PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 387 



to possess a crop so well suited to its peculiar conditions 

 of irrigation. The Arabs introduced the species into 

 Spain, as we see from the Spanish name arroz. Eice was 

 first cultivated in Italy in 1468, near Pisa.^ It is of 

 recent introduction into Louisiana. 



When I said that the cultivation of rice in India was 

 probably more recent than in China, I did not mean that 

 the plant was not wild there. It belongs to a family of 

 which the species cover wide areas, and, besides, aquatic 

 plants have commonly more extensive habitations than 

 others. Rice existed, perhaps, before all cultivation in 

 Southern Asia from China to Bengal, as is shown by the 

 variety of names in the monosyllabic languages of the 

 races betAveen India and China.^ It has been found 

 outside cultivation in several Indian localities, according 

 to Roxburgh.^ He says that wild rice, called neiuaree by 

 the Telingas, grows in abundance on the shores of lakes 

 in the country of the Circars, Its grain is prized by rich 

 Hindus, but it is not planted because it is not very 

 productive. Roxburgh has no doubt that this is the 

 original plant. Thomson ^ found wild rice at Moradabad, 

 in the province of Delhi. Historical reasons support the 

 idea that these specimens are indigenous. Otherwise 

 they might be supposed to be the result of the habitual 

 cultivation of the species, all the more that there are 

 examples of the facility with which rice sows itself and 

 becomes naturalized in warm, damp climates.^ In any 

 case historical evidence and botanical probability tend to 

 the belief that rice existed in India before cultivation.^ 



Maize — Zea mays, Linnseus. 



" Maize is of American origin, and has only been intro- 

 duced into the old world since the discovery of the new. 



^ Targioni, Cenni Storici. 



2 Crawfurd, in Journal of Botany, 1866, p. 324. 



3 Roxburgh, Fl. Ind., edit. 1832,' vol. ii. p. 200. 

 * Aitchinson, Catal. Punjab,, p. 157. 



^ Nees, in Martins, Fl. BrasiL, in Svo, ii. p. 518 ; Baker, Fl. of 

 Mauritius, p. 458. 



^ Von Mueller wi-ites to me that rice is certainly wild in tropical 

 Australia. It may have been accidentally sown, and have become 

 naturalized. — Author's note, 1884. 



