asia in particular. The proofs of an American origin are so numerous and consistent that, without entering much into detail, I may sum them up as follows:—
A. Out of fifty species of the genus Nicotiana found in a wild state, two only are foreign to America; namely, N. suavolens of New Holland, with which is joined N. rotundifolia of the same country, and that which Ventinat had wrongly styled N. undulata; and N. fragans, Hooker, of the Isle of Pines, near New Caledonia, which differs very little from the preceding.
B. Though the Asiatic people are great lovers of tobacco, and have from a very early epoch sought the smoke of certain narcotic plants, none of them made use of tobacco before the discovery of America. Tiedemann has distinctly proved this fact by thorough researches into the writings of travellers in the Middle Ages.686 He even quotes for a later epoch, not long after the discovery of America, between 1540 and 1603, the fact that several travellers, some of whom were botanists, such as Belon and Rauwolf, who travelled through the Turkish and Persian empires, observing their customs with much attention, have not once mentioned tobacco. It was evidently introduced into Turkey at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and the Persians soon received it from the Turks. The first European who mentions the smoking of tobacco in Persia is Thomas Herbert, in 1626. No later travellers have omitted to notice the use of the hookah as well established. Olearius describes this apparatus, which he saw in 1633. The first mention of tobacco in India is in 1605,687 and it is probable that it was of European introduction. It was first introduced at Arracan and Pegu, in 1619, according to the traveller Methold.688 There are doubts about Java, because Rumphius, a very accurate observer, who wrote in the second half of the seventeenth century, says689 that, according to the tradition of some old people, tobacco had been employed as a medicine before the arrival of the Portuguese in 1496, and that only the practice of smoking it had been communicated by the Europeans. Rumphius adds, it is true, that the name tabaco or tambuco, which is in use in all these places, is of foreign origin. Sir Stamford Raffles,690 in his numerous historical researches on Java, gives, on the other hand, the year 1601 as the date of the introduction of tobacco into Java. The Portuguese had certainly discovered the coasts of Brazil between 1500 and 1504, but Vasco di Gama and his successors went to Asia round the Cape, or through the Red Sea, so that they could hardly have established frequent or direct communications between America and Java. Nicot had seen the plant in Portugal in 1560, so that the Portuguese probably introduced it into Asia in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Thunberg affirms691 that the use of tobacco was introduced into Japan by the Portuguese, and according to early travellers quoted by Tiedemann, this was at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Lastly, the Chinese have no original and ancient sign for tobacco; their paintings on china in the Dresden collection often present, from the year 1700 and never before that date, details relating to tobacco,692 and Chinese students are agreed that Chinese works do not mention the plant before the end of the sixteenth century.693 If it be remembered with what rapidity the use of tobacco has spread wherever it has been introduced, these data about Asia have an incontestable force.
C. The common names of tobacco confirm its American origin. If there had been any indigenous species in the old world there would be a great number of different names; but, on the contrary, the Chinese, Japanese, Javanese, Indian, Persian, etc., names are derived from the American names, petum, or tabak, tabok, tamboc, slightly modified. It is true that Piddington gives Sanskrit names, dhumrapatra and tamrakouta,694 but Adolphe Pictet informs me that the first of these names, which is not in Wilson’s dictionary, means only leaf for smoking, and appears to be of modern composition; while the second is probably no older, and seems to be a modern modification of the American names. The Arabic word docchan simply means smoke.695
Lastly, we must inquire into the two so-called Asiatic Nicotianæ. The one, called by Lehmann Nicotiana chinensis, came from the Russian botanist Fischer, who said it was Chinese. Lehmann said he had seen it in a garden. Now, it is well known how often an erroneous origin is attributed to plants grown by horticulturists, and besides, from the description, it seems that it was simply N. Tabacum, of which the seeds had perhaps come from China.696 The second species is N. persica, Lindley, figured in the Botanical Register (pl. 1592), of which the seeds had been sent from Ispahan to the Horticultural Society of London, as those of the best tobacco cultivated in Persia, that of Schiraz. Lindley did not observe that it corresponded exactly to N. alata, drawn three years before by Link and Otto697 from a plant in the gardens at Berlin. The latter was grown from seed sent by Sello from Southern Brazil. It is certainly a Brazilian species, with a white elongated corolla, allied to N. suaveolens of New Holland. Thus the tobacco cultivated sometimes in Persia along with the common species, is of American origin, as I declared in my Geographical Botany of 1855. I do not understand how this species was introduced into Persia. It must have been from seed taken from a garden, or brought by chance from America, and it is not likely that its cultivation is common in Persia, for Olivier and Bruguière, and other naturalists who have observed the tobacco plantations in that country, make no mention of it.
