Chap. IX. PRELIMINARY REMARKS 323 



some facts of' value can be gleaned : and other facts will 

 hereafter be incidentally given. One chief object in the 

 two following chapters is to show how many characters in 

 our cultivated plants have become variable. 



Before entering on details a few general remarks on the 

 origin of cultivated plants may be introduced. M. Alph. De 

 Candolle 1 in an admirable discussion on this subject, in which 

 he displays a wonderful amount of knowledge, gives a list of 

 157 of the most useful cultivated plants. Of these he 

 believes that 85 are almost certainly known in their wild 

 state; but on this head other competent judges 2 entertain 

 great doubts. Of 40 of them, the origin is admitted by M. 

 De Candolle to be doubtful, either from a certain amount of 

 dissimilarity which they present when compared with their 

 nearest allies in a wild state, or from the probability of the 

 latter not being truly wild plants, but seedlings escaped 

 from culture. Of the entire 157, 32 alone are ranked by 

 M. De Candolle as quite unknown in their aboriginal con- 

 dition. But it should be. observed that he does not include 

 in his list several plants which present ill-defined characters, 

 namely, the various forms of pumpkins, millet, sorghum, 

 kidney-bean, dolichos, capsicum, and indigo. Nor does he 

 include flowers ; and several of the more anciently cultivated 

 flowers, such as certain roses, the common Imperial lily, the 

 tuberose, and even the lilac, are said 3 not to be known in the 

 wild state. 



From the relative numbers above given, and from other 

 arguments of much weight, M. De Candolle concludes that 

 plants have rarely been so much modified by culture that 

 they cannot be identified with their wild prototypes. But 

 on this view, considering that savages probably would not 

 have chosen rare plants for cultivation, that useful plants are 

 generally conspicuous, and that they could not have been 

 the inhabitants of deserts or of remote and recently discovered 



1 'Gebgraphie botanique raisonne'e,' Plants,' by Dr. A. Targioni-Tozzetti. 

 1855, pp. 810 to 991. See also 'Edinburgh Review,' 1866, 



2 Review by Mr. Bentham in ' Hort. p. 510. 



Journal,' vol. ix. 1855, p. 133, entitled, 3 'Hist. Notes,' as above, by Tar- 



4 Historical Notes on cultivated gioni-Tozzetti. 



