NOTES ON HELIANTHUS TUBEROSUS. 201 
The notices by early voyagers, of ground-nuts, eaten by the 
Indians, are generally so brief and so vague, that it is not 
easy to distinguish the three or four species mentioned under 
that name or its equivalents. The Solanum tuberosum, 
Apios tuberosa, Aralia trifolia, and a Cyperus (articulatus?) 
were all “ ground-nuts,” or “earth-nuts.” We find, however, 
in a few instances, unmistakable mention of the roots already 
known in Europe as “ Canadian.” 
Brereton, in his account of Gosnold’s voyage to New Eng- 
land in 1602, notes the “great store of ground-nuts” found 
on all the Elizabeth Islands. They grow “forty together on 
a string, some of them as big as a hen’s egg” (Purchas, iv. 
1651). These, doubtless, were the roots of Apios tuberosa. 
But when Champlain, a few years later (1605-6), was in the 
same region, he observed that the Almouchiquois Indians near 
Point Mallebarre (Nauset harbor, probably,) had “ force des 
racines qu’els cultivent, lesquelles ont le gott d’artichaut ” 
(Voyages, ed. 1632, p. 84). And it is to these roots, evi- 
dently, that Lescarbot alludes, ‘‘ Histoire de la Nouv. France,” 
1612 (p. 840): there is, he says, in the country of the Ar- 
mouchiquois (7. e., New England, west and south of Maine), 
a certain kind of roots “grosses comme naveaux, tres excel- 
lentes a manger, ayans un gout retirant aux cardes, mais plus 
agréable, lesquelles plantées multiplient en telle fagon que 
e’est merveille ;”’ and he thinks these must be the “ Afro- 
dilles ” described by Pliny. 
Sagard-Theodat (Hist. du Canada, 1636, p. 785) mentions 
the cultivation of the Sunflower by the Hurons — who ex- 
tracted oil from its seeds, — and names also the “roots that 
we [the French] call Canadiennes or Pommes de Canada, 
and that the Hurons call ‘ Orasqueinta,’ which are not very 
(assez pew) common in their country. They eat them raw, 
as well as cooked, as they eat another sort of root resembling 
parsnips [ Siwm lineare ?], which they call Sondhratates, and 
which are much better; but they seldom gave us these, and 
only when they received some present from us or when we 
visited them in their cabins.” He goes on to speak of “ pa- 
tates, fort grosses et tres-excellentes,’ some of which he had 
