454 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



This is a small proportion of the one hundred and twenty 

 or one hundred and forty thousand in the vegetable 

 kingdom ; but in the animal world the proportion of 

 creatures subject to the will of man is far smaller. 

 There are not perhaps more than two hundred species of 

 domestic animals — that is, reared for our use, — and the 

 animal kingdom reckons millions of species. In the 

 great class of molluscs the oyster alone is cultivated, and 

 in that of the Articulata, which counts ten times more 

 species than the vegetable kingdom, we can only name 

 the bee and two or three silk-producing insects. Doubt- 

 less the number of species of animals and vegetables 

 which may be reared or cultivated for pleasure or 

 curiosity is very large : witness menageries and zoolo- 

 gical and botanical gardens, but T am only speaking here 

 of useful plants and animals, in general and customary 

 employment. 



Article III. — Cultivated Plants known or not known in a 

 Wild State. 



Science has succeeded in discovering the geographical 

 origin of nearly all cultivated species ; but there is less 

 progress in the knowledge of species in a natural state — 

 that is wild, far from cultivation and dwellings. There 

 are species which have not been discovered in this 

 condition, and others whose specific identity and truly 

 wild condition are doubtful. 



In the following enumeration I have classed the 

 species according to the degree of certainty as to the 

 wild character, and the nature of the doubts where such 

 exist.^ 



1. Spontaneous species, that is wild, seen by several 

 botanists far from dwellings and cultivation, with every 

 appearance of indigenous plants, and under a form identical 

 with one of the cultivated varieties. These are the 



* The species in italics are of very ancient cultivation (A or D), 

 those marked with an asterisk have been less than two thousand years 

 in cultivation (C or F). 



