Alphonse de Candolle
Origin of Cultivated Plants
Without entering here into a purely botanical discussion, I may say that, after reading the descriptions quoted by Boissier, and looking at Wight’s433 plate of Spinacia tetandra, Roxb., cultivated in India, and the specimens of several herbaria, I see no decided difference between this plant and the cultivated spinach with prickly fruit. The term tetandra implies that one of the plants has five and the other four stamens, but the number varies in our cultivated spinaches.434
If, as seems probable, the two plants are two varieties, the one cultivated, the other sometimes wild and sometimes cultivated, the oldest name, S. oleracea, ought to persist, especially as the two plants are found in the cultivated grounds of their original country.
The Dutch or great spinach, of which the fruit has no spines, is evidently a garden product. Tragus, or Bock was the first to mention it in the sixteenth century.435
Amaranth—Amarantus gangeticus, Linnæus.
Several annual amaranths are cultivated as a green vegetable in Mauritius, Bourbon, and the Seychelles Isles, under the name of brède de Malabar.436 This appears to be the principal species. It is much cultivated in India. Anglo-Indian botanists mistook it for a time for Amarantus oleraceus of Linnæus, and Wight gives an illustration of it under this name,437 but it is now acknowledged to be a different species, and belongs to A. gangeticus. Its numerous varieties, differing in size, colour, etc., are called in the Telinga dialect tota kura, with the occasional addition of an adjective for each. There are other names in Bengali and Hindustani. The young shoots sometimes take the place of asparagus at the table of the English.438 A. melancholicus, often grown as an ornamental plant in European gardens, is considered one of the forms of this species.
Its original home is perhaps India, but I cannot discover that the plant has ever been found there in a wild state; at least, this is not asserted by any author. All the species of the genus Amarantus spread themselves in cultivated ground, on rubbish-heaps by the wayside, and thus become half-naturalized in hot countries as well as in Europe. Hence the extreme difficulty in distinguishing the species, and above all in guessing or proving their origin. The species most nearly akin to A. gangeticus appear to be Asiatic.
A. gangeticus is said by trustworthy authorities to be wild in Egypt and Abyssinia;439 but this is perhaps only the result of such naturalization as I spoke of just now. The existence of numerous varieties and of different names in India, render its Indian origin most probable.
The Japanese cultivate as vegetables A. caudatus, A. mangostanus, and A. melancholicus (or gangeticus) of Linnæus,440 but there is no proof that any of them are indigenous. In Java A. polystachyus, Blume, is cultivated; it is very common among rubbish, by the wayside, etc.441
I shall speak presently of the species grown for the seed.
Leek—Allium ampeloprasum, var. Porrum.
According to the careful monograph by J. Gay,442 the leek, as early writers443 suspected, is only a cultivated variety of Allium ampeloprasum of Linnæus, so common in the East, and in the Mediterranean region, especially in Algeria, which in Central Europe sometimes becomes naturalized in vineyards and round ancient cultivations.444 Gay seems to have mistrusted the indications of the floras of the south of Europe, for, contrary to his method with other species of which he gives the localities out of Algeria, he only quotes in the present case the Algerian localities; admitting, however, the identity of name in the authors for other countries.
The cultivated variety of Porrum has not been found wild. It is only mentioned in doubtful localities, such as vineyards, gardens, etc. Ledebour445 indicates for A. ampeloprasum the borders of the Crimea, and the provinces to the south of the Caucasus. Wallich brought a specimen from Kamaon, in India,446 but we cannot be sure that it was wild. The works on Cochin-China (Loureiro), China (Bretschneider), and Japan (Franchet and Savatier) make no mention of it.
Article II.—Fodder
Lucern—Medicago sativa, Linnæus.