From all these reasons I conclude that no species of tobacco is a native of Asia. They are all American, except N. suaveolens of New Holland, and N. fragrans of the Isle of Pines to the south of New Caledonia.
Several Nicotianæ, besides N. tabacum and N. rustica, have been cultivated here and there by savages, or as a curiosity by Europeans. It is strange that so little notice is taken of these attempts, by means of which very choice tobacco might be obtained. The species with white flowers would yield probably a light and perfumed tobacco, and as some smokers seek the strongest tobaccos and the most disagreeable to non-smokers, I would recommend to their notice N. angustifolia of Chili, which the natives call tabaco del diablo.698
Cinnamon—Cinnamonum zeylanicum, Breyn.
This little tree, belonging to the laurel tribe, of which the bark of the young branches forms the cinnamon of commerce, grows in great quantities in the forests of Ceylon. Certain varieties which grow wild on the continent of India were formerly considered to be so many distinct species, but Anglo-Indian botanists are agreed in connecting them with that of Ceylon.699
The bark of C. zeylanicum, and that of several uncultivated species of Cinnamonum, which produce the cassia, or Chinese cassia, have been an important article of commerce from a very early period. Flückiger and Hanbury700 have treated of this historical question with so much learning and thoroughness, that we need only refer to their work, entitled Pharmacographia, or History of the Principal Drugs of Vegetable Origin. It is important from our point of view to note how modern the culture is of the cinnamon tree in comparison with the trade in its product. It was only between 1765 and 1770 that a Ceylon colonist, named de Koke, aided by Falck, the governor of the island, made some plantations which were wonderfully successful. They have diminished in Ceylon in the last few years, but others have been established in the tropical regions of the old and new worlds. The species becomes easily naturalized beyond the limits of cultivation,701 as birds are fond of the fruit, and drop the seeds in the forests.
China Grass—Boehmeria nivea, Hooker and Arnott.
The cultivation of this valuable Urticacea has been introduced into the south of France and of the United States for about thirty years, but commerce had previously acquainted us with the great value of its fibres, more tenacious than hemp and in some cases flexible as silk. Interesting details on the manner of cultivating the plant and of extracting its fibres702 may be found in several books; I shall confine myself here to defining as clearly as I can its geographical origin.
To attain this end we must not trust to the vague expressions of most authors, nor to the labels attached to the specimens in herbaria, since frequently no distinction has been made between cultivated, naturalized, or truly wild plants, and the two varieties of Boehmeria nivea (Urtica nivea, Linnæus), and Boehmeria tenacissima, Gaudichaud, or B. candicans, Hasskarl, have been confounded together; forms which appear to be varieties of the same species, because transitions between them have been observed by botanists. There is also a sub-variety, with leaves green on both sides, cultivated by Americans and by M. de Malartic in the south of France.
The variety earliest known (Urtica nivea, L.), with leaves white on the under side, is said to grow in China and some neighbouring countries. Linnæus says it is found on walls in China, which would imply a plant naturalized on rubbish-heaps from cultivation. But Loureiro703 says, “habitat et abundanter colitur in Cochin-China et China,” and according to Bentham,704 the collector Champion found it in abundance in the ravines of the island of Hongkong. According to Franchet and Savatier,705 it exists in Japan in clearings and hedges (in fruticetis umbrosis et sepibus). Blanco706 says it is common in the Philippine Isles. I find no proof that it is wild in Java, Sumatra, and other islands of the Malay Archipelago. Rumphius707 knew it only as a cultivated plant. Roxburgh708 believed it to be a native of Sumatra, but Miquel709 does not confirm this belief. The other varieties have nowhere been found wild, which supports the theory that they are only the result of cultivation.
Hemp—Cannabis sativa, Linnæus.
