204 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



California.^ Thus its area extends round the north pole, 

 except in Eastern Siberia and the basin of the river 

 Amur, since the species is not mentioned by Maximowicz 

 in his PriiniticE Florae Amiirensis. In America its area 

 is extended along the highlands of Mexico ; for Fragaria 

 mexicana, cultivated in the Jardin cles Plantes, and 

 examined by Gay, is F. vesca. It also grows round 

 Quito, according to the same botanist, who is an authority 

 on this question.^ 



The Greeks and Romans did not cultivate the straw- 

 berry. Its cultivation was probably introduced in the 

 fifteenth or sixteenth century. Champier, in the six- 

 teenth century, speaks of it as a novelty in the north 

 of France,^ but it already existed in the south, and in 

 England.^ 



Transported into gardens in the colonies, the straw- 

 berry has become naturalized in a few cool localities far 

 from dwellings. This is the case in Jamaica,^ in Mauritius,^ 

 and in Bourbon, where some plants had been placed by 

 Commerson on the table-land known as the Kaffirs' 

 Plain. Bory Saint- Vincent relates that in 1801 he 

 found districts quite red with strawberries, and that it 

 was impossible to cross them without staining the feet 

 red with the juice, mixed with volcanic dust.'' It is 

 probable that similar cases of naturalization may be seen 

 in Tasmania and New Zealand. 



The genus Fragaria has been studied with more care 

 than many others, by Duchesne (fils), the Comte de 

 Lambertye, Jacques Gay, and especially by Madame Eliza 

 Yilmorin, whose faculty of observation was worthy of 

 the name she bore. A summary of their works, with 

 excellent coloured plates, is published in the Jardin 



^ A. Gray, Bot. Calif., i. p. 176. 



^ J. Gay, in Decaisne, Jardin Fruitier du Museum, Fraisier, p. 30. 



^ Le Grand d'Aussy, Hist, de la Vie Privee des Frangais, i. pp. 233 

 and 3. 



* Olivier de Serres, TMdtre d'Agric, p. 511 ; Gerard, from Phillips, 

 Pomariimi Britannicum, p. 334. 



^ Purdie, in Hooker's London Journal of Botany, 1844, p. 515. 



® Bojer, Hortus Mauritianus, p. 121. 



^ Bory Saint-Yincent, Comptes Rendus de I'Acad. des. Sc. Nat., 1836, 

 sem. ii. p. 109. 



