331 



; 





t 



but from (he following considerations it will be evident that 

 Lauremberg was speaking vaguely, from memory, and that the 

 date, 1602, is much too early, and moreover that if he meant to 

 say that the Dutch had brought them direct from Canada he was 



wronff. 



1. There were no Dutch expeditions during the critical years 

 An i<?to x_ xi districts where the aborigines were found by 



1600 



the French voyagers to cultivate these tubers. 



2. Pelletier could hardly have omitted to mention them in 

 1610 in his list of the plants of YTalcheren, just across the Hond 

 from Terneuzen, if they had arrived there so early as 1602. 



3. Peter Lauremberg (1585-1639) was born and died at Rostock, 

 where, as well as at Hamburg, he held the chair of botany. His 



be 



hen, a Dutchman, for close and contemporary knowledge of 

 Petius Hondius. 



4. He is vague about the " thirty years/' for he adds "or 

 thereabouts." 



5. His language reads like an echo of what he ought to have 

 read in van Ravelinghen's Dodonaeus ; for instance in the passage 

 " Nam plurimae aestates etiam in Belgio* labuntur cum nullo 

 flore his flos solis conspicuus est. XJbi aestas acriter fervet et 

 sicca est admodum . . . planta solet florifera fieri ** as well as in 

 the passage already quoted. Nevertheless he alleges on p. 134 

 "a neniine enim depictam ant descriptam hactemis vidi." If 

 indeed he had never read van Ravelinghen's account, the verbal 

 coincidences are surprising. 



6. If his date were correct, it could hardly have been unknown 

 to van Ravelinghen, w r ho obviously was in correspondence with 

 Petrus Hondius, and would hardly, in that case, have spoken of 

 the planting in 1613 as if the tubers were then a novelty. 



T. If they had been grown in Holland earlier, in fact much 

 earlier, than in France it is not likely that their first arrival in 

 England would have been, as we shall shortly see, through a 

 I Frenchman. 



We may thus dismiss Ln ur ember er's claim that Petrus Hondius 

 was the firsi to introduce Jerusalem artichokes to Europe, though 



I he may have been the channel of their transmission to German v, 



j and very possibly to Italy as well. 



! Let us now turn to England. The Jerusalem artichoke was not 



ea 



known to Gerarde, who does not allude to it in his Herbal! of 

 1597. The earliest published reference is in the second edition 

 (1622) f of Venner's Via recta ad vitam longam, p. 134. in a 

 quaint passage : "Artichoks of Jerusalem is a roote usually 

 with butter, vinegar, and pepper, by itselfe, or together with 

 other meates: It is in nature somewhat answerable to the former 

 (i.e., Artichoks), but not so pleasant in taste, nor of so com- 

 mendable nourishment. It breedeth melancholy, and is somewhat 

 nauseous or fulsome to the stomacke, and therefore very hurtful 



# The southern shore of the Hond was " in Belgio," although not com- 

 prised in the modern kingdom of Belgium, 



t In the Oxford English Dictionaiy the passage is referred to the first 

 edition of 1620, where it does not occur. 