Hemp is mentioned, in its two forms, male and female, in the most ancient Chinese works, particularly in the Shu-King, written 500 B.C.710
It has Sanskrit names, bhanga and gangika.711 The root of these words, ang or an, recurs in all the Indo-European and modern Semitic languages: bang in Hindu and Persian, ganga in Bengali,712 hanf in German, hemp in English, chanvre in French, kanas in Keltic and modern Breton,713 cannabis in Greek and Latin, cannab in Arabic.714
According to Herodotus (born 484 B.C.), the Scythians used hemp, but in his time the Greeks were scarcely acquainted with it.715 Hiero II., King of Syracuse, bought the hemp used for the cordage of his vessels in Gaul, and Lucilius is the earliest Roman writer who speaks of the plant (100 B.C.). Hebrew books do not mention hemp.716 It was not used in the fabrics which enveloped the mummies of ancient Egypt. Even at the end of the eighteenth century it was only cultivated in Egypt for the sake of an intoxicating liquid extracted from the plant.717 The compilation of Jewish laws known as the Talmud, made under the Roman dominion, speaks of its textile properties as of a little-known fact.718 It seems probable that the Scythians transported this plant from Central Asia and from Russia when they migrated westward about 1500 B.C., a little before the Trojan war. It may also have been introduced by the earlier incursions of the Aryans into Thrace and Western Europe; yet in that case it would have been earlier known in Italy. Hemp has not been found in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland719 and Northern Italy.720
The observations on the habitat of Cannabis sativa agree perfectly with the data furnished by history and philology. I have treated specially of this subject in a monograph in Prodromus, 1869.721
The species has been found wild, beyond a doubt, to the south of the Caspian Sea,722 in Siberia, near the Irtysch, in the desert of the Kirghiz, beyond Lake Baikal, in Dahuria (government of Irkutsh). Authors mention it also throughout Southern and Central Russia, and to the south of the Caucasus,723 but its wild nature is here less certain, seeing that these are populous countries, and that the seeds of the hemp are easily diffused from gardens. The antiquity of the cultivation of hemp in China leads me to believe that its area extends further to the east, although this has not yet been proved by botanists.724 Boissier mentions the species as “almost wild in Persia.” I doubt whether it is indigenous there, since in that case the Greeks and Hebrews would have known of it at an earlier period.
White Mulberry—Morus alba, Linnæus.
The mulberry tree, which is most commonly used in Europe for rearing silkworms, is Morus alba. Its very numerous varieties have been carefully described by Seringe,725 and more recently by Bureau.726 That most widely cultivated in India, Morus indica, Linnæus (Morus alba, var. Indica, Bureau), is wild in the Punjab and in Sikkim, according to Brandis, inspector-general of forests in British India.727 Two other varieties, serrata and cuspidata, are also said to be wild in different provinces of Northern India.728 The Abbé David found a perfectly wild variety in Mongolia, described under the name of mongolica by Bureau; and Dr. Bretschneider729 quotes a name yen, from ancient Chinese authors, for the wild mulberry.
It is true he does not say whether this name applies to the white mulberry, pe-sang, of the Chinese plantations.730 The antiquity of its culture in China,731 and in Japan, and the number of different varieties grown there, lead us to believe that its original area extended eastward as far as Japan; but the indigenous flora of Southern China is little known, and the most trustworthy authors do not affirm that the plant is indigenous in Japan. Franchet and Savatier732 say that it is “cultivated from time immemorial, and become wild here and there.” It is worthy of note also that the white mulberry appears to thrive especially in mountainous and temperate countries, whence it may be argued that it was formerly introduced from the north of China into the plains of the south. It is known that birds are fond of the fruit, and bear the seeds to great distances and into uncultivated ground, and this makes it difficult to discover its really original habitat.
This facility of naturalization doubtless explains the presence in successive epochs of the white mulberry in Western Asia and the south of Europe. This must have occurred especially after the monks brought the silkworm to Constantinople under Justinian in the sixth century, and as the culture of silkworms was gradually propagated westwards. However, Targioni has proved that only the black mulberry, M. nigra, was known in Sicily and Italy when the manufacture of silk was introduced into Sicily in 1148, and two centuries later into Tuscany.733 According to the same author, the introduction of the white mulberry into Tuscany dates at the earliest from the year 1340. In like manner the manufacture of silk may have begun in China, because the silkworm is natural to that country; but it is very probable that the tree grew also in the north of India, where so many travellers have found it wild. In Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, I am inclined to believe that it was naturalized at a very early epoch, rather than to share Grisebach’s opinion that it is indigenous in the basin of the Caspian Sea. Boissier does not give it as wild in that region.734 Buhse735 found it in Persia, near Erivan and Bashnaruschin, and he adds, “naturalized in abundance in Ghilan and Masenderan.” Ledebour,736 in his Russian flora, mentions numerous localities round the Caucasus, but he does not specify whether the species is wild or naturalized. In the Crimea, Greece, and Italy, it exists only in a cultivated state.737 A variety, tatarica, often cultivated in the south of Russia, has become naturalized near the Volga.738
If the white mulberry did not originally exist in Persia and in the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea, it must have penetrated there a long while ago. I may quote in proof of this the name tut, tutti, tuta, which is Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and Tartar. There is a Sanskrit name, tula,739 which must be connected with the same root as the Persian name; but no Hebrew name is known, which is a confirmation of the theory of a successive extension towards the west of Asia.
