PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 275 



name to avoid changes which are a source of confusion, 

 and to recall the popular denomination. The prickly 

 forms, and those more or less free from spines, have been 

 considered by some authors as distinct species, but an 

 attentive examination leads us to regard them as one.^ 



The species existed both wild and cultivated in 

 Mexico before the arrival of the Spaniards. Hernandez ^ 

 describes nine varieties of it, which shows the antiquity of 

 its cultivation. The cochineal insect appears to feed on one 

 of these, almost without thorns, more than on the others, 

 and it has been transported with the plant to the Canary 

 Isles and elsewhere. It is not known how far its habitat 

 extended in America before man transported pieces of 

 the plant, shaped like a racket, and the fruits, which are 

 two easy ways of propagating it. Perhaps the wild 

 plants in Jamaica, and the other West India Islands 

 mentioned by Sloane,^ in 1725, were the result of its 

 introduction by the Spaniards. Certainly the species 

 has become naturalized in this direction as far as the 

 climate permits ; for instance, as far as Southern Florida.* 



It was one of the first plants which the Spaniards in- 

 troduced to the old world, both in Europe and Asia. Its 

 singular appearance was the more striking that no other 

 species belonging to the family had before been seen.^ 

 All sixteenth-century botanists mention it, and the plant 

 became naturalized in the south of Europe and in Africa 

 as its cultivation was introduced. It was in Spain that 

 the prickly pear was first known under the American 

 name tuna, and it was probably the Moors who took it 

 into Barbary when they were expelled from the peninsula. 

 They called it fig of the Christians.^ The custom of 

 using the plant for fences, and the nourishing property 

 of the fruits, which contain a large proportion of sugar, 

 have determined its extension round the Mediterranean, 

 and in general in all countries near the tropics. 



* Webb and Berthelot, Phytog. Canar., sect. 1, p. 208. 



' Hernandez, Theo. Novae Hisp., p. 78. ' Sloane, Jamaica, ii. p. 150. 



* Chapman, Flora of Southern States, p. 144. 



* The cactos of the Greeks was quite a different plant. 



® Steinbeil, in Boissier, Voyage Bot. en Espagne, i. p. 25. 



