PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 159 



growing wild in China ; on the contrary, the origin in 

 Cochin-China, indicated by Loureiro, finds an unexpected 

 confirmation. It seems to me most probable that its 

 primitive range extended from Bengal to Cochin-China. 

 It may have included the Sunda Isles and the Moluccas, 

 whose climate is very similar ; but there are quite as 

 many reasons for believing that it was early introduced 

 into these from Cochin-China or the Malay peninsula. 



The propagation of the sugar-cane from India west- 

 ward is well known. The Greco-Roman world had a 

 vague idea of the reed (calamus) which the Indians 

 delighted to chew, and from which they obtained sugar.^ 

 On the other hand, the Hebrew writings do not mention 

 sugar ; ^ whence we may infer that the cultivation of the 

 sugar-cane did not exist west of the Indus at the time 

 of the Jewish captivity at Babylon. The Arabs in the 

 Middle Ages introduced it into Egypt, Sicily, and the 

 south of Spain,^ where it flourished until the abundance 

 of sugar in the colonies caused it to be abandoned. Don 

 Henriquez transported the sugar-cane from Sicily to 

 Madeira, whence it was taken to the Canaries in 1503.* 

 Hence it was introduced into Brazil in the beginning of 

 the sixteenth century.^ It was taken to St. Domingo 

 about 1520, and shortly afterwards to Mexico;^ to 

 Guadeloupe in 1644, to Martinique about 1650, to Bour- 

 bon when the colony was founded."^ The variety known 

 as Otahiti, which is not, however, wild in that island, 

 and which is also called Bourbon, was introduced into 

 the French and English colonies at the end of the last 

 and the beginning of the present century.^ 



^ See the quotations from Strabo, Dioscorides, Pliny, etc., in Lenz, 

 Botanik der Alien Crriechen und Romer, 1859, p. 267 ; Fingerhut, in Flora, 

 1839, vol. ii. p. 529 ; and many other authors. 



2 Rosenmiiller, Handhuch der Bihl. Alterth! 



' Calendrier Rural de Uarih, written in the tenth century for Spain, 

 translated by Bureau de la Malle in his Climatologie de Vltalie et de 

 VAndalousie, p. 71. 



* Von Buch, Canar. Ins. * Piso, Bre^'il, p. 49. 



® Humboldt, Noiiv. Espagne, ed. 2, vol. iii. p. 34. 



^ Not. Stat, sur les Col. Franc, i. pp. 207, 29, 83. 



' Macf adyen, in Hooker, Bat. Miscell., i. p. 101 ; Maycock, Fl. Barhad., 

 p. 50. 