I refer those of my readers who may desire more detailed information about the introduction of the mulberry and of silkworms to the able works of Targioni and Ritter, to which I have already referred. Recent discoveries made by various botanists have permitted me to add more precise data than those of Ritter on the question of origin, and if there are some apparent contradictions in our opinions on other points, it is because the famous geographer has considered a number of varieties as so many different species, whereas botanists, after a careful examination, have classed them together.
Black Mulberry—Morus nigra, Linnæus.
This tree is more valued for its fruit than for its leaves, and on that account I should have included it in the list of fruit trees; but its history can hardly be separated from that of the white mulberry. Moreover, its leaves are employed in many countries for the feeding of silkworms, although the silk produced is of inferior quality.
The black mulberry is distinguished from the white by several characters independently of the black colour of the fruit, which occurs also in a few varieties of the M. alba.740 It has not a great number of varieties like the latter, which argues a less ancient and a less general cultivation and a narrower primitive area.
Greek and Latin authors, even the poets, have mentioned Morus nigra, which they compare to Ficus sycomorus, and which they even confounded originally with this Egyptian tree.
Commentators for the last two centuries have quoted a number of passages which leave no doubt on this head, but which are devoid of interest in themselves.741 They furnish no proof touching the origin of the species, which is presumably Persian, unless we are to take seriously the fable of Pyramus and Thisbe, of which the scene was in Babylonia, according to Ovid.
Botanists have not yet furnished any certain proof that this species is indigenous in Persia. Boissier, who is the most learned in the floras of the East, contents himself with quoting Hohenacker as the discoverer of M. nigra in the forests of Lenkoran, on the south coast of the Caspian Sea, and he adds, “probably wild in the north of Persia near the Caspian Sea.”742 Ledebour, in his Russian flora, had previously indicated, on the authority of different travellers, the Crimea and the provinces south of the Caucasus;743 but Steven denies the existence of the species in the Crimea except in a cultivated state.744 Tchihatcheff and Koch found the black mulberry in high wild districts of Armenia. It is very probable that in the region to the south of the Caucasus and of the Caspian Sea Morus nigra is wild and indigenous rather than naturalized. What leads me to this belief is (1) that it is not known, even in a cultivated state, in India, China, or Japan; (2) that it has no Sanskrit name; (3) that it was so early introduced into Greece, a country which had intercourse with Armenia at an early period.745
Morus nigra spread so little to the south of Persia, that no certain Hebrew name is known for it, nor even a Persian name distinct from that of Morus alba. It was widely cultivated in Italy until the superiority of the white mulberry for the rearing of silkworms was recognized. In Greece the black mulberry is still the most cultivated.746 It has become naturalized here and there in these countries and in Spain.747
American Aloe—Agave Americana, Linnæus.
This ligneous plant, of the order of Amaryllidaceæ, has been cultivated from time immemorial in Mexico under the names maguey or metl, in order to extract from it, at the moment when the flower stem is developed, the wine known as pulque. Humboldt has given a full description of this culture,748 and he tells us elsewhere749 that the species grows in the whole of South America as far as five thousand feet of altitude. It is mentioned750 in Jamaica, Antigua, Dominica, and Cuba, but it must be observed that it multiplies easily by suckers, and that it is often planted far from dwellings to form fences or to extract from it the fibre known as pite, and this makes it difficult to ascertain its original habitat. Transported long since into the countries which border the Mediterranean, it occurs there with every appearance of an indigenous species, although there is no doubt as to its origin.751 Probably, to judge from the various uses made of it in Mexico before the arrival of the Europeans, it came originally from thence.
Sugar-Cane—Saccharum officinarum, Linnæus.
The origin of the sugar-cane, of its cultivation, and of the manufacture of sugar, are the subject of a very remarkable work by the geographer, Karl Ritter.752 I need not follow his purely agricultural and economical details; but for that which interests us particularly, the primitive habitat of the species, he is the best guide, and the facts observed during the last forty years for the most part support or confirm his opinions.