The lucern was known to the Greeks and Romans. They called it in Greek medicai, in Latin medica, or herba medica, because it had been brought from Media at the time of the Persian war, about 470 years before the Christian era.447 The Romans often cultivated it, at any rate from the beginning of the first or second century. Cato does not speak of it,448 but it is mentioned by Varro, Columella, and Virgil. De Gasparin449 notices that Crescenz, in 1478, does not mention it in Italy, and that in 1711 Tull had not seen it beyond the Alps. Targioni, however, who could not be mistaken on this head, says that the cultivation of lucern was maintained in Italy, especially in Tuscany, from ancient times.450 It is rare in modern Greece.451 French cultivators have often given to the lucern the name of sainfoin, which belongs properly to Onobrychis sativa; and this transposition still exists, for instance in the neighbourhood of Geneva. The name lucern has been supposed to come from the valley of Luzerne, in Piedmont; but there is another and more probable origin. The Spaniards had an old name, eruye, mentioned by J. Bauhin,452 and the Catalans call it userdas453 whence perhaps the patois name in the south of France, laouzerdo, nearly akin to luzerne. It was so commonly cultivated in Spain that the Italians have sometimes called it herba spagna.454 The Spaniards have, besides the names already given, mielga, or melga, which appears to come from Medica, but they principally used names derived from the Arabic —alfafa, alfasafat, alfalfa. In the thirteenth century, the famous physician Ebn Baithar, who wrote at Malaga, uses the Arab word fisfisat, which he derives from the Persian isfist.455 It will be seen that, if we are to trust to the common names, the origin of the plant would be either in Spain, Piedmont, or Persia. Fortunately botanists can furnish direct and possible proofs of the original home of the species.
It has been found wild, with every appearance of an indigenous plant, in several provinces of Anatolia, to the south of the Caucasus, in several parts of Persia, in Afghanistan, in Beluchistan,456 and in Kashmir.457 In the south of Russia, a locality mentioned by some authors, it is perhaps the result of cultivation as well as in the south of Europe. The Greeks may, therefore, have introduced the plant from Asia Minor as well as from India, which extended from the north of Persia.
This origin of the lucern, which is well established, makes me note as a singular fact that no Sanskrit name is known.458 Clover and sainfoin have none either, which leads us to suppose that the Aryans had no artificial meadows.
Sainfoin—Hedysarum Onobrychis, Linnæus; Onobrychis sativa, Lamarck.
This leguminous plant, of which the usefulness in the dry and chalky soils of temperate regions is incontestable, has not been long in cultivation. The Greeks did not grow it, and their descendants have not introduced it into their agriculture to this day.459 The plant called Onobrychis by Dioscorides and Pliny, is Onobrychis Caput-Galli of modern botanists,460 a species wild in Greece and elsewhere, which is not cultivated. The sainfoin, or lupinella of the Italians, was highly esteemed as fodder in the south of France in the time of Olivier de Serres,461 that is to say, in the sixteenth century; but in Italy it was only in the eighteenth century that this cultivation spread, particularly in Tuscany.462
Sainfoin is a herbaceous plant, which grows wild in the temperate parts of Europe, to the south of the Caucasus, round the Caspian Sea,463 and even beyond Lake Baikal.464 In the south of Europe it grows only on the hills. Gussone does not reckon it among the wild species of Sicily, nor Moris among those of Sardinia, nor Munby among those of Algeria.
No Sanskrit, Persian, or Arabic names are known. Everything tends to show that the cultivation of this plant originated in the south of France as late perhaps as the fifteenth century.
French Honeysuckle, or Spanish Sainfoin—Hedysarum coronarium, Linnæus.
The cultivation of this leguminous plant, akin to the sainfoin, and of which a good illustration may be found in the Flora des Serres et des Jardins, vol. xiii. pl. 1382, has been diffused in modern times through Italy, Sicily, Malta, and the Balearic Isles.465 Marquis Grimaldi, who first pointed it out to cultivators in 1766, had seen it at Seminara, in Lower Calabria; De Gasparin466 recommends it for Algeria, and it is probable that cultivators under similar conditions in Australia, at the Cape, in South America or Mexico, would do well to try it. In the neighbourhood of Orange, in Algeria, the plant did not survive the cold of 6° centigrade.
Hedysarum coronarium grows in Italy from Genoa to Sicily and Sardinia,467 in the south of Spain468 and in Algeria,469 where it is rare. It is, therefore, a species of limited geographical area.
Purple Clover—Trifolium pratense, Linnæus.
Clover was not cultivated in ancient times, although the plant was doubtless known to nearly all the peoples of Europe and of temperate Western Asia. Its use was first introduced into Flanders in the sixteenth century, perhaps even earlier, and, according to Schwerz, the Protestants expelled by the Spaniards carried it into Germany, where they established themselves under the protection of the Elector Palatine. It was also from Flanders that the English received it in 1633, through the influence of Weston, Earl of Portland, then Lord Chancellor.470
Trifolium pratense is wild throughout Europe, in Algeria,471 on the mountains of Anatolia, in Armenia, and in Turkestan,472 in Siberia towards the Altai Mountains,473 and in Kashmir and Garwhall.474
The species existed, therefore, in Asia, in the land of the Aryan nations; but no Sanskrit name is known, whence it may be inferred that it was not cultivated.
