PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 291 



ago, and the silence of ancient writers on China on this 

 head shows that it is of recent introduction there. Rum- 

 phius ^ had seen it in gardens in the Malay Archipelago. 

 The Malays called it tomatte, but this is an American 

 name, for C. Bauhin calls the species turnatle America- 

 norum. Nothing leads us to suppose it was known in 

 Europe before the discovery of America. 



The first names given to it by botanists in the six- 

 teenth century indicate that they received the plant from 

 Peru.^ It was cultivated on the continent of America 

 before it was grown in the West India Islands, for Sloane 

 does not mention it in Jamaica, and Hughes^ says it 

 was brought to Barbados from Portugal hardly more 

 than a century ago. Humboldt considered that the cul- 

 tivation of the tomato was of ancient date in Mexico.* 

 I notice, however, that the earliest work on the plants of 

 this country (Hernandez, Historia) makes no mention 

 of it. Neither do the early writers on Brazil, Piso and 

 Marcgraf, speak of it, although the species is now culti- 

 vated throughout tropical America. Thus by the process 

 of exhaustion we return to the idea of a Peruvian origin, 

 at least for its cultivation. 



De Martins^ found the plant wild in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Rio de Janeiro and Para, but it had per- 

 haps escaped from gardens. I do not know of any 

 botanist who has found it really wild in the state in 

 which it is familiar to us, with the fruit more or less 

 large, lumpy, and with swelled sides ; but this is not the 

 case with the variety with small spherical fruit, called 

 L. cerasiforr}ie in some botanical works, and considered 

 in others (and rightly so, I think ^) as belonging to the 

 same species. This variety is wild on the sea-shore of 



* Rumphius, Amhoin, v. p. 416. 



2 Mala Peruviana, Ponii del Peru, in Bauhin's Hist., iii. p. 621. 

 ^ Hughes, Barbados, p. 148. 



* Humboldt, Espagne, edit. 2, vol. ii. p. 472. 

 5 Fl. Brasil., vol. x. p. 126. 



^ The proportions of the calyx and the corolla are the same as those 

 of the cultivated tomato, but they are different in the allied species 8. 

 Humholdtii, of which the fruit is also eaten, according to Humboldt, who 

 found it wild in Venezuela. 



