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THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES.

VOLUME XLVIII.


   THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES.

   ORIGIN OF
   CULTIVATED PLANTS.

   BY

   ALPHONSE DE CANDOLLE,

   FOREIGN ASSOCIATE OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE;
   FOREIGN MEMBER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETIES OF LONDON, EDINBURGH,
   AND DUBLIN; OF THE ACADEMIES OF ST. PETERSBURG,
   STOCKHOLM, BERLIN, MUNICH, BRUSSELS, COPENHAGEN, AMSTERDAM,
   ROME, TURIN, MADRID, BOSTON, ETC.

   NEW YORK:
   D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
   1908.




AUTHOR'S PREFACE.


THE knowledge of the origin of cultivated plants is interesting to
agriculturists, to botanists, and even to historians and philosophers
concerned with the dawnings of civilization.

I went into this question of origin in a chapter in my work on
geographical botany; but the book has become scarce, and, moreover,
since 1855 important facts have been discovered by travellers,
botanists, and archaeologists. Instead of publishing a second edition, I
have drawn up an entirely new and more extended work, which treats of
the origin of almost double the number of species belonging to the
tropics and the temperate zones. It includes almost all plants which are
cultivated, either on a large scale for economic purposes, or in
orchards and kitchen gardens.

I have always aimed at discovering the condition and the habitat of each
species before it was cultivated. It was needful to this end to
distinguish from among innumerable varieties that which should be
regarded as the most ancient, and to find out from what quarter of the
globe it came. The problem is more difficult than it appears at first
sight. In the last century and up to the middle of the present authors
made little account of it, and the most able have contributed to the
propagation of erroneous ideas. I believe that three out of four of
Linnaeus' indications of the original home of cultivated plants are
incomplete or incorrect. His statements have since been repeated, and in
spite of what modern writers have proved touching several species, they
are still repeated in periodicals and popular works. It is time that
mistakes, which date in some cases from the Greeks and Romans, should be
corrected. The actual condition of science allows of such correction,
provided we rely upon evidence of varied character, of which some
portion is quite recent, and even unpublished; and this evidence should
be sifted as we sift evidence in historical research. It is one of the
rare cases in which a science founded on observation should make use of
testimonial proof. It will be seen that this method leads to
satisfactory results, since I have been able to determine the origin of
almost all the species, sometimes with absolute certainty, and sometimes
with a high degree of probability.

I have also endeavoured to establish the number of centuries or
thousands of years during which each species has been in cultivation,
and how its culture spread in different directions at successive epochs.

A few plants cultivated for more than two thousand years, and even some
others, are not now known in a spontaneous, that is, wild condition, or
at any rate this condition is not proved. Questions of this nature are
subtle. They, like the distinction of species, require much research in
books and in herbaria. I have even been obliged to appeal to the
courtesy of travellers or botanists in all parts of the world to obtain
recent information. I shall mention these in each case with the
expression of my grateful thanks.

In spite of these records, and of all my researches, there still remain
several species which are unknown wild. In the cases where these come
from regions not completely explored by botanists, or where they belong
to genera as yet insufficiently studied, there is hope that the wild
plant may be one day discovered. But this hope is fallacious in the case
of well-known species and countries. We are here led to form one of two
hypotheses; either these plants have since history began so changed in
form in their wild as well as in their cultivated condition that they
are no longer recognized as belonging to the same species, or they are
extinct species. The lentil, the chick-pea, probably no longer exist in
nature; and other species, as wheat, maize, the broad bean, carthamine,
very rarely found wild, appear to be in course of extinction. The number
of cultivated plants with which I am here concerned being two hundred
and forty-nine, the three, four, or five species, extinct or nearly
extinct, is a large proportion, representing a thousand species, out of
the whole number of phanerogams. This destruction of forms must have
taken place during the short period of a few hundred centuries, on
continents where they might have spread, and under circumstances which
are commonly considered unvarying. This shows how the history of
cultivated plants is allied to the most important problems of the
general history of organized beings.

   GENEVA, 1882.


CONTENTS.


   PART I.

   GENERAL REMARKS.