Crimson or Italian Clover—Trifolium incarnatum, Linnæus.
An annual plant grown for fodder, whose cultivation, says Vilmorin, long confined to a few of the southern departments, becomes every day more common in France.475 De Candolle, at the beginning of the present century, had only seen it in the department of Ariège.476 It has existed for about sixty years in the neighbourhood of Geneva. Targioni does not think that it is of ancient date in Italy,477 and the trivial name trafoglio strengthens his opinion.
The Catalan fé, fench,478 and, in the patois of the south of France,479 farradje (Roussillon), farratage (Languedoc), feroutgé (Gascony), whence the French name farouch, have, on the other hand, an original character, which indicates an ancient cultivation round the Pyrenees. The term which is sometimes used, “clover of Roussillon,” also shows this.
The wild plant exists in Galicia, in Biscaya, and Catalonia,480 but not in the Balearic Isles;481 it is found in Sardinia482 and in the province of Algiers.483 It appears in several localities in France, Italy, and Dalmatia, in the valley of the Danube and Macedonia, but in many cases it is not known whether it may not have strayed from neighbouring cultivation. A singular locality in which it appears to be indigenous, according to English authors, is on the coast of Cornwall, near the Lizard. In this place, according to Bentham, it is the pale yellow variety, which is truly wild on the Continent, while the crimson variety is only naturalized in England from cultivation.484 I do not know to what degree this remark of Bentham’s as to the wild nature of the sole variety of a yellow colour (var. Molinerii, Seringe) is confirmed in all the countries where the species grows. It is the only one indicated by Moris in Sardinia, and in Dalmatia by Viviani,485 in the localities which appear natural (in pascuis collinis, in montanis, in herbidis). The authors of the Bon Jardinier486 affirm with Bentham that Trifolium Molinerii is wild in the north of France, that with crimson flowers being introduced from the south; and while they admit the absence of a good specific distinction, they note that in cultivation the variety Molinerii is of slower growth, often biennial instead of annual.
Alexandrine or Egyptian Clover—Trifolium Alexandrinum, Linnæus.
This species is extensively cultivated in Egypt as fodder. Its Arab name is bersym or berzun.487 There is nothing to show that it has been long in use; the name does not occur in Hebrew and Armenian botanical works. The species is not wild in Egypt, but it is certainly wild in Syria and Asia Minor.488
Ervilia—Ervum Ervilia, Linnæus; Vicia Ervilia, Willdenow.
Bertoloni489 gives no less than ten common Italian names —ervo, lero, zirlo, etc. This is an indication of an ancient and general culture. Heldreich490 says that the modern Greeks cultivate the plant in abundance as fodder. They call it robai, from the ancient Greek orobos, as ervos comes from the Latin ervum. The cultivation of the species is mentioned by ancient Greek and Latin authors.491 The Greeks made use of the seed; for some has been discovered in the excavations on the site of Troy.492 There are a number of common names in Spain, some of them Arabic,493 but the species has not been so widely cultivated there for several centuries.494 In France it is so little grown that many modern works on agriculture do not mention it. It is unknown in British India.495
General botanical works indicate Ervum Ervilia as growing in Southern Europe, but if we take severally the best floras, it will be seen that it is in such localities as fields, vineyards, or cultivated ground. It is the same in Western Asia, where Boissier496 speaks of specimens from Syria, Persia, and Afghanistan. Sometimes, in abridged catalogues,497 the locality is not given, but nowhere do I find it asserted that the plant has been seen wild in places far from cultivation. The specimens in my own herbarium furnish no further proof on this head.
In all likelihood the species was formerly wild in Greece, Italy, and perhaps Spain and Algeria, but the frequency of its cultivation in the very regions where it existed prevent us from now finding the wild stocks.
Tare, or Common Vetch—Vicia sativa, Linnæus.
Vicia sativa is an annual leguminous plant wild throughout Europe, except in Lapland. It is also common in Algeria,498 and to the south of the Caucasus as far as the province of Talysch.499 Roxburgh pronounces it to be wild in the north-west provinces and in Bengal, but Sir Joseph Hooker admits this only as far as the variety called angustifolia500 is concerned. No Sanskrit name is known, and in the modern languages of India only Hindu names.501 Targioni believes it to be the ketsach of the Hebrews.502 I have received specimens from the Cape and from California. The species is certainly not indigenous in the two last-named regions, but has escaped from cultivation.