The sugar-cane is cultivated at the present day in all the warm regions of the globe, but a number of historical facts testify that it was first grown in Southern Asia, whence it spread into Africa, and later into America. The question is, therefore, to discover in what districts of the continent, or in which of the southern islands of Asia, the plant exists, or existed at the time it was first employed.
Ritter has followed the best methods of arriving at a solution. He notes first that all the species known in a wild state, and undoubtedly belonging to the genus Saccharum, grow in India, except one in Egypt.753 Five species have since been described, growing in Java, New Guinea, Timor, and the Philippine Isles.754 The probabilities are all in favour of an Asiatic origin, to judge from the data furnished by geographical botany.
Unfortunately no botanist had discovered at the time when Ritter wrote, or has since discovered, Saccharum officinarum wild in India, in the adjacent countries or in the archipelago to the south of Asia. All Anglo-Indian authors, Roxburgh, Wallich, Royle, etc., and more recently Aitchison,755 only mention the plant as a cultivated one. Roxburgh, who was so long a collector in India, says expressly, “where wild I do not know.” The family of the Gramineæ has not yet appeared in Sir Joseph Hooker’s flora. For the island of Ceylon, Thwaites does not even mention the cultivated plant.756 Rumphius, who has carefully described its cultivation in the Dutch colonies, says nothing about the home of the species. Miquel, Hasskarl, and Blanco mention no wild specimen in Sumatra, Java, or the Philippine Isles. Crawfurd tried to discover it, but failed to do so.757 At the time of Cook’s voyage Forster found the sugar-cane only as a cultivated plant in the small islands of the Pacific.758 The natives of New Caledonia cultivate a number of varieties of the sugar-cane, and use it constantly, sucking the syrup from the cane; but Vieillard759 takes care to say, “From the fact that isolated plants of Saccharum officinarum are often found in the middle of the bush and even on the mountains, it would be wrong to conclude that the plant is indigenous; for these specimens, poor and weak, only mark the site of old plantations, or are sprung from fragments of cane left by the natives, who seldom travel without a piece of cane in the hand.” In 1861, Bentham, who had access to the rich herbarium of Kew, says, in his Flora of Hongkong, “We have no authentic and certain proof of a locality where the common sugar-cane is wild.”
I do not know, however, why Ritter and every one else has neglected an assertion of Loureiro, in his Flora of Cochin-China,760 “Habitat, et colitur abundantissime in omnibus provinciis regni Cochin-Chinensis: simul in aliquibus imperii sinensis, sed minori copia.” The word habitat, separated by a comma from the rest, is a distinct assertion. Loureiro could not have been mistaken about the Saccharum officinarum, which he saw cultivated all about him, and of which he enumerates the principal varieties. He must have seen plants wild, at least in appearance. They may have spread from some neighbouring plantation, but I know nothing which makes it unlikely that the plant should be indigenous in this warm moist district of the continent of Asia.
Forskal761 mentions the species as wild in the mountains of Arabia, under a name which he believes to be Indian. If it came from Arabia, it would have spread into Egypt long ago, and the Hebrews would have known it.
Roxburgh had received in the botanical gardens of Calcutta in 1796, and had introduced into the plantations in Bengal, a Saccharum to which he gave the name of S. sinense, and of which he published an illustration in his great work Plantæ Coromandelianæ, vol. iii. pl. 232. It is perhaps only a form of S. officinarum, and moreover, as it is only known in a cultivated state, it tells nothing about the primitive country either of this or of any other variety.
A few botanists have asserted that the sugar-cane flowers more often in Asia than in America or Africa, and even that it produces seed762 on the banks of the Ganges, which they regard as a proof that it is indigenous. Macfadyen says so without giving any proof. It was an assertion made to him in Jamaica by some traveller; but Sir W. Hooker adds in a note, “Dr. Roxburgh, in spite of his long residence on the banks of the Ganges, has never seen the seeds of the sugar-cane.” It rarely flowers, and still more rarely bears fruit, as is commonly the case with plants propagated by buds or suckers, and if any variety of sugar-cane were disposed to seed, it would probably be less productive of sugar and would soon be abandoned. Rumphius, a better observer than many modern botanists, has given a good description of the cultivated cane in the Dutch colonies, and makes an interesting remark.763 “It never produces flowers or fruit unless it has remained several years in a stony place.” Neither he, nor any one else to my knowledge, has described or drawn the seed. The flower, on the contrary, has often been figured, and I have a fine specimen from Martinique.764 Schacht is the only person who has given a good analysis of the flower, including the pistil; he had not seen the seed ripe.765 De Tussac,766 who gives a poor analysis, speaks of the seed, but he only saw it young in the ovary.
