students of plants have differed for more than four cen- 
turies. Sturtevant, a careful student of maize and of the 
literature pertaining to it, compiled (1879) lists of names 
of prominent herbalists and early botanists who had ex- 
pressed opinions on the geographical origin of maize. 
Among those who regarded maize as a plant of Old 
World origin were: Bock, Ruellius, Fuchs, Sismondi, 
Michaud, Gregory, Lonicer, Amoreux, Regnier, Viterbo, 
Donicer, Tabernaemontanus, Bonafous, St. John, de 
Turre, Daru, de Herbelot and Klippart. Equally im- 
pressive is the roster of those who believed maize to be 
an American plant: Dodoens, Camerarius, Matthioli, 
Gerard, Ray, Parmentier, Descourtilz, de Candolle, 
Humboldt, Darwin, F. Unger, Von Heer, de Jonnes, 
Targioni-Tozzetti, Hooker, Figuer, Nuttall, Mrs. Somer- 
ville and Flint. De Candolle’s case (1855) for the Ameri- 
can origin of maize was so convincing and the evidence 
which he marshalled to support his conclusions so substan- 
tial that the possibility of an Old World origin of maize 
has received little consideration from serious students in 
more recent times. Especially has this been true since 
Ascherson (1875) demonstrated the close relationship of 
maize and teosinte, a plant unmistakably American. 
The question of a pre-Columbian distribution of maize 
in Asia has, however, been raised at least twice in this 
century, first in 1909 by Collins, and now by Stonor and 
Anderson (1949). The last named paper, since it pur- 
ports to present new evidence on the question and coin- 
ciding as it does with a fashionable new preoccupation 
with the old problem of trans-Pacific diffusion of pre- 
Columbian cultures, has been of particular interest. We 
have been requested by a number of anthropologists to 
review it and to evaluate the evidence on which it is 
based. The paper has already been critically discussed 
by Merrill (1950), who has questioned its principal con- 
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