The Romans sowed this plant both for the sake of the seed and as fodder as early as the time of Cato.503 I have discovered no proof of a more ancient cultivation. The name vik, whence vicia, dates from a very remote epoch in Europe, for it exists in Albanian,504 which is believed to be the language of the Pelasgians, and among the Slav, Swedish, and Germanic nations, with slight modifications. This does not prove that the species was cultivated. It is distinct enough and useful enough to herbivorous animals to have received common names from the earliest times.
Flat-podded Pea—Lathyrus Cicera, Linnæus.
An annual leguminous plant, esteemed as fodder, but whose seed, if used as food in any quantity, becomes dangerous.505
It is grown in Italy under the name of mochi.506 Some authors suspect that it is the cicera of Columella and the ervilia of Varro,507 but the common Italian name is very different to these. The species is not cultivated in Greece.508 It is more or less grown in France and Spain, without anything to show that its use dates from ancient times. However, Wittmack509 attributes to it, but doubtfully, some seeds brought by Virchow from the Trojan excavations.
According to the floras, it is evidently wild in dry places, beyond the limits of cultivation in Spain and Italy.510 It is also wild in Lower Egypt, according to Schweinfurth and Ascherson;511 but there is no trace of ancient cultivation in this country or among the Hebrews. Towards the East its wild character becomes less certain. Boissier indicates the plant “in cultivated ground from Turkey in Europe, and Egypt as far as the south of the Caucasus and Babylon.”512 It is not mentioned in India either as wild or cultivated, and has no Sanskrit name.513
The species is probably a native of the region comprised between Spain and Greece, perhaps also of Algeria,514 and diffused by a cultivation, not of very ancient date, over Western Asia.
Chickling Vetch—Lathyrus sativus, Linnæus.
An annual leguminous plant, cultivated in the South of Europe, from a very early age, as fodder, and also for the seeds. The Greeks called it lathyros515 and the Latins cicercula.516 It is also cultivated in the temperate regions of Western Asia, and even in the north of India;517 but it has no Hebrew518 nor Sanskrit name,519 which argues a not very ancient cultivation in these regions.
Nearly all the floras of the south of Europe and of Algeria give the plant as cultivated and half-wild, rarely and only in a few localities as truly wild. It is easy to understand the difficulty of recognizing the wild character of a species often mixed with cereals, and which persists and spreads itself after cultivation. Heldreich does not allow that it is indigenous in Greece.520 This is a strong presumption that in the rest of Europe and in Algeria the plant has escaped from cultivation.
It is probable that this was not the case in Western Asia; for authors cite sufficiently wild localities, where agriculture plays a less considerable part than in Europe. Ledebour,521 for instance, mentions specimens gathered in the desert, near the Caspian Sea, and in the province of Lenkoran. Meyer522 confirms the assertion with respect to Lenkoran. Baker, in his flora of British India, after indicating the species as scattered here and there in the northern provinces, adds, “often cultivated,” whence it may be inferred that he considers it as indigenous, at least in the north. Boissier asserts nothing with regard to the localities in Persia which he mentions in his Oriental flora.523
To sum up, I think it probable that the species was indigenous before cultivation in the region extending from the south of the Caucasus, or of the Caspian Sea, to the north of India, and that it spread towards Europe in the track of ancient cultivation, mixed perhaps with cereals.
Ochrus—Pisum ochrus, Linnæus; Lathyrus ochrus, de Candolle.
Cultivated as an annual fodder in Catalonia, under the name of tapisots,524 and in Greece, particularly in the island of Crete, under that of ochros,525 mentioned by Theophrastus,526 but without a word of description. Latin authors do not speak of it, which argues a rare and local cultivation in ancient times.
The species is certainly wild in Tuscany.527 It appears to be wild also in Greece and Sardinia, where it is found in hedges,528 and in Spain, where it grows in uncultivated ground;529 but as for the south of France, Algeria, and Sicily, authors are either silent as to the locality, or mention only fields and cultivated ground. The plant is unknown further east than Syria,530 where probably it is not wild.
The fine plate published by Sibthorp, Flora Græca, 589, suggests that the species is worthy of more general cultivation.
Trigonel, or Fenugreek– Trigonella fænum-græcum, Linnæus.