In default of precise information as to the native country of the species, accessory means, linguistic and historical, of proving an Asiatic origin, are of some interest. Ritter gives them carefully; I will content myself with an epitome. The Sanskrit name of the sugar-cane was ikshu, ikshura, or ikshava, but the sugar was called sarkara, or sakkara, and all its names in our European languages of Aryan origin, beginning with the ancient ones—Greek, for example—are clearly derived from this. This is an indication of Asiatic origin, and that the produce of the cane was of ancient use in the southern regions of Asia with which the ancient Sanskrit-speaking nation may have had commercial dealings. The two Sanskrit words have remained in Bengali under the forms ik and akh.767 But in other languages beyond the Indus, we find a singular variety of names, at least when they are not akin to that of the Aryans; for instance: panchadara in Telinga, kyam in Burmese, mia in the dialect of Cochin-China, kan and tche, or tsche, in Chinese; and further south, among the Malays, tubu or tabu for the plant, and gula for the product. This diversity proves the great antiquity of its cultivation in those regions of Asia in which botanical indications point out the origin of the species.
The epoch of its introduction into different countries agrees with the idea that its origin was in India, Cochin-China, or the Malay Archipelago.
The Chinese were not acquainted with the sugar-cane at a very remote period, and they received it from the West. Ritter contradicts those authors who speak of a very ancient cultivation, and I find most positive confirmation of his opinion in Dr. Bretschneider’s pamphlet, drawn up at Pekin with the aid of all the resources of Chinese literature.768 “I have not been able to discover,” he says, “any allusion to the sugar-cane in the most ancient Chinese books (the five classics).” It appears to have been mentioned for the first time by the authors of the second century before Christ. The first description of it appears in the Nan-fang-tsao-mu-chuang, in the fourth century: “The chê chê, kan-chê (kan, sweet, chê, bamboo) grows,” it says, “in Cochin-China. It is several inches in circumference, and resembles the bamboo. The stem, broken into pieces, is eatable and very sweet. The sap which is drawn from it is dried in the sun. After a few days it becomes sugar (here a compound Chinese character), which melts in the mouth.... In the year 286 (of our era) the kingdom of Funan (in India, beyond the Ganges) sent sugar as a tribute.” According to the Pent-Sao, an emperor who reigned from 627 to 650 A.D., sent a man into the Indian province of Behar to learn how to manufacture sugar.
There is nothing said in these works of the plant growing wild in China; on the contrary, the origin in Cochin-China, indicated by Loureiro, finds an unexpected confirmation. It seems to me most probable that its primitive range extended from Bengal to Cochin-China. It may have included the Sunda Isles and the Moluccas, whose climate is very similar; but there are quite as many reasons for believing that it was early introduced into these from Cochin-China or the Malay peninsula.
The propagation of the sugar-cane from India westward is well known. The Greco-Roman world had a vague idea of the reed (calamus) which the Indians delighted to chew, and from which they obtained sugar.769 On the other hand, the Hebrew writings do not mention sugar;770 whence we may infer that the cultivation of the sugar-cane did not exist west of the Indus at the time of the Jewish captivity at Babylon. The Arabs in the Middle Ages introduced it into Egypt, Sicily, and the south of Spain,771 where it flourished until the abundance of sugar in the colonies caused it to be abandoned. Don Henriquez transported the sugar-cane from Sicily to Madeira, whence it was taken to the Canaries in 1503.772 Hence it was introduced into Brazil in the beginning of the sixteenth century.773 It was taken to St. Domingo about 1520, and shortly afterwards to Mexico;774 to Guadeloupe in 1644, to Martinique about 1650, to Bourbon when the colony was founded.775 The variety known as Otahiti, which is not, however, wild in that island, and which is also called Bourbon, was introduced into the French and English colonies at the end of the last and the beginning of the present century.776
The processes of cultivation and preparation of the sugar are described in a number of works, among which the following may be recommended: de Tussac, Flore des Antilles, 3 vols., Paris; vol. i. pp. 151-182; and Macfadyen, in Hooker’s Botanical Miscellany, 1830, vol. i. pp. 103-116.
PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FLOWERS, OR FOR THE ORGANS WHICH ENVELOP THEM.
