PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 339 



no Sanskrit name, and that sixteenth-century gardeners 

 often called the species Titrkish hecin. Convinced, more- 

 over, that the Greeks cultivated this plant under the 

 names fasiolos and dolichos, I suggested that it came 

 originally from Western Asia, and not from India. Georg 

 von Martens adopted this hypothesis. 



However, the meaning of the words dolichos of 

 Theophrastus, fasiolos of Dioscorides, faseolus and 

 phaseolus of the Romans,^ is far from being sufficiently 

 defined to allow them to be attributed with certainty to 

 Phaseolus vulgaris. Several cultivated Legu'inhioscB are 

 supported by the trellises mentioned b}^ authors, and 

 have pods and seeds of a similar kind. The best argu- 

 ment for translating these names by Phaseolus vidgaHs 

 is that the modern Greeks and Italians have names 

 derived from fasiolus for the common haricot. In 

 modern Greek it is fasoulia, in Albanian (Pelasgic ?) 

 fastile, in Italian fagiolo. It is possible, however, that 

 the name has been transferred from a species of pea 

 or vetch, or from a haricot formerly cultivated, to our 

 modern haricot. It is rather bold to determine a species 

 of Phaseolus from one or two epithets in an ancient 

 author, when we see how difficult is the distinction of 

 species to modern botanists Avith the plants under their 

 eyes. Nevertheless, the dolichos of Theophrastus has 

 been definitely referred to the scarlet runner, and the 

 fasiolos to the dwarf haricot of our gardens, which are 

 the two principal modern varieties of the common 

 haricot, with an immense number of sub-varieties in the 

 form of the pods and seed. I can only say it may be so. 



If the common haricot was formerly known in Greece, 

 it was not one of the earliest introductions, for the 

 faseolos did not exist at Rome in Cato's time, and it is 

 only at the beginning of the empire that Latin authors 

 speak of it. Yirchow brought from the excavations at 

 Troy the seeds of several leguminee, which Wittmack ^ 



* Theophrastus, Hist., lib. viii. cap. 3; Dioscorides, lib. ii. cap. 130; 

 Plinj, Hist., lib. xviii. cap. 7, 12, interpreted by Fraas, Syn. Fl. Class., 

 p. 52 ; Lenz, Bot. der Alten, p. 731 ; Martens, Die Garteiibohnen, p. 1. 



^ Wittmack, Bot. Vereins Brandenburg, Dec. 19, 1879. • 