The cultivation of this annual leguminous plant was common in ancient Greece and Italy,531 either for spring forage, or for the medicinal properties of its seeds. Abandoned almost everywhere in Europe, and notably in Greece,532 it is maintained in the East and in India,533 where it is probably of very ancient date, and throughout the Nile Valley.534 The species is wild in the Punjab and in Kashmir,535 in the deserts of Mesopotamia and of Persia,536 and in Asia Minor,537 where, however, the localities cited do not appear sufficiently distinct from the cultivated ground. It is also indicated538 in several places in Southern Europe, such as Mount Hymettus and other localities in Greece, the hills above Bologna and Genoa, and a few waste places in Spain; but the further west we go the more we find mentioned such localities as fields, cultivated ground, etc.; and careful authors do not fail to note that the species has probably escaped from cultivation.539 I do not hesitate to say that if a plant of this nature were indigenous in Southern Europe, it would be far more common, and would not be wanting to the insular floras, such as those of Sicily, Ischia, and the Balearic Isles.540
The antiquity of the species and of its use in India is confirmed by the existence of several different names in different dialects, and above all of a Sanskrit and modern Hindu name, methi.541 There is a Persian name, schemlit, and an Arab name, helbeh;542 but none is known in Hebrew.543 One of the names of the plant in ancient Greek, tailis τηλις, may, perhaps, be considered by philologists as akin to the Sanskrit name,544 but of this I am no judge. The species may have been introduced by the Aryans, and the primitive name have left no trace in northern languages, since it can only live in the south of Europe.
Bird’s Foot—Ornithopus sativus, Brotero; O. isthmocarpus, Cosson.
The true bird’s foot, wild and cultivated in Portugal, was described for the first time in 1804 by Brotero,545 and Cosson has distinguished it more clearly from allied species.546 Some authors had confounded it with Ornithopus roseus of Dufour, and agriculturists have sometimes given it the name of a very different species, O. perpusillus, which by reason of its small size is unsuited for cultivation. It is only necessary to see the pod of Ornithopus sativus to make certain of the species, for it is when ripe contracted at intervals and considerably bent. If there are in the fields plants of a similar appearance, but whose pods are straight and not contracted, they are the result of a cross with O. roseus, or, if the pod is curved but not contracted, with O. compressus. From the appearance of these plants, it seems that they might be grown in the same manner, and would present, I suppose, the same advantages.
The bird’s foot is only suited to a dry and sandy soil. It is an annual which furnishes in Portugal a very early spring fodder. Its cultivation has been successfully introduced into Campine.547
O. sativus appears to be wild in several districts of Portugal and the south of Spain. I have a specimen from Tangier; and Cosson found it in Algeria. It is often found in abandoned fields, and even elsewhere. It is difficult to say whether the specimens are not from plants escaped from cultivation, but localities are cited where this seems improbable; for instance, a pine wood near Chiclana, in the south of Spain (Willkomm).
Spergula, or Corn Spurry—Spergula arvensis, Linnæus.
This annual, belonging to the family of the Caryophylaceæ, grows in sandy fields and similar places in Europe, in North Africa and Abyssinia,548 in Western Asia as far as Hindustan,549 and even in Java.550 It is difficult to know over what extent of the old world it was originally indigenous. In many localities we do not know if it is really wild or naturalized from cultivation. Sometimes a recent introduction may be suspected. In India, for instance, numerous specimens have been gathered in the last few years; but Roxburgh, who was so diligent a collector at the end of the last and the beginning of the present century, does not mention the species. No Sanskrit or modern Hindu name is known,551 and it has not been found in the countries between India and Turkey.
The common names may tell us something with regard to the origin of the species and to its cultivation.
No Greek or Latin name is known. Spergula, in Italian spergola, seems to be a common name long in use in Italy. Another Italian name, erba renaiola, indicates only its growth in the sand (rena). The French (spargoule), Spanish (esparcillas), Portuguese (espargata), and German (Spark), have all the same root. It seems that throughout the south of Europe the species was taken from country to country by the Romans, before the division of the Latin languages. In the north the case is very different. There is a Russian name, toritsa;552 several Danish names, humb or hum, girr or kirr;553 and Swedish, knutt, fryle, nägde, skorff.554 This great diversity shows that attention had long been drawn to this plant in this part of Europe, and argues an ancient cultivation. It was cultivated in the neighbourhood of Montbelliard in the sixteenth century,555 and it is not stated that it was then of recent introduction. Probably it arose in the south of Europe during the Roman occupation, and perhaps earlier in the north. In any case, its original home must have been Europe.
Agriculturists distinguish a taller variety of spergula,556 but botanists are not agreed with them in finding in it sufficient characteristics of a distinct species, and some do not even make it a variety.