Clove—Caryophyllus aromaticus, Linnæus.
The clove used for domestic purposes is the calix and flower-bud of a plant belonging to the order of Myrtaceæ. Although the plant has been often described and very well drawn from cultivated specimens, some doubt remains as to its nature when wild. I spoke of it in my Geographical Botany in 1855, but it does not appear that the question has made any further progress since then, which induces me to repeat here what I said then.
“The clove must have come originally from the Moluccas,” as Rumphius asserts,777 for its cultivation was limited two centuries ago to a few little islands in this archipelago. I cannot, however, find any proof that the true clove tree, with peduncles and aromatic buds, has been found in a wild state. Rumphius778 considers that a plant of which he gives a description, and a drawing under the name Caryophyllum sylvestre, belongs to the same species, and this plant is wild throughout the Moluccas. A native told him that the cultivated clove trees degenerate into this form, and Rumphius himself found a plant of C. sylvestre in a deserted plantation of cultivated cloves. Nevertheless plate 3 differs from plate 1 of the cultivated clove in the shape of the leaves and of the teeth of the calix. I do not speak of plate 2, which appears to be an abnormal form of the cultivated clove. Rumphius says that C. sylvestre has no aromatic properties; now, as a rule, the aromatic properties are more developed in the wild plants of a species than in the cultivated plants. Sonnerat779 also publishes figures of the true clove and of a spurious clove found in a small island near the country of the Papuans. It is easy to see that his false clove differs completely by its blunt leaves from the true clove, and also from the two species of Rumphius. I cannot make up my mind to class all these different plants, wild and cultivated, together, as all authors have done.780 It is especially necessary to exclude plate 120 of Sonnerat, which is admitted in the Botanical Magazine. An historical account of the cultivation of the clove, and of its introduction into different countries, will be found in the last-named work, in the Dictionnaire d’Agriculture, and in the dictionaries of natural history.
If it be true, as Roxburgh says,781 that the Sanskrit language had a name, luvunga, for the clove, the trade in this spice must date from a very early epoch, even supposing the name to be more modern than the true Sanskrit. But I doubt its genuine character, for the Romans would have known of a substance so easily transported, and it does not appear that it was introduced into Europe before the discovery of the Moluccas by the Portuguese.
Hop—Humulus Lupulus, Linnæus.
The hop is wild in Europe from England and Sweden as far south as the mountains of the Mediterranean basin, and in Asia as far as Damascus, as the south of the Caspian Sea, and of Eastern Siberia,782 but it is not found in India, the north of China, or the basin of the river Amur.783
In spite of the entirely wild appearance of the hop in Europe in districts far from cultivation, it has been sometimes asked if it is not of Asiatic origin.784 I do not think this can be proved, nor even that it is likely. The fact that the Greeks and Latins have not spoken of the use of the hop in making beer is easily explained, as they were almost entirely unacquainted with this drink. If the Greeks have not mentioned the plant, it is simply perhaps because it is rare in their country. From the Italian name lupulo it seems likely that Pliny speaks of it with other vegetables under the name lupus salictarius.785 That the custom of brewing with hops only became general in the Middle Ages proves nothing, except that other plants were formerly employed, as is still the case in some districts. The Kelts, the Germans, other peoples of the north and even of the south who had the vine, made beer786 either of barley or of other fermented grain, adding in certain cases different vegetable substances—the bark of the oak or of the tamarisk, for instance, or the fruits of Myrica gale.787 It is very possible that they did not soon discover the advantages of the hop, and that even after these were recognized, they employed wild hops before beginning to cultivate them. The first mention of hop-gardens occurs in an act of donation made by Pepin, father of Charlemagne, in 768.788 In the fourteenth century it was an important object of culture in Germany, but it began in England only under Henry VIII.789
The common names of the hop only furnish negative indications as to its origin. There is no Sanskrit name,790 and this agrees with the absence of the species in the region of the Himalayas, and shows that the early Aryan peoples had not noticed and employed it. I have quoted before791 some of the European names, showing their diversity, although some few of them may be derived from a common stock. Hehn, the philologist, has treated of their etymology, and shown how obscure it is, but he has not mentioned the names totally distinct from humle, hopf or hop, and chmeli of the Scandinavian, Gothic, and Slav races; for example, Apini in Lette, Apwynis in Lithuanian, tap in Esthonian, blust in Illyrian,792 which have evidently other roots. This variety tends to confirm the theory that the species existed in Europe before the arrival of the Aryan nations. Several different peoples must have distinguished, known, and used this plant successively, which confirms its extension in Europe and in Asia before it was used in brewing.