   CHAPTER                                                      PAGE

    I. IN WHAT MANNER AND AT WHAT EPOCHS CULTIVATION BEGAN
           IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES                                   1

   II. METHODS FOR DISCOVERING OR PROVING THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES     8


   PART II.

   ON THE STUDY OF SPECIES, CONSIDERED AS TO THEIR
   ORIGIN, THEIR EARLY CULTIVATION, AND THE
   PRINCIPAL FACTS OF THEIR DIFFUSION.

     I. PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SUBTERRANEAN PARTS, SUCH
            AS ROOTS, TUBERCLES, OR BULBS                          29

    II. PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES                83

   III. PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FLOWERS, OR FOR THE ORGANS
            WHICH ENVELOP THEM                                    161

    IV. PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS                        168

     V. PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS                         313


   PART III.

   SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION.

    I. GENERAL TABLE OF SPECIES, WITH THEIR ORIGIN AND THE
           EPOCH OF THEIR EARLIEST CULTIVATION                    436

   II. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS                       447

       INDEX                                                      463




ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS.




PART I.

General Remarks.




CHAPTER I.

IN WHAT MANNER AND AT WHAT EPOCHS CULTIVATION BEGAN IN DIFFERENT
COUNTRIES.


THE traditions of ancient peoples, embellished by poets, have commonly
attributed the first steps in agriculture and the introduction of useful
plants, to some divinity, or at least to some great emperor or Inca.
Reflection shows that this is hardly probable, and observation of the
attempts at agriculture among the savage tribes of our own day proves
that the facts are quite otherwise.

In the progress of civilization the beginnings are usually feeble,
obscure, and limited. There are reasons why this should be the case with
the first attempts at agriculture or horticulture. Between the custom of
gathering wild fruits, grain, and roots, and that of the regular
cultivation of the plants which produce them, there are several steps. A
family may scatter seeds around its dwelling, and provide itself the
next year with the same product in the forest. Certain fruit trees may
exist near a dwelling without our knowing whether they were planted, or
whether the hut was built beside them in order to profit by them. War
and the chase often interrupt attempts at cultivation. Rivalry and
mistrust cause the imitation of one tribe by another to make but slow
progress. If some great personage command the cultivation of a plant,
and institute some ceremonial to show its utility, it is probably
because obscure and unknown men have previously spoken of it, and that
successful experiments have been already made. A longer or shorter
succession of local and short-lived experiments must have occurred
before such a display, which is calculated to impress an already
numerous public. It is easy to understand that there must have been
determining causes to excite these attempts, to renew them, to make them
successful.

The first cause is that such or such a plant, offering some of those
advantages which all men seek, must be within reach. The lowest savages
know the plants of their country; but the example of the Australians and
Patagonians shows that if they do not consider them productive and easy
to rear, they do not entertain the idea of cultivating them. Other
conditions are sufficiently evident: a not too rigorous climate; in hot
countries, the moderate duration of drought; some degree of security and
settlement; lastly, a pressing necessity, due to insufficient resources
in fishing, hunting, or in the production of indigenous and nutritious
plants, such as the chestnut, the date-palm, the banana, or the
breadfruit tree. When men can live without work it is what they like
best. Besides, the element of hazard in hunting and fishing attracts
primitive, and sometimes civilized man, more than the rude and regular
labour of cultivation.

I return to the species which savages are disposed to cultivate. They
sometimes find them in their own country, but often receive them from
neighbouring peoples, more favoured than themselves by natural
conditions, or already possessed of some sort of civilization. When a
people is not established on an island, or in some place difficult of
access, they soon adopt certain plants, discovered elsewhere, of which
the advantage is evident, and are thereby diverted from the cultivation
of the poorer species of their own country. History shows us that
wheat, maize, the sweet potato, several species of the genus Panicum,
tobacco, and other plants, especially annuals, were widely diffused
before the historical period. These useful species opposed and arrested
the timid attempts made here and there on less productive or less
agreeable plants. And we see in our own day, in various countries,
barley replaced by wheat, maize preferred to buckwheat and many kinds of
millet, while some vegetables and other cultivated plants fall into
disrepute because other species, sometimes brought from a distance, are
more profitable. The difference in value, however great, which is found
among plants already improved by culture, is less than that which exists
between cultivated plants and others completely wild. Selection, that
great factor which Darwin has had the merit of introducing so happily
into science, plays an important part when once agriculture is
established; but in every epoch, and especially in its earliest stage,
the choice of species is more important than the selection of varieties.

