62 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



3. The natives of America had several ancient names 

 for the varieties of manioc, especially in Brazil/ which 

 does not appear to have been the case in Africa, even on 

 the coast of Guinea.^ 



4. The varieties cultivated in Brazil, in Guiana, and 

 in the West Indies are very numerous, whence we may 

 presume a very ancient cultivation. This is not the case 

 in Africa. 



5. The forty-two known species of the genus Manihot, 

 without counting M. utilissima, are all wild in America ; 

 most of them in Brazil, some in Guiana, Peru, and 

 Mexico; not one in the old world.^ It is very unlikely that 

 a single species, and that the cultivated one, was a native 

 both of the old and of the new world, and all the more so 

 since in the family Eiiphorhiaceoe the area of the woody 

 species is usually restricted, and since phanerogamous 

 plants are very rarely common to Africa and America. 



The American origin of the manioc being thus 

 established, it may be asked how the species has been 

 introduced into Guinea and Congo. It was probably 

 the result of the frequent communications established in 

 the sixteenth century by Portuguese merchants and 

 slave-traders. 



The Manihot utilissmia and the allied species or 

 variety called aijyi, which is also cultivated, have not 

 been found in an undoubtedly wild state. Humboldt 

 and Bonpland, indeed, found upon the banks of the 

 Magdalena a plant of Manihot utilissima which they 

 called almost wild,^ but Dr. Sagot assures me that it has 

 not been found in Guiana, and that botanists who have 

 explored the hot region in Brazil have not been more 

 fortunate. We gather as much from the expressions 

 of Pohl, who has carefully studied these plants, and who 

 was acquainted with the collections of Martius, and had 



^ Aypi, mandioca, manihot, nianioch, yuca, etc., in Pohl, Icones and 

 Dcsc, i. pp. 30, 33. Martius, Beitrdge z. Ethnographie, etc., Braziliens, 

 ii. p. 122, gives a number of names. 



2 Thonning (in Schumacher, BesJc. Guin.), who is accustomed to 

 quote the common names, gives none for the manioc. 



2 J. Miiller, in Prodromus, xv., sect. 1, p. 1057. 



* Kunth, in Humboldt and B., Nova Genera, ii. p. 108. 