Carthamine—Carthamus tinctorius, Linnæus.
The composite annual which produces the dye called carthamine is one of the most ancient cultivated species. Its flowers are used for dyeing in red or yellow, and the seeds yield oil.
The grave-cloths which wrap the ancient Egyptian mummies are dyed with carthamine,793 and quite recently fragments of the plant have been found in the tombs discovered at Deir el Bahari.794 Its cultivation must also be ancient in India, since there are two Sanskrit names for it, cusumbha and kamalottara, of which the first has several derivatives in the modern languages of the peninsula.795 The Chinese only received carthamine in the second century B.C., when Chang-kien brought it back from Bactriana.796 The Greeks and Latins were probably not acquainted with it, for it is very doubtful whether this is the plant which they knew as cnikos or cnicus.797 At a later period the Arabs contributed largely to diffuse the cultivation of carthamine, which they named qorton, kurtum, whence carthamine, or usfur, or ihridh, or morabu,798 a diversity indicating an ancient existence in several countries of Western Asia or of Africa. The progress of chemistry threatens to do away with the cultivation of this plant as of many others, but it still subsists in the south of Europe, in the East, and throughout the valley of the Nile.799
No botanist has found the carthamine in a really wild state. Authors doubtfully assign to it an origin in India or Africa, in Abyssinia in particular, but they have never seen it except in a cultivated state, or with every appearance of having escaped from cultivation.800
Mr. Clarke,801 formerly director of the Botanical Gardens in Calcutta, who has lately studied the Compositæ of India, includes the species only as a cultivated one. The summary of our modern knowledge of the plants of the Nile region, including Abyssinia, by Schweinfurth and Ascherson,802 only indicates it as a cultivated species, nor does the list of the plants observed by Rohlfs on his recent journey mention a wild carthamine.803
As the species has not been found wild either in India or in Africa, and as it has been cultivated for thousands of years in both countries, the idea occurred to me of seeking its origin in the intermediate region; a method which had been successful in other cases.
Unfortunately, the interior of Arabia is almost unknown. Forskal, who has visited the coasts of Yemen has learnt nothing about the carthamine; nor is it mentioned among the plants of Botta and of Bové. But an Arab, Abu Anifa, quoted by Ebn Baithar, a thirteenth-century writer, expressed himself as follows:804—“Usfur, this plant furnishes a substance used as a dye; there are two kinds, one cultivated and one wild, which both grow in Arabia, of which the seeds are called elkurthum.” Abu Anifa was very likely right.
Saffron—Crocus sativus, Linnæus.
The saffron was cultivated in very early times in the west of Asia. The Romans praised the saffron of Cilicia, which they preferred to that grown in Italy.805 Asia Minor, Persia, and Kashmir have been for a long time the countries which export the most. India gets it from Kashmir806 at the present day. Roxburgh and Wallich do not mention it in their works. The two Sanskrit names mentioned by Piddington807 probably applied to the substance saffron brought from the West, for the name kasmirajamma appears to indicate its origin in Kashmir. The other name is kunkuma. The Hebrew word karkom is commonly translated saffron, but it more probably applies to carthamine, to judge from the name of the latter in Arabic.808 Besides, the saffron is not cultivated in Egypt or in Arabia. The Greek name is krokos.809 Saffron, which recurs in all modern European languages, comes from the Arabic sahafaran,810 zafran.811 The Spaniards, nearer to the Arabs, call it azafran. The Arabic name itself comes from assfar, yellow.
Trustworthy authors say that C. sativus is wild in Greece812 and in the Abruzzi mountains in Italy.813 Maw, who is preparing a monograph of the genus Crocus, based on a long series of observations in gardens and in herbaria, connects with C. sativus six forms which are found wild in mountainous districts from Italy to Kurdistan. None of these, he says,814 are identical with the cultivated variety; but certain forms described under other names (C. Orisnii, C. Cartwrightianus, C. Thomasii), hardly differ from it. These are from Italy and Greece.
The cultivation of saffron, of which the conditions are given in the Cours d’Agriculture by Gasparin, and in the Bulletin de la Société d’Acclimatation for 1870, is becoming more and more rare in Europe and Asia.815 It has sometimes had the effect of naturalizing the species for a few years at least in localities where it appears to be wild.