The various causes which favour or obstruct the beginnings of
agriculture, explain why certain regions have been for thousands of
years peopled by husbandmen, while others are still inhabited by nomadic
tribes. It is clear that, owing to their well-known qualities and to the
favourable conditions of climate, it was at an early period found easy
to cultivate rice and several leguminous plants in Southern Asia, barley
and wheat in Mesopotamia and in Egypt, several species of Panicum in
Africa, maize, the potato, the sweet potato, and manioc in America.
Centres were thus formed whence the most useful species were diffused.
In the north of Asia, of Europe, and of America, the climate is
unfavourable, and the indigenous plants are unproductive; but as hunting
and fishing offered their resources, agriculture must have been
introduced there late, and it was possible to dispense with the good
species of the south without great suffering. It was different in
Australia, Patagonia, and even in the south of Africa. The plants of the
temperate region in our hemisphere could not reach these countries by
reason of the distance, and those of the intertropical zone were
excluded by great drought or by the absence of a high temperature. At
the same time, the indigenous species are very poor. It is not merely
the want of intelligence or of security which has prevented the
inhabitants from cultivating them. The nature of the indigenous flora
has so much to do with it, that the Europeans, established in these
countries for a hundred years, have only cultivated a single species,
the _Tetragonia_, an insignificant green vegetable. I am aware that Sir
Joseph Hooker[1] has enumerated more than a hundred Australian species
which may be used in some way; but as a matter of fact they were not
cultivated by the natives, and, in spite of the improved methods of the
English colonists, no one does cultivate them. This clearly demonstrates
the principle of which I spoke just now, that the choice of species is
more important than the selection of varieties, and that there must be
valuable qualities in a wild plant in order to lead to its cultivation.

In spite of the obscurity of the beginnings of cultivation in each
region, it is certain that they occurred at very different periods. One
of the most ancient examples of cultivated plants is in a drawing
representing figs, found in Egypt in the pyramid of Gizeh. The epoch of
the construction of this monument is uncertain. Authors have assigned a
date varying between fifteen hundred and four thousand two hundred years
before the Christian era. Supposing it to be two thousand years, its
actual age would be four thousand years. Now, the construction of the
pyramids could only have been the work of a numerous, organized people,
possessing a certain degree of civilization, and consequently an
established agriculture, dating from some centuries back at least. In
China, two thousand seven hundred years before Christ, the Emperor
Chenming instituted the ceremony at which every year five species of
useful plants are sown--rice, sweet potato, wheat, and two kinds of
millet.[2] These plants must have been cultivated for some time in
certain localities before they attracted the emperor's attention to such
a degree. Agriculture appears, then, to be as ancient in China as in
Egypt. The constant relations between Egypt and Mesopotamia lead us to
suppose that an almost contemporaneous cultivation existed in the
valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile. And it may have been equally
early in India and in the Malay Archipelago. The history of the
Dravidian and Malay peoples does not reach far back, and is sufficiently
obscure, but there is no reason to believe that cultivation has not been
known among them for a very long time, particularly along the banks of
the rivers.

The ancient Egyptians and the Phoenicians propagated many plants in the
region of the Mediterranean, and the Aryan nations, whose migrations
towards Europe began about 2500, or at latest 2000 years B.C., carried
with them several species already cultivated in Western Asia. We shall
see, in studying the history of several species, that some plants were
probably cultivated in Europe and in the north of Africa prior to the
Aryan migration. This is shown by names in languages more ancient than
the Aryan tongues; for instance, Finn, Basque, Berber, and the speech of
the Guanchos of the Canary Isles. However, the remains, called
kitchen-middens, of ancient Danish dwellings, have hitherto furnished no
proof of cultivation or any indication of the possession of metal.[3]
The Scandinavians of that period lived principally by fishing and
hunting, and perhaps eked out their subsistence by indigenous plants,
such as the cabbage, the nature of which does not admit any remnant of
traces in the dung-heaps and rubbish, and which, moreover, did not
require cultivation. The absence of metals does not in these northern
countries argue a greater antiquity than the age of Pericles, or