Guinea Grass—Panicum maximum, Jacquin.557
This perennial grass has a great reputation in countries lying between the tropics as a nutritious fodder, easy of cultivation. With a little care a meadow of guinea grass will last for twenty years.558
Its cultivation appears to have begun in the West Indies. P. Browne speaks of it in his work on Jamaica, published in the middle of the last century, and it is subsequently mentioned by Swartz.
The former mentions the name guinea grass, without any remarks on the original home of the species. The latter says, “formerly brought from the coast of Africa to the Antilles.” He probably trusted to the indication given by the common name; but we know how fallacious such indications of origin sometimes are. Witness the so-called Turkey wheat, which comes from America.
Swartz, who is an excellent botanist, says that the plant grows in the dry cultivated pastures of the West Indies, where it is also wild, which may imply that it has become naturalized in places where it was formerly cultivated. I cannot find it anywhere asserted that it is really wild in the West Indies. It is otherwise in Brazil. From data collected by de Martius and studied by Nees,559 data afterwards increased and more carefully studied by Dœll,560 Panicum maximum grows in the clearings of the forests of the Amazon valley, near Santarem, in the provinces of Balria, Ceara, Rio de Janeiro, and Saint Paul. Although the plant is often cultivated in these countries, the localities given, by their number and nature, prove that it is indigenous. Dœll has also seen specimens from French Guiana and New Granada.
With respect to Africa, Sir William Hooker561 mentioned specimens brought from Sierra Leone, from Aguapim, from the banks of the Quorra, and from the Island of St. Thomas, in Western Africa. Nees562 indicates the species in several districts of Cape Colony, even in the bush and in mountainous country. Richard563 mentions places in Abyssinia, which also seem to be beyond the limits of cultivation, but he owns to being not very sure of the species. Anderson, on the contrary, positively asserts that Panicum maximum was brought from the banks of the Mozambique and of the Zambesi rivers by the traveller Peters.564
The species is known to have been introduced into Mauritius by the Governour Labourdonnais,565 and to have become naturalized from cultivation as in Rodriguez and the Seychelles Isles. Its introduction into Asia must be recent, for Roxburgh and Miquel do not mention the species. In Ceylon it is only cultivated.566
On the whole, it seems to me that the probabilities are in favour of an African origin, as its name indicates, and this is confirmed by the general, but insufficiently grounded opinion of authors.567 However, as the plant spreads so rapidly, it is strange that it has not reached Egypt from the Mozambique or Abyssinia, and that it was introduced so late into the islands to the east of Africa. If the co-existence of phanerogamous species in Africa and America previous to cultivation were not extremely rare, it might be inferred in this case; but this is unlikely in the case of a cultivated plant of which the diffusion is evidently very easy.
Article III.—Various Uses of the Stem and Leaves
Tea—Thea sinensis, Linnæus.
In the middle of the eighteenth century, when the shrub which produces tea was still very little known, Linnæus gave it the name of Thea sinensis. Soon afterwards, in the second edition of the Species Plantarum, he judged it better to distinguish two species, Thea bohea and Thea viridis, which he believed to correspond to the commercial distinction between black and green teas. It has since been proved that there is but one species, comprehending several varieties, from all of which either black or green tea may be obtained according to the process of manufacture. This question was settled, when another was raised, as to whether Thea really forms a genus by itself distinct from the genus Camellia. Some authors make Thea a section of the old genus Camellia; but from the characters indicated with great precision by Seemann,568 it seems to me that we are justified in retaining the genus Thea, together with the old nomenclature of the principal species.
A Japanese legend, related by Kæmpfer,569 is often quoted. A priest who came from India into China in A.D. 519, having succumbed to sleep when he had wished to watch and pray, in a movement of anger cut off his two eyelids, which were changed into a shrub, the tea tree, whose leaves are eminently calculated to prevent sleep. Unfortunately for those people who readily admit legends in whole or in part, the Chinese have never heard of this story, although the event is said to have taken place in their country. Tea was known to them long before 519, and probably it was not brought from India. This is what Bretschneider tells us in his little work, rich in botanical and philological facts.570 The Pentsao, he says, mentions tea 2700 B.C., the Rye 300 or 600 B.C.; and the commentator of the latter work, in the fourth century of our era, gave details about the plant and about the infusion of the leaves. Its use is, therefore, of very ancient date in China. It is perhaps more recent in Japan, and if it has been long known in Cochin-China, it is possible, but not proved, that it formerly spread thither from India; authors cite no Sanskrit name, nor even any name in modern Indian languages. This fact will appear strange when contrasted with what we have to say on the natural habitat of